Subscription terms and lead time

Subscription terms are the rules around an option: how long a customer is committed, what they're allowed to do on their own, and when their orders are processed. These settings let you balance flexibility for the customer with protection for your business.

Minimum and maximum cycles

A cycle is a payment, not a delivery. The checkout order counts as the first cycle.

• Minimum cycles - The number of payments that must complete before a customer can cancel. Use it to protect a discount or guarantee a run of orders.
• Maximum cycles - Automatically ends the subscription after a set number of payments, creating a fixed-length plan that won't renew forever. When the next payment would fall past the limit, the subscription ends instead of charging.

Leave either blank for no limit.

Prepaid plans: because one payment covers several deliveries, count payments, not deliveries. A "3 deliveries, paid once" plan is bill every 3 months, deliver every month, maximum cycles 1. Setting maximum cycles to 3 there would charge the customer three times for nine deliveries.

Changing these limits applies to subscriptions started after the change. Existing subscriptions keep the terms they were bought with.

What customers can manage themselves

Decide which actions customers can take from their account, each with its own switch:

• Pause - Put the subscription on hold and resume later.
• Skip - Skip an upcoming delivery without cancelling.
• Cancel - End the subscription (subject to any minimum commitment).
• Change frequency - Switch how often they receive orders.
• Swap products - Change to another allowed product in the plan.

Turning an action off simply hides it from the customer portal — you can still do it for them from your admin.

Processing orders early for shipping

Fulfillment lead time lets you create each order a few days before its scheduled date, so shipping has time to arrive on cadence. This is useful for products customers can't run out of, where a late box is a problem.

Keep in mind that processing an order early also charges the customer a few days earlier — the app notes this so the timing is clear. Leave lead time off (the default) to bill and ship exactly on schedule.