Prepaid subscriptions

A prepaid subscription charges the customer once, up front, to cover a set run of deliveries. Instead of paying each time a box ships, they pay for the whole period at checkout and then receive their deliveries on schedule. It's a great fit when you want commitment and predictable cash flow, or when the subscription is really a gift.

How prepaid differs from pay-as-you-go

This is the clearest example of billing and delivery being on different schedules:

• Pay-as-you-go (Subscribe & Save) - Charged each time a delivery ships. Bill monthly, deliver monthly.
• Prepaid - Charged once to cover several deliveries. Bill once, deliver monthly for the length of the term.

The customer still receives their product on the normal cadence — only the charging is bundled into a single up-front payment.

When prepaid is a good fit

• Gifts - "3 months of coffee" as a single purchase the buyer pays for once.
• Commitment and cash flow - You collect the full term's revenue at the start.
• Seasonal or fixed-length runs - Where a defined number of deliveries makes sense.

What the customer experiences

At checkout the customer pays the full prepaid amount. Their deliveries then arrive on the regular schedule until the term is complete. When the prepaid term ends, the subscription renews for another term unless it was set up as a fixed-length plan.

Paying once, with no renewal

To sell a single prepaid batch that never renews, turn on Limit subscription length and set Maximum cycles to 1. A cycle is a payment, so 1 means one charge at checkout; the deliveries inside that term still ship on schedule, and the subscription ends when the next payment would have been due.

What customers can change on a prepaid plan

By default the deliveries in a prepaid term belong to the order the customer already paid for, so they can't be edited one by one. Per-order changes (customizing a single upcoming delivery) are not available on that kind of prepaid subscription, and the customer portal doesn't offer them.

One order per prepaid delivery

Turn on One order per prepaid delivery (under the plan's options) to keep the single upfront payment but let customers manage each delivery. The customer still pays the whole term at checkout; each later delivery is then created as its own order at €0 on the delivery date. Because every delivery is its own order, customers can customize a single delivery (with per-order changes on), and skip or reschedule one, while the rest stay as they are. A customized delivery keeps the same number of items, since it was already paid for.

Two rules apply:

• Every product in the plan must have the same price. The upfront charge is one price for the whole plan, computed as the number of deliveries × the discounted product price.
• The plan ends after the paid deliveries. It does not renew automatically; a customer who wants another term buys again. Leave Maximum cycles blank for these options, the app sets it to the number of deliveries.

Example: deliver every month, bill every 3 months, 10% off, on a €24.95 product. The customer pays €67.37 at checkout, receives three monthly deliveries (the second and third as €0 orders), and can swap the product in delivery 2 or 3 from their account.