Overview
A key extension of subscription that most big product and service merchants provide these days is pre-paid billing! While the subscription frequency remains the same, pre-paid billing helps merchants get revenue upfront, lock-in the customer, and enjoy their wallet share and loyalty for a longer period. From a customer's standpoint, pre-paid payment often comes with a discount, which is attractive!
Functionality
Appstle has recently introduced the pre-paid billing functionality, which enables you, the merchant, to provide the option for your most loyal customers to pay upfront for their upcoming orders.
To configure pre-paid billing in Appstle Subscriptions, please follow the below steps.
Step 1: Login to your Merchant Portal for Appstle Subscriptions in Shopify
Step 2: Click on 'Manage Plans'
Step 3: Create a subscription plan
Step 4: Enter the required details such as Plan Name, Delivery Frequency, etc.
Note: In the case of pre-paid subscriptions, the delivery frequency is not connected to the billing cycle, and instead refers to the time gap between each delivery.
Step 5: Select the products for which you want the pre-paid subscription plan to apply to. Then select whether you want the prepaid subscription to auto renew or only charge the customer once.
Step 6: Once you have filled in all the details, please update the 'Billing Frequency' to the number of days/weeks/months that you want to allow your customers to pay upfront.
Note (Illustration): In the below screenshot, I have set the billing frequency for pre-paid subscription to be 3 weeks. Given that the delivery frequency (in my screenshot) is 1 week, with this plan, I will be enabling my customers to pay for 3 deliveries upfront!
Step 7: Click on 'Save'. Your customers will now see the option to pre-pay for their products that are a part of this subscription plan.
If you have any other questions regarding setting up pre-paid billing. Please reach out to us at subscription-support@appstle.com, or just ping us through the chat widget on our app. Our 24x7x365 available experts will be happy to assist you further.