If you want your subscribers or members to be charged on a specific day of the week, month, or year, you can set a Billing/Delivery Day in your selling plan. Since this feature can be a bit complex, we highly recommend placing a test order to familiarize yourself with how it works.
The billing day refers to the date when we charge your customers, but the actual delivery day is entirely up to the shop owner, which is you. The dates you select in the application are strictly for billing purposes and do not control or schedule the delivery of products to your customers. You will need to handle delivery scheduling separately.
What are the common applications of a specific billing day?
Delivery Restrictions
You can use this option on your subscription plan if you have restrictions for delivery and don't have the option to deliver on any day of the week/month/year.
Decrease shipping and fulfillment costs
A pre-determined billing day can lower your costs and effort in Shipping and order fulfillment.
Sync subscription orders
Also, if you want all the subscription orders of one subscriber to get billed or delivered together in one day, you can set a similar Billing Day for all your subscription plans on Subify.
How can I set a billing day for my subscriptions?
You can set a Billing day for each of your selling plans in Subify. From the Subify app, go to the Subscription plans tab > Selling plan > Charge on specific days.
Follow these steps:
1- Go to the Subscription Plans tab.
2- Create a new Subscription plan.
3- Click on the Add/edit Selling plan.
4- Set the frequencies that you want.
5- Enable Charge on specific days.
7- Set the <Select Specific day> option to your preferred time.
8- Review the remaining settings and make sure they are set correctly.
Billing Day is only available for selling plans with weekly, monthly, and yearly frequencies, and cannot be applied to daily subscriptions.
The options for <Billing day> change based on the frequency of your subscription:
Weekly: You need to choose the day of the week.
Monthly: Choose a specific day of the month, or you can set it for every 2 months, every 3 months (Quarterly), every 4 months, or every 6 months. For more info please read this article.
Yearly: You need to choose both the month and the day of the month.
Billing Day for pay-per-delivery subscriptions
For example, if you create a subscription plan with the following selling plans:
<Selling plan type> : Pay-per-delivery subscription
<Delivery every> : 1 week
<Specific Delivery/billing day> : Saturday
When the customer subscribes to the product and makes their first payment at the checkout, an order is created in your Shopify panel for the first delivery of this subscription on the exact day that the customer subscribed.
But after that, Subify will automatically charge your customer every Saturday for the rest of the subscription, no matter when the initial order was placed. And so, every Saturday, a new order is created for the renewal of this subscription on your Shopify panel.
If one order is skipped, then the next order will automatically skip to the next Saturday.
Check out this subscription contract on Subify as an example:
Real Example:
Let's say your customer subscribes to this pay-per-delivery subscription or membership on Sunday, Dec 11th: the first order is created on that exact day, Dec 11th. And the next renewal of this subscription would be the next upcoming Saturday, Dec 17th. And it continues to Dec 24th, Dec 31st, ...
Billing Day for pre-paid subscriptions
For example, if you create a subscription plan with the following selling plans:
<Selling plan type> : Pre-paid subscription
<Delivery every> : 1 month
<Bill every> : 3 deliveries
<Delivery/billing day>: <1st of the month>
After the first payment that the customer does at the checkout, an order is created in your Shopify panel with 3 fulfillment options. The first fulfillment date is the same as the payment date. But the rest are automatically scheduled for the 1st day of upcoming months.
Three months later, at the renewal of this pre-paid subscription, Subify will automatically charge your customer again on the first day of that month, for the next three upcoming deliveries. And again a new order will be created for these three deliveries. (all dated the 1st day of each month).
This will continue for the rest of the subscription. No matter when the initial order was placed.
If one order is skipped, then the next order will automatically skip three months and again takes place on the 1st day of that month.
Real Example:
Let's say your customer subscribes to this pre-paid subscription or membership on Sunday, Dec 11th. The first order is created on Dec 11th containing 3 fulfilments for Dec 11th, Jan 1st, and Feb 1st. And the next renewal of this subscription would be on March 1st.
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Cut-off period
When you set a <Delivery/Billing Day> for your subscription, you can also set a cut-off period for it to filter out just or newly created subscription orders that are too close to the pre-defined billing day.
Let your customers know about it, too
Let your customers know about your subscription billing day. You can inform them on your store: explain it in the product description, subscription FAQ, or anywhere on the product page. If you have a subscription landing page, it would be good to put it there, too.
Editing a subscription plan won't change the previous subscription contracts and only affect the future subscriptions on your store. If you want to change the billing day on existing subscriptions, please contact our support from the app.