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Selling Plan Groups and Selling Plans

How to Set Up and Edit Selling Plans

Benjamin Paull avatar
Written by Benjamin Paull
Updated over a week ago

What is a Selling Plan Group?

A selling plan group is a collection of selling plans. Selling plans allow you to sell products on subscription on your store. They attach to products or variants to provide a set discount, shipping policy, and billing policy.

The subscription discount is not the same as a discount code, it is a price override.

Please note, selling plans are only for checking out. For products and variants available in the merchant portal and customer portal after purchase, you will use the Catalog and Carousel pages.

Types of Selling Plan Groups

There are four types of selling plan groups:

  • Standard - Sell products which bill on specific intervals.

  • Calendar - Sell products which bill on specific days of the year. Intervals are optional.

  • Prepaid - Sell multiple orders of a product which are paid at once and then divvied out at a specific intervals. These can expire or renew.

  • Calendar Prepaid - Sell multiple orders of a product which are paid at once and then divvied out at a days of the year. Intervals are optional. These can expire or renew.

Creating a Selling Plan

To create a selling plan navigate to Subscription Setup > Selling Plans and click New Selling Plan Group.

You can give your selling plan group a name, but if you do not the name will default to New {Type} Selling Plan Group. Please note you cannot have two selling plan groups of the same name. You can change the name during the creation process by updating the Admin Label.

Selecting Products and/or Variants

You can associate the selling plan group with product(s) and/or variant(s) by clicking the Add New Products or Add New Variants buttons.

Adding a product will add all of the variants for that product to the selling plan group and if any new variants are added to the product, then those will be added to the selling plan group automatically.

Adding a variant will add only that variant of that product to the selling plan group. If new variants are added to the product for that variant, then those variants will not automatically be added to the selling plan. This is useful for when you want to create different value selling plan groups for different variants OR if you only want to offer some variants of a product on subscription.

Once products or variants are added to the selling plan group, you'll see see them in the Products section. You can remove them from the selling plan group by clicking the trashcan icon.

Products will display with their product image (if available) and their Shopify product gid (gid://shopify/Product/{productId}). Variants will display with their variant (if available) and their Shopify variant gid (gid://shopify/ProductVariant/{variantId}).

Please run a product refresh under Settings > General if you aren't seeing a product in your store.

Creating Selling Plans

When you are creating a Selling Plan Group there will always be one selling plan available to be filled out.

Every selling plan type will consist of the same 6 fields*, but calendar, prepaid, and calendar prepaid will have additional fields which dictate their behavior.

Selection Label - This is the label used by the subscription buybox for selecting the selling plan option on the product detail page for the products and variants in the Selling Plan Group. They will also appear in the Purchase options section in Shopify.

Checkout / Cart Label - This will be shown in the cart and at checkout underneath the product.

Discount Type - The type of discount Percentage or Fixed. Fixed discounts will use your store's currency to deduct from the the price of the product. This will be converted automatically by Shopify for foreign currencies.

Discount Value - The value of the discount.

*Billing Schedule Interval Type - How often the subscription will create orders. Values are Days, Weeks, Months, Years.

*Billing Schedule Interval Value - The value of the billing interval. 1 Day frequencies are not supported.

These four values will reflect in the recurring subtotal value in the Shopify Checkout.

*Billing Schedules may not used for all Calendar Selling Plans.

Standard Selling Plan Groups

Standard Selling Plan Groups are the most common type you will see and offer customers the most flexibility to manage their subscription. Customers will create subscriptions that are charged at a specific frequency which they will select at checkout. The frequency can be updated after checkout in the customer portal or merchant portal.

We advise that you keep the discount type and value the same as discounts tied to specific frequencies are not supported in the customer portal without customization.

Calendar Selling Plans

Calendar selling plans are billed on specific days of the year that you will set in the calendar interface.

If you toggle "This calendar selling plan group should consider the selected billing policy" then you can also can also offer multiple frequencies just as you would standard selling plan.

Creating/Editing the Calendar

When creating or editing the calendar, you will see a year field. The year will not effect future shipments of orders so you can set it to 1999 if you'd like. What is important is that the year stays the same for all calendar dates so as to avoid potential issues.

PLEASE NOTE: Editing the calendar will affect the calendar dates for all existing subscriptions. This will not change the next order date, but will update the following order date based on the updated calendar.

Cutoff Days

Cutoff Days are used when there are not frequency values selected for the calendar. They are used to prevent customers from being billed too quickly after their initial orders or reactivations or retries.

"Any subscriptions with orders (checkout or recurring) placed within the number of cutoff days before the next set calendar billing order date will have their orders set to the following calendar billing date."

Orders which bill on a calendar date are not affected by cutoff days and will bill the next calendar date if they do not have a frequency.

Prepaid Selling Plan Groups

Prepaid Selling Plan Groups allow you to offer multiple orders of a product or variant for one flat fee upfront. These orders will be sent at whatever interval you specify.

The only additional field you need to add for prepaid selling plans is the Number of Shipments that the customer will receive upon initial purchase and renewal.

Prepaid Pricing

Prepaid pricing is automatically calculated by Shopify by subtracting the discount from the price of the product and multiplying by the number of orders. Shipping price will also be multiplied by the number of orders at checkout.

Additional Prepaid Settings

  • Allow Gifting for this Selling Plan Group - Allows you to offer the gifting buybox to customers on your storefront. This will allow customers to purchase a prepaid subscription for their friends and family.

  • Allow Subscriptions from this Prepaid Selling Plan Group to Renew - Enabling this feature will allow prepaid subscriptions to renew. If it is not checked, prepaid subscriptions will Expire (Cancel) once all orders are received.

Prepaid Calendar Selling Plan Group

A Prepaid Calendar Selling Plan Group allows you to sell prepaid subscriptions which create orders on specific days of the year. These can have intervals or be set to bill on each day of the calendar without a specific interval just like regular Calendar Selling Plan Groups.

Selling Plan Group Labels

The final step of creating or editing a Selling Plan is the Selling Plan Group Labels.

  • Storefront Label - Used by Shopify on the Product pages in the Shopify Merchant Admin.

  • Storefront Option Label - These can be used by the buybox through customization, but by default will not show to you or your customers.

  • Admin Label - The title used by Stay AI in the merchant portal

  • Admin Description - A description to help you understand what this selling plan does and what is it is used for

First Order(s) Policy

If you use workflows to modify the price of products after the initial order, please see our guide on setting up First Order(s) Policies here.

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