Search for a single terms or two-word term instead of a sentence. For example "subscriptions", "recurring payments", "webhooks" etc., instead of "how to start a subscription" or "where can I find recurring payments".
circuly has partnered with Debtist to offer automated collection of unpaid invoices natively within circuly.
In this article:
Our new debt collection feature (powered by Debtist) enables you to recover lost revenue easily and professionally, thus improving your bottom-line cash flow while eliminating the need to allocate additional time or human resources to manage unpaid invoices.
The native integration ensures that you have a full and detailed overview within circuly of all your unpaid payments that Debtist is currently handling.
Additionally, our native debt collection integration eliminates the need for maintaining and checking two different systems and ensure that you have all the information you need in one system, that is circuly. The two systems speak with each other seamlessly to provide you a smooth and consistent user experience and clean data for bookkeeping purposes.
Subscription-based business models have an increased exposure to payment failure due to the recurring nature of the business. Effective and efficient dunning and debt collection is needed at all costs but can often be messy, frustrating and time-consuming.
Additionally, since Inkasso processes typically operate offline, they result in unsynchronised data and cumbersome post-collection tasks, like manually entering information into bookkeeping systems and other needed platforms.
circuly has partnered with Debtist to offer debt collection natively within circuly so that you can save your time, nerves, internal resources and lost revenue.
About Debtist
Debtist is an end-to-end debt collection solution specialising in resolving outstanding debts and unpaid invoices on your behalf professionally.
Automated & professional debt collection maximises revenue recovery.
Once you have enabled the integration and completed the setup, all unpaid invoices will be transferred to the Debt Collection tab for collection by Debtist as soon as the maximum number of payment retrials have been made. Debtist then works fully automated to bring the unpaid invoices to a resolution.
Given below are the detailed steps:
Step 1: Regular payment collection.
circuly collects recurring payments according to the defined schedule. If the payment is successfully collected, you’ll see its status marked as “settled." If it fails, you’ll see its status marked as “failed.”
Step 2: Payment retrial and email communication.
When a payment fails, the circuly system retries the failed payment according to your payment retrial settings and sends the “payment failure” email.
IMPORTANT: In the circuly operations backend, you can define how many times a payment should be retried, what should be the time interval between each attempt and if the customer should be informed on each attempt or only on the final attempt.
Step 3: Maximum payment retrial attempts made.
As soon as circuly has made the last payment retrial attempt and if the payment still has the “failed” status, the payment and the connected invoice are transferred to the Debt Collection tab.
Step 4: Prejudicial debt collection by Debtist
When an invoice is transferred to the debt collection tab, it is also transferred to Debtist for debt collection. Debtist then starts with the pre-judicial collection process via email and/or letter and other communication channels to obtain the particle or full payment.
Step 5: Judicial debt collection by debtist
If the payment is still outstanding, Debtist begins judicial proceedings. At this stage, Debtist may get in touch with you if additional charges are to be incurred.
IMPORTANT: Debtist will always get in touch with you before proceeding with any step that incurs additional charges for you.
Step 6: Debt Collected
If the payment is successfully collected, the status will change to “debt collected”.
See the image below for a process overview
There are two steps to enabling and setting up the debt collection feature:
IMPORTANT: After you send the activation request, the debt collection feature will be activated on the 1st day of the month following your request.
For example, if you submit the activation request on August 15th, the debt collection feature will be automatically activated for your account on September 1st.
A popup box will open where you can see the pricing list from Debtist and. The pricing list outlines the debt collection charges from Debtist for different countries.
Additionally, you can read the privacy policy and terms & conditions.
Click on the NEXT button to trigger the activation request and to start creating your Debtist account.
What is the Max. Payment Plan Option?
When setting up your Debtist account, you can choose how your customers will repay their debt—either as a single payment or in multiple installments.
This option gives you control over how repayments are structured to suit both your needs and those of your customers.
The debt collection feature will be activated on the 1st day of the month following your request. For example, if you submit the activation request on August 15th, the debt collection feature will be automatically activated for your account on September 1st.
In your circuly Operations Backend, head over to the Settings tab > Invoice & payment > Scroll down to DEBT COLLECTION to configure the settings associated with debt collection.
In the beginning the Debt Collection tab will be empty (see image below).
You will see data as soon a payment has been retried by the circuly system as per your payment retrial settings and transferred to Debtist for Debt Collection. When there are some claims and invoices under the process of debt collection, this is how the Debt Collection tab will appear (see image)
A fixed fee of 49€ will be charged monthly upon activation for everything, including the integration + implementation + continued debt collection-*
*Additional costs may apply based on the region of debt collection. Additional costs are incurred ONLY IF the debt is successfully collected. There are no costs if the debt is not collected, that is if the claim is unsuccessful.
Additional costs based on region
DACH - no additional costs
Europe (excluding DACH) - 20% of the success claim
Outside Europe - 30% of the success claim
The circuly Customer Self-Service (CSS) Portal is a dedicated place for your customers to manage their subscriptions. It provides your customers with the necessary flexibility they need in managing their subscriptions and the transparency they expect from you. In the CSS, your customers can see all their subscriptions (active, ended, cancelled), make cancellation requests, make swap requests, report problems etc.
Follow the information provided in this article about the login process for the self-service portal. Adapt the information provided in the article for publishing on your website and include a how-to guide on your website for first time users.
Refer to this article to understand all the actions your customers can perform in the self service portal.
We recommend adding a how-to guide for all the features that you want to make available to your customers.
You can not only control the style elements of the self-service portal but can also freely decide which actions (subscription cancellation, buyout, reporting issues etc) you want to make available to your customers.
Learn more about the setup of your White-Label Self-Service Portal in this article.
Did you miss the customer login webinar? No worries. You can watch it here to get in-depth information about it.
A typical situation in subscription ecommerce is failed recurring payments. The reasons why a payment fails can vary from one customer to another.
The reason for the failed payment can be seen for most Payment Service Providers (PSP) in your circuly Operations Backend in the Recurring Payment List under Failed Reason. The reason for the failed payment as displayed in the Failed Reason column is the same as the reason displayed in your PSP. In other words, if you log into your PSP and see a failed transaction, the reason displayed in the PSP will be the same as the reason displayed in the circuly Operations Backend.
Important note: When the Payment Settled column displays a "No", this does not mean that the payment has failed or not gone through rather it means that the payment has not been settled yet.
The reason for a "No" in the Payment Settled column is either that the date of collecting the recurring payment hasn't arrived yet or it's an upcoming payment.
Recurring payments with a "No" in the Payment Settled column do not require any action from your side.
When a payment fails because of one of the reasons mentioned above, circuly retries the payment if the associated settings are enabled. For the associated settings, continue reading below.
In the circuly operations backend you can define how many times a payment should be retried, what should be the time interval between each retry, should the customer be informed on each attempt or only on the final attempt and so on.
We’ll go through each setting associated with failed payment in detail, so you can decide on a process that fits your subscription operations.
Step 1: Decide how many times a failed payment should be retried, the time interval between the attempts and what happens on failure.
Step 2: Decide if you would like to inform the customer about the payment attempts and the frequency of the reminders.
Available Setting Options:
Available Setting Options:
If the payment fails after the last trial attempt, your connected customer support will be automatically notified about the failed payments via email.
Yes, you can try to collect the failed payment even after three failed trial attempts. to do so, follow the following steps:
You should retry a failed payment manually when your customer confirms with you that the payment details have been edited or changed and a manual payment attempt can be made.
Sometimes, an invoice might contain errors or incorrect information. Not all typos need to be fixed. However, if the error involves mandatory information as per §14 Paragraph 2 No. 2 of the German VAT Act, it must be corrected.
The wrongly generated invoice first needs to be cancelled, and a new invoice must be created for the same with the correct information.
Typically invoice errors are related to either customer or order details. Therefore the first step is to update the wrong information with correct information.
Updating customer details
For updating customer details (such as email and phone number) go to Customers > Select the customer from the Customer List > Go to DETAILS in the button right corner > Click on the edit icon > Update the details in the Edit customer window > Click on the SUBMIT button to save your changes.
Updating order details
For updating order details (such as the address of the customer) go to Orders > Select the order from the Order List > Go to DETAILS in the buttom right corner > Click on the edit icon > Update the details in the Edit customer window > Click on the SUBMIT button to save your changes.
You will now see a new invoice.
You can further edit the corrected invoice by making them editable in the same window.
Note: Generating a new invoice does not trigger any emails. If you want to send the invoice to the customer, you need to do so manually.
Important Information
Cancelling an invoice does not refund the payment associated with it because cancelling an invoice has another purpose. The purpose is that, as per German law, an invoice that has been created with the wrong information needs to be “cancelled”. The payment associated with the invoice could still be correct and therefore the payment attached to the invoice with the wrong information is not refunded. If you also want to refund the invoice, you need to perform the refund operation.
The CSS can only be accessed with the email address used at checkout or the email ID used for placing the order.
Steps:
How the login process looks for your customer:
Example: See the image below to see how Strollme’s customers and access their Self-Service Portal.
You should now see an overview of all your subscriptions, your payments and more.
Your Customers can do the following in their Self-Service Portal:
By embracing the power of the circuly Self-Service Portal, you're not just freeing your Customer Success team from operational constraints, but also delivering the transparency your customers crave. This transparency isn't just a feature – it's a catalyst that fuels the transformation of customer experience into something truly extraordinary.
This article offers detailed insights into the self-service portal's features. Written for your customers, you can easily copy and paste this information onto your website, providing them with a clear guide to navigate their self-service options effectively. We only recommend that you make use of your own screenshots so that the information appears to be tailored to your audience.
Note: If you do not provide one or more options mentioned below, compile your own custom article based on the information mentioned in this article and make it available on your own website.
In the Customer self service portal (CSS), you have an overview of all the products subscribed by you. Additionally, you can also access your invoices and personal detail. Given below is a list of all the things you can see in the CSS.
You can see both active and ended subscriptions in the CSS. You can also see the monthly subscription price for all your subscriptions. Under "Your Subscriptions", you can only see products that have or were a subscription. If you have one-time orders, they are displayed under "Your Orders".
You can find all your orders, both subscription and one-time, under "Your Orders."
You can access and download invoices for subscription payments that have already been paid under “Your invoices”.
The CSS enables you to perform actions such as cancelling subscriptions, changing your payment and personal details, downloading invoices and reporting product issues without calling customer support or writing an email. Given below is a list of actions you can perform in the CSS.
Extension price is the price that is charged for a subscription after the minimum subscription duration is over and when the subscription is auto-renewed. The reason why you would need to define the extension price of a product or variant is when you have Prepaid subscriptions, that is, subscriptions where the full amount is charged upfront instead of recurring payments. The extension price needs to be defined in the circuly Operations Backend if you use the Prepaid Subscription feature.
To edit or define the extension price follow the steps given below:
In the circuly operations backend you can define how many times a failed payment should be retried, what should be the time interval between each retry, should the customer be informed on each attempt or only on the final attempt and so on.
We’ll go through each setting associated with failed payment in detail, so you can decide on a process that fits your subscription operations.
Step 1: Decide how many times a failed payment should be retried, the time interval between the attempts and what happens on failure.
Step 2: Decide if you would like to inform the customer about the payment attempts and the frequency of the reminders.
Available Setting Options:
Available Setting Options:
Subscriptions have a duration attached to it and there can be a number of circumstances under which you might be required to change the duration of a subscription.
Scenario: When your customer makes a request to extend the subscription duration and there is no change in the subscription price.
Action: Use the Extend subscription function. The “Extend Subscription” function only changes the end date of the subscription and extends it.
Scenario: When your customer changes their mind and wants to revert the change and set it back to its original duration.
Action: First check the already changed end date of the subscription. Then use the “Change subscription duration” function to revert the change.
Scenario: When your customer wants to change their subscription duration and as a result their is a change in the price of the subscription
Action: Use the “Change subscription duration function” to change the subscription and the subscription duration.
The function you use depends on the end result you desire.
If you only want to change the duration and do nothing with the payments attached to it, then we recommend using the "extend subscription duration" function.
If you want to change the duration and also make changes to the subscription price, then we recommend using the "change subscription duration" function.
To change the subscription duration follow the steps given below or the video tutorial given below:'
Steps:
Options
Alternatively you can also click on a subscription in the Subscription List to go to the Subscription overview. If you are in the Subscription overview, you can access the subscription duration setting by clicking on the three dots in the top right corner (see image).
Then follow the same steps mentioned above to edit the subscription duration.
To only extend the subscription duration, follow the steps given below:
Alternatively you can also click on a subscription in the Subscription List to go to the Subscription overview. If you are in the Subscription overview, you can access the subscription duration setting by clicking on the three dots in the top right corner (see image).
Then follow the same steps mentioned above to only extend the subscription duration.
Use case: Customer changed their mind about extending the subscription and wants the subscription to be restored to its original duration. How can you cancel the change already applied?
To cancel the extension of the subscription duration, simply use the Change subscription duration function to restore it to it's original duration.
Follow the steps mentioned above under Change subscription duration.
Possible status options and their explanation:
Tags do not have a fixed definition and can be used based on the definition that has been defined internally. Tags need to be changed manually and have no automation behind them. They shall be used to communicate between users internally after agreeing on a fixed definition for the existing tags. They are not visible to your customer. Tags are not shown in any form to your customer.
Find more info regarding updating the tag via API here.
The origin information is not shown to the customer in any form.
The subscription type information is not shown to the customer in any form.
The subscription frequency defines the billing schedule for the subscription or in other words how often the customer is charged for their subscription. Currently the following values are possible.
Numerical value ranging from 0 to x (Defined by you in your settings for failed payments. Associated setting: Number of payment retries).
Indicates the date when the next automatic payment charge try will be done. If the maximum number of autoamtic tries was done this will indicate the date when the last automatic payment try was done.
The displayed value varies according the payment service provider used. The information displayed here is directly taken from your connected service provider. Kindly check the failed reason articles from your respective PSP.
Note: The failed reasons are only for recurring payments.
Quick links for PSP documentation on failed reasons
Repair Status
Refer a friend is a feature that allows your existing customers to get some monetary incentive for encouraging other people to become your customer. Your existing customers get a unique voucher code that they can pass along to their friends. The voucher can be used on the checkout page to get a discount on a new order.
The voucher amount and validity is freely customisable in the Settings tab.
Step 1: Enable the feature in the Settings.
Step 2: Set up the Refer a friend email in the Email Templates.
Step 3: Update the Oder confirmation, Invoice and one-time password email template.
The Refer a friend feature button is available in the Customer Self-Service portal only if the customer has an active subscription and the subscription has passed the early cancellation period.
Note: The reason why the button for referring a friend is available with an active subscription and after the early cancellation period is passed so as to eliminate any chances of fraud.
Settings Explanation
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Now you can start the set up the activated Email Template as described below in Step 3.
The reward that your customers get is added to the customer profile under Account balance and this balance is used for any future payment to be charged.
If your customers have an account balance, then the invoice amount will be calculated based on the existing account balance. If there is an existing balance then the amount to be charged is first taken from the account balance. Your customers get an invoice for every transaction (recurring and one-time), and the invoice looks like the following (see image):
As you can see the invoice summary shows the "From account balance" field to indicate that the invoice amount has been deducted from the account balance of the customer.
Before you start using the Refer a friend feature, you need to adjust the , Order Confirmation, Invoice and One-time Transaction email template.
You have two options when it comes to setting up the necessary email templates:
NOTE: If you already have an email template set up (for Order Confirmation, Invoice and One-time transaction), you can set it to default as shown in the image below.
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<section class="card card--outlined">
<div class="card-header">
<h3>Articles</h3>
</div>
<div class="card-body--fluid background-white">
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th class='text-left'>Name</th>
<th class='text-center'>Qty</th>
<th class='text-center'>Payment</th>
<th class='text-center'>Price <span class='font-sm'>(excl. VAT)</span></th>
<th class='text-center'>VAT</th>
<th class='text-center'>VAT Rate</th>
<th class='text-center'>Price <span class='font-sm'>(incl. VAT)</span></th>
<th class='text-center'>Subtotal <span class='font-sm'>(incl. VAT)</span></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<!-- For product in products -->
{% for product in products %}
<tr>
<td class="td--product-text text-left">{{product.title}}</td>
<td class="td--product-text text-center">
{{product.quantity}}
</td>
<td class="td--product-text">{{product.frequency}}</td>
<td class="td--product-text text-center">
{{product.price_excl_vat}} €
</td>
<td class="td--product-text text-center">{{product.tax_amount}} €</td>
<td class="td--product-text text-center">{{product.tax_percent}} %</td>
<td class="td--product-text text-center">
{{product.price}} €
</td>
<td class="td--product-text text-center">
{{product.subtotal_incl_vat}} €
</td>
</tr>
{% endfor %}
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<div class="card-body--fluid background-white">
<div style="width: 50%; margin-left: 50%">
<div class="card-subheader text-center background-grey">
<h4>Summary</h4>
</div>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td class="td--product-text">Net sum (excl. VAT)</td>
<td class="td--product-text text-right">
{{order_amount_no_vat}} €
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="td--product-text">Shipping cost</td>
<td class="td--product-text text-right">
{{shipping_cost}} €
</td>
</tr>
<!-- For vat in vats -->
<tr>
<td class="td--product-text">VAT ({{vat_percent}}%)</td>
<td class="td--product-text text-right">{{vat_amount}} €</td>
</tr>
<!-- endfor -->
<tr>
<td class="td--product-text"><b>Total</b></td>
<td class="td--product-text text-right"><b>{{order_amount}} €</b></td>
</tr>
<!-- When is_account_balance == true -->
{% if is_account_balance == true %}
<tr>
<td class="td--product-text">From account balance</td>
<td class="td--product-text text-right">
{{from_account_balance}} €
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="td--product-text border-none"><b>Invoice amount</b></td>
<td class="td--product-text border-none text-right">
<b>{{final_invoice_amount}} €</b>
</td>
</tr>
{% endif %}
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</section>
Simply copy the complete code and add it to your Invoice and One-time transaction email template.
New available variables: is account_balance, from account_balance and final invoice_amount.
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Here are some frequently asked questions about the refer a friend feature:
The customer balance (balance generated by a customer when a customer successfully uses the refer a friend feature) can only be used for the upcoming recurring payments and not for new payments from the checkout.
If the customer balance amount is more than the recurring payment amount then the remaining balance amount will be kept and will be used for the next recurring payment. This continues until the customer balance amount is zero. Let's assume that Customer A has accumulated a customer balance amount of 40€ and the recurring payment amount is 20€. In this case 20€ will be used from the customer balance to charge the upcoming recurring payment. The remaining balance of 20€ will be kept and will be used to charge the recurring payment after that.
Important: Kindly provide detailed information to your customer about the entire process and also inform them how their reward balance will be used. It is important to clarify that they do not actually receive any cashbacks from you to avoid any confusion.
Refer a friend is a feature that allows you as a customer to get some monetary incentive for encouraging other people to become our customer. You get a unique voucher code that you can pass along to your friends. The voucher can be used on the checkout page to get a discount on a new order. You get a fixed amount credited to your customer profile in our system every time your code is successfully used to place an order on our checkout page.
Important: Your voucher amount cannot be credited into your bank account and can only be used at the time of your next recurring payment. Your account balance will automatically be used and deducted from your next payment, and you will receive an invoice for the same.
The Refer a friend feature button is available in the Customer Self-Service portal only if the customer has an active subscription and the subscription has passed the early cancellation period.
Here's how you can generate your voucher code and pass it to your friends:
Your friends can follow these steps to get the discount:
Tip: This process can be automated via our customer API. This is the PUT request you can use https://api-docs.circuly.io/docs/customers-api-docs/pgyucirl7m7fh-update-order-s-tag to update the order tag.
A tag is a keyword assigned to a piece of information that helps describe it visually and allows it to be easily found. In the circuly operations backend a tag is a keyword assigned to an order. Accompanied with the tag date, a tag describes what action needs to be taken or is currently active and the date associated with that action. Every order can have a tag and a tag date attached to it.
Tags main purpose is to see the associated action of an order at first sight. In order to gain a better overview of the status of your orders you can add tags to each order. The additional information serves your team e.g. to assure everyone working in the system directly knows the handling status/fulfilment timeline regardless of an external additional document, a single person's memory or additional assumption being made based on other information. Tags are solely for internal use and do not change anything for the consumer. Using tags also does not influence the information and pre-set e.g. buffer time/delivery time, order date or subscription date started, payment date.
The different tags can be interpreted as follows - however can also be given a different definition within your team:
A tag date simply represents the fulfilment timeline of the tag.
Tags can be added and edited for an order in the Order List. You can find the Order List by navigating to Orders in the left navigation bar. To add a tag follow the following steps:
Note: If you have a "Delivery Date Picker" in your checkout, the selected delivery date will be used for the Tag date value for the order in question.
Tags and tag date are meant to be used for internal operations. They do not have any affect on the order or customer data. If there are multiple users of the operations backend, tags can help in efficiently managing rentals by providing a visual aspect.
Did you know that consumers are more likely to take action when presented with a limited yet personalised selection of products?
Research shows that 87% of customers appreciate curated experiences that alleviate decision fatigue and guide them towards making confident choices.
The Problem
In today's fast-paced world, the abundance of choices and information can often overwhelm online shoppers, tarnishing their experience and hindering their decision-making process.
The Implication
Even though consumers generally like to have some level of information and choice when purchasing, the overload of information and choices can lead to frustration and hinder the overall experience.
Your customers may find themselves lost in the different choices available to them and may not take any action.
The Solution
Strike the right balance between providing relevant and comprehensive information while ensuring a user-friendly and intuitive purchasing journey is crucial.
Liberate your customers from the weight of overwhelming choices and information overload by curating a tailored selection of bundled products. Provide them with a refined experience that offers a handpicked assortment of options to choose from.
The Feature
Introducing exchange groups - a circuly feature that empowers your customers to swap their subscription products and choose a replacement product from a predefined and curated group of products tailored to their needs and preferences.
The Benefit
By simplifying the decision-making process, you create a personalised and memorable experience that instils confidence and loyalty. Your customers will appreciate the invaluable gift of time and the freedom to explore a thoughtfully limited selection that truly resonates with their individual tastes and requirements.
Additionally, your customers can rely on your expertise and benefit from the curated experience created by you.
Elevate your customer's journey to new heights, where frustration is replaced with excitement, and indecision is transformed into swift action.
The technical setup provides comprehensive instructions on configuring the exchange groups feature and making it accessible to your customers in the Self-Service Portal.
Step 1: Create an exchange group collection
Step 2: Map variants to the collection
Step 3: (Optional) Go over the swap settings in the Settings tab
Step 4: Enable the "Check System Stock" setting
Good to know
1. Your products and product variants are always set up in your individual shopsystem. circuly only takes over the product information (product name, price etc.) from your shopsystem via a product sync and displays the information under the Product tab in the circuly Operations Backend.
2. The product prices are also taken from the shop system, and the exchange group feature makes use of the default shop system prices (as set up by you). However, it is also possible to have the same price for the entire bundle collection, irrespective of the product selected. If you would like to have this logic, kindly get in touch with us via service desk.
3. The possibility to select products from a predefined collection is only available for new orders. If you want to make the feature available for your old subscriptions, get in touch with circuly via service desk.
Step 1: Create an exchange group collection
To create a collection in the circuly Operations Backend:
Note: There are two possible option for assigning variants to the Exchange Collection.
Option 1: From the Product variants dropdown menu that is available in the Edit Exchange Group window.
Option 2: From the Variants tab (explained in detail under Step 2).
The Product variants dropdown option
The Product Variants dropdown menu option provides you the possibility to select variants while you are in the process of creating the Exchange Collection. If you have a long list of available variants kindly note that not all variants will show up in the dropdown menu. You can search for the variant by typing the variant name in the given field.
However you can also ignore the Product variants dropdown menu and assign the variants to the Exchange Collection from the Variants tab where you can see all your variants at the same time (explained below under Step 2)
IMPORTANT: An exchange groups can have up to 1000 product variants.
You can find an overview about the existing mapped collections by scrolling left to display the Exchange Group column. The exchange group column shows information about the collection the variant is mapped to.
Since exchanging a product from an existing product collection is also a swap, the feature and the operations associated with it make use of the swap settings.
Make sure that you go over your swap settings or set them up if you haven't already done so.
Continue reading the article about Swap settings in the circuly Operations Backend to know more.
By activating the "Check System Stock" option, you ensure that customers can only request products that are currently in stock. This prevents scenarios where customers try to request products that are unavailable. If you've already turned on this setting for your checkout process, the Self-Service Portal will also apply the same stock-checking configuration.
To access the setting > In your circuly Operations Backend > Go to Settings > Checkout > PRE CHECKOUT > Check System Stock.
We recommend adding a how to guide on your website about swapping products to make it easier for your customers to take the right actions.
Given below is an overview of how the process looks for your customers. Kindly be informed that the subscription menu options and some display options can vary depending on your settings and setup.
Note: at this time a stock validation check is being done. If the selected product is not not in stock then an error message will be displayed.
The stock validation is done after the customer selects a product from the dropdown menu options. If you have stock sensitive items (like limited number of refurbished products) kindly update your exchange groups on a regular basis. You can also get in touch with our Customer Success team to figure out a solution together.
Note: If you wish to display your custom terms and conditions text , kindly send us your desired text and we will add it to your White-Label Self-Service Portal.
Refer to the image below to see an example.
Like with any replacement order, a new order is created in the circuly Operations Backend (unless you have the Delay swapped orders setting enabled). Process the order like you normally would that is either creating a subscription manually, or changing the status of the order to “fulfilled” in your shopsystem if you have the automatic flow enabled depending on the order status in your shop system.
Learn more about creating subscriptions in the circuly Operations Backend manually.
Learn more about updating orders into subscription with the BULK UPDATE button.
In this section we’ve highlighted some possible use cases of the bundle swap feature. The list is of course not limited to the ideas mentioned below and can be expanded upon.
Let’s imagine that you have a subscription service for protein powder and you want to offer your customers the possibility to exchange one flavour with another throughout the length of the subscription contract.
What you need to do: all you need to do in this case create a bundle collection (something like flavours for Black Edition and map the variants (Cookie dough, vanilla, chocolate etc.) to this collection in your circuly Operations Backend.
Follow the steps mentioned above under technical setup for a detailed description on the setup process.
What your customers can do: your customers can then select their desired flavor from their Self-Service Portal.
Similar logic can be applied to other consumable products such as coffee, baby diapers, wine etc.
Tangible products such as bikes, baby strollers, furniture etc can also use the bundle swap feature in different ways. Here are a few examples:
Bundle swap for Strollers
You can offer your customers the possibility to swap a small stroller for a big one or vice versa or perhaps a lightweight stroller in exchange for a double stroller.
Bundle swap for bikes
You can offer your customers the possibility to swap a small sized kids bike with a bigger bike as the child grow and their needs change.
Bundle swap for furniture
You can offer your customers the possibility to exchange various furniture items to fit the season.
Mark as settled is a feature available in the circuly Operations Backend, that enables a user to manually mark a payment or invoice as "settled".
Theoretically, all payments that have not been charged yet, can be marked as settled. This includes, both, payments that are to be triggered by the circuly system in your connected Payment Service Provider and payments that are managed outside of circuly.
Payments that are managed by circuly, do not need to be manually charged as they are first auto-settled by the circuly system.
However when payments are managed outside of circuly (such as payment via invoice), the mark as settled feature enables you maintain full transparency on your payments in circuly.
Marking the payment as settled will assign the "paid" status to it, but no charge will be made.
You can mark a payment as settled either from the Subscriptions tab or the Recurring Payments tab.
In your circuly Operations Backend > Go to the Subscriptions tab > From the Subscription List select the subscription with the payment you wish to mark as settled > Scroll down to the RECURRING PAYMENTS section > Click on the three dots to display the action menu > Click on Mark as Settled.
Confirm your action by clicking on the MARK AS SETTLED button.
In your circuly Operations Backend > Go to the Recurring Payments tab > From the Recurring Payments List find the payment you wish to mark as settled > Click on the three dots to display the menu options > Click on Mark as settled.
Confirm your action by clicking on the MARK AS SETTLED button.
Your customers can make cancellation requests either from the Customer Self-Service Portal or by getting in touch with your customer support.
When they get in touch with your customer support, you have full control over how you want to cancel the subscription and if you want to cancel it. This process is manual as it requires a circuly user to cancel the subscription manually from the circuly Operations backend.
However when cancellation requests are made from the Self-Service Portal, a few actions can be taken by the circuly system depending on your setting.
One setting that influences what happens when a customer makes a cancellation request is the Auto cancel subscription setting.
The Auto cancel subscription setting is disabled by default and can be made active by turning on the switch.
Here’s an overview of the different cancellation situations and their implication based on the Auto cancel subscription setting:
Scenario 1
Result: The auto renew button is turned off (if it was originally in an active state), the subscriptions gets cancelled and the subscription status is set to pending return to trigger the return workflow.
Scenario 2
Result: The auto renew button is turned off (if it was originally in an active state), the subscriptions gets cancelled and the subscription status is set to pending return to trigger the return workflow.
You might have noticed that the state of the "Auto cancel subscription" setting has no impact if the cancellation request is made within the early cancellation period and the the option selected by the customer to return the product is "immediately". This is because the customer has the right to cancel the subscription if the cancellation has been made within the early cancellation period and therefore the auto cancel subscription setting has no impact on the cancellation request.
Scenario 3
Scenario 4
Scenario 5
Scenario 6
Learn more about the entire cancellation process in this Miro board to understand actions taken by a user and by your customer for cancellations.
When your customer makes a cancellation request from the self-service portal, they are required to select the "type of cancellation" and the "reason" for making the cancellation request.
By requiring customers to provide a cancellation reason, businesses can make more informed decisions, enhance their offerings, and build stronger relationships with their customers by showing that they value feedback and are committed to continuous improvement.
Some of the reasons to consider adding cancellation reasons to your cancellation process are:
When you use the circuly Self-Service Portal and provide the option to cancel subscriptions from the self-service portal, as part of the cancellation process your customers will be required to select the "type of cancellation" and the cancellation reason. The "type of cancellation" is fixed, that is normal and extraordinary. However the cancellation reasons that are categorised under the cancellation type are fully customisable and can be defined in your settings.
The process of terminating a subscription within the standard terms and conditions set forth by the service provider.
Extraordinary cancellation refers to the termination of a subscription under exceptional circumstances that deviate from the regular terms and conditions.
To add cancellation reasons, follow these steps:
Important: Only the translated version of the cancellation reason will be shown to the customer in the self-service portal.
Note: The language options available when adding the cancellation reasons are based on your Allowed language setting. Only languages selected from the dropdown menu of the Allowed language setting are available when defining the cancellation reason.
Related articles
Two click cancellation law in Germany: Set up process
Early cancellation period: Set up
Tip: This process can be automated via our customer API. This is the POST request you can use https://api-docs.circuly.io/docs/customers-api-docs/f301d280d321c-creates-a-new-subscription that you can use for creating a subscription.
circuly first takes action as soon as your customer clicks on `add to cart”, “rent”, or “subscribe” button in your webshop.
As soon as your customer clicks on the button, the cart summary (circuly cart or your default shop cart) is displayed, where your customer sees the product overview.
When your customers click on “order now”, they are taken to the circuly white-label one-page checkout. After going through the checkout and proceeding with the payment, a success message appears and your customer receives an automated Order confirmation email from the circuly backend.
You can see all your incoming, existing and past orders in the Order List under the Orders tab.
An order is not a subscription meaning that when a customer goes through the checkout process on your website, all that happens is the customer tells you that they want a product on a subscription basis.
When to manually create a subscription:
When to set up an automated process:
There are multiple ways to create a subscription in the circuly operations backend. You can create a subscription from the following:
Note: You can also create a subscription where the start date is in the past.
NOTE: You can automate the process of selecting a subscription start date so that you don't have to manually select a date every-time you create a subscription. Learn more.
All orders are displayed in the Order List in the Orders tab and the customer attached to the Order is displayed in the Customer List in the Customer tab. You can also create a subscription for an order from the Customer tab.
Here are the steps:
In order to create a subscription in the regular way you have to select an order (or customer if you are using the customer tab to create the subscription) and go to the Order Overview to create a subscription. You can skip that by bulk updating Orders into Subscriptions.
Detailed steps: How to bulk update orders into subscriptions.
With circuly you can create subscriptions in bulk and skip manually assigning serial number to a product in case you have thousands of orders coming in on a daily basis.
Detailed steps: How to create subscriptions in bulk.
You can use the circuly API to create subscriptions. Follow the link to the circuly Customer API documentation.
Generate enables you to automate the process of assigning serial numbers to a subscription by simply picking out a product with an existing serial number from the inventory.
Note: If you choose the GENERATE option then make sure that your logistics department picks out the order associated to the serial number picked by GENERATE.
For proper tracking of the product, make sure to ship with the right serial number.
You can change the start date of the subscription in case their is a situation or use case that requires you to do so. The option to change the date is in the same window as the Create Subscription window. You can also predefine the start date so that you don't have to select the Start Date every time you create a subscription. Learn more about Start Date settings.
The start date of a subscription can also be in the past.
You can also set up an automated process for craeting a subscription by using circuly's API. Refer to this API documentation.
In the circuly backend, you can create a voucher and customise it as per you needs. To create a voucher code follow the video tutorial or the steps given below:
Watch the video tutorial:
All: the voucher code can be used for all products.
Bought: the voucher code can only be used if the cart contains bought that is one-time purchase products.
Rent: the voucher code can only be used if the cart contains rental/subscription products.
Apply discount to initial payments and all recurring payments: the discount amount/percentage will be applied to all transaction amounts in a particular subscription. For example, if you want to offer a 20% or 20€ discount to a customer who has rented a product from you for (let's say) 12 months, with a monthly payment of 50€, then 20% or 20€ will apply to every monthly transaction.
Apply discount to initial payment only: used when you want to offer your customer a one time discount on their entire cart value. The one time discount applies only to the very first payment and every payment after that will be of the original amount.
Webhooks are automated messages sent from one app to another in case something happens or something is updated/changed. Example: if you want to send all transactions from the circuly operations backend to your bookkeeping system (tool) you can do that via Webhooks. In your circuly operations backend, you can now access Webhooks. You will find them in the left main menu under Admins.
In order for circuly to make the requested information available to you we need a URL where the information can be sent (pushed) to. The URL can be generated by tools like Zapier or it can be one of your API endpoints. Make sure that the URL where you want the information to be sent to, can be caught by circuly. To ensure that, make sure that URL allows a POST request since circuly PUSHES the information to your specified URL. Once you create an event for the information you want, circuly will push the information to the URL specified by you and will also push any changes made to the event.
To create a web hook:
At present Events can be created for customer, order, order item, subscription and transaction.
How Webhook works with Zapier?
In Zapier you can create a new Zap and say that the source is a webhook. On doing that Zapier will generate a URL that you can paste in the URL field of the Create Webhook window in your circuly operations backend.
Figure out what information is fired
You can use websites like Webhook.site to check what information is being fired.
Typically you can expect your customer to return the product back to you for the following reasons:
In all cases you should expect to get the product back from the customer within a specified time duration. If the products are not returned within that time, the subscription can be reactivated and the recurring payments can be charged for the said subscription.
In this article we'll cover the two scenarios:
When the product is returned to you by your customer and is in your warehouse, you should ideally go to the Returns tab in your circuly Operations Backend > Search for the serial number associated with the returned product in the Returns List > Click on the button that says HANDLE and in the handle return window > Mark the product as returned by clicking on the MARK AS RETURNED button.
The following message will be displayed.
If you've set up the Repair questions and process repairs from the circuly Operations Backend > Navigate to the Repairs tab and complete the repair process for the product.
Update stock on SKU level after return: if you want to update the stock on a SKU level (makes sense if you have more than one subscription duration for the same variant), you should activate this setting. If the switch for this setting is disabled then the stock is updated on a variant level.
To access the setting > Go to the Settings tab > Subscriptions > RETURN SUBSCRIPTION > Update stock on SKU level after return.
Note: If you do not want your stock to be updated at all by circuly, please write to us via the service desk.
Typically there are three things you can decide when it comes to processing return requests when the product hasn't been returned by the customer.
Note: the return workflow is triggered in the first place when you mark a subscription status either as pending return or pending replacement.
All return operations revolve around the three Settings mentioned above.
When you process a swap request, then the status of the existing product that is with the customer is set to pending replacement (pending replacement has the same effect as pending return) and a new order appears in the Orders tab.
The customer then receives the return instructions via email in the Swap confirmation email sent from the Email Templates (see image below) and has to return the product within a specified time duration aka the Return until period.
The specified time duration (the Return until period) within which the customer has to return the product back to you is predefined by you on a company level and can be customisable as per your needs in the Settings tab. To edit/change the Return until period setting > go to the Settings > Subscription > CANCEL SUBSCRIPTIONS > Add a numeric value in the Return until period input field.
If the customer does not return the product within the specified time duration (as defined in the Return until period) then the subscription can be reactivated so that the customer can be continued to get charged for the product.
You can define whether or not the subscription should be reactivated and after how long it should be reactivated in case the Return until period has passed.
Whether or not a subscription (that is pending replacement/return and has not been returned by the customer within the Return until period) is activated can be set by toggling the switch for Reactivate subscription in the Settings tab. (see image below)
The next step is to add a value in the Reactivate subscription period (days) setting to define the number of days after which the subscription will be reactivated and the recurring payments will continue to be charged.
In the same settings > Add a value in the Reactivate subscription period (days) input field.
In the image below the Reactivate subscription period (days) is 7 and the Return until period is 14. This means that when a subscription is set to pending return/replacement then the customer has 14 days to return the product back to you. If the customer does not return the product back within this time period then the subscription will be reactivated 7 days after the Return until period.
When a customer makes a subscription cancellation request before the subscription end date has arrived then the subscription status needs to be manually set to pending return to proceed to the product return workflow.
When a subscription status is set to pending return, the customer gets the Subscription Pending Return email from the Email Templates with the return instructions.
The workflow after this is same as the workflow for the swap product, that is the customer has to return the product within the Return until period or else the subscription will be reactivated as explained above.
When the subscription end date is approaching the customer gets the Subscription Almost Over email from the Email Template. This template can, for example, contain return instructions.
When the subscription end date has arrived (or = today) the subscription status is set to pending return and the return workflow (as explained above) is trigged.
The customer then has to return the product within the Return until period (defined as days in the Settings tab).
If the customer returns the product within the Return until period, perfect! You can then continue to the repair process.
When the customer does not return the product within the Return until period then the subscription is reactivated if you have enabled the setting for Reactivate subscription and added a numeric value in the Reactivate subscription period input field.
Reactivate subscription toggle switch is enabled, Reactivate subscription period (days) = 7 and Return until period = 14.
Subscription end date is 01.04.2022. The customer has until 15.04.2022 to return the product. If the product is not returned till 22.04.2022 (i.e. 7 days after the Return until period has passed) then the subscription will be reactivated
This process can be automated via our customer API. This is the PUT request you can use https://api-docs.circuly.io/docs/customers-api-docs/916cb4d9c8142-set-real-subscription-end-date that you can use to mark the subscription status as pending return.
Marking the subscription status as “pending return” can be either done manually or it can be automatically triggered.
The subscription status is automatically set to pending return when the subscription end date has been reached. In practice every subscription comes with an end date and will receive the "pending return" status automatically when the subscription end date has arrived. Doing so ensures that no manual action is needed for tracking returns or sending transaction communication to the customer in the normal process of a subscription.
A manual intervention is only needed when you want to set the subscription status as pending return prior to the end date of the subscription.
You can mark the subscription status as pending return manually when you get a cancellation request from the customer. To process the cancellation request, you need to mark the subscription status as pending return so that the return process can be trigged.
IMPORTANT: Read more about the difference between Cancelling an order and setting the subscription status as pending return.
Follow these steps to mark a subscription as pending return:
Check the box if: You want to avoid charging the customer for the upcoming month while the customer is on the process of returning the product then you can check the box for Delete future recurring payments.
Keep the box unchecked if: You want to encourage the customer to return the product in time or else they might be charged for the next month.
When the subscription status is set as "pending return" the return process is triggered.
The customer receives the "Subscription pending return" email from the Email Templates.
Both “cancel order” and “set as pending return” are ways to process a cancellation request but with different logic and background.
Orders can be “cancelled” and subscription status can be “set as pending return”.
Cancel order should be used when there is no active subscription attached to the order and the product has not been delivered yet. Cancelling an order in the circuly operations backend also cancels the order in the shop system. This is relevant if you work with fulfilment partners who do not have access to the circuly backend as a user but process the orders (that is send it out for delivery to the end customer) based on the order status in the shop system.
Another reason for orders are cancelled and not set as pending return because cancelling an order has monetary implications: when you cancel an order, you can process a refund at the same time. Whereas when you set the subscription status as pending return, only future recurring payments are stopped.
Marking the subscription status as pending return should be done when there is an active subscription for an order or when the product has already been delivered to the customer. Marking the subscription status as pending return means that you should expect the product to come back which is not the case when an order is cancelled because no product has been delivered anyway. But a subscription is created either when the product is being delivered or has been already delivered.
Another reason why subscription status are set as pending return and not cancelled because setting the subscription status as pending return triggers the return process.
In October 2021, a new law was introduced in Germany about the termination of subscription contracts.
Here a recap:
The two click cancellation law is effective as on 1st July 2022.
Button on the website (taken care of by you): As part of the "two-click cancellation" process you must add a button on your website that indicated that it's a cancellation button.
Confirmation page (taken care of by circuly): The button should then lead to another page where the customer can provide information on the type of termination, the reason for termination, clear means of identification, the time at which the termination shall take effect and contact data to confirm the termination easily by electronic means.
Add a cancellation button on your website that is easily visible and accessible at all times and gives clear indication that it is a cancellation button. Your customers can click on this button to proceed to the cancellation steps.
Clicking on the button will take your customer to the customer self-service portal where they can sign in with their email (the email used to place the order on your website) to access and manage their subscriptions and request cancellation.
A visible cancellation button has been added to every product and can be seen under all the active subscriptions by the customer, as shown in the image below.
The cancellation button leads your customer to a confirmation page within the customer self service portal itself (as shown in the image below). The confirmation page provides the customer with the necessary information about the subscription they are cancelling and additional options to conclude their cancellation request.
Important note: Read more about how to set up cancellation reasons at the end of this article.
Important note: Displaying the “Pickup Date” on the confirmation page is optional. It is by default turned off and disabled. To enable it go to your circuly operations backend > Settings > Customer login > CANCEL OPTIONS > Enable the switch for Pickup date as shown in the image below.
If the customer has already sent the cancellation request for a particular product, then the following happens:
Important note: The subscription end date is based on the subscription start date. If the customer has selected a 12 months subscription and started the subscription on 1st April then the displayed subscription end date will be 31st March. When the subscription end date has arrived and the subscription is still active, the subscription is extended by a month (if auto renew is enabled) and the end date changes accordingly as per this date, that is the new end date will then be 30th of April.
As part of the “two-click cancellation” law, your customers get a confirmation email about their cancellation. The email that you customers receive from the Email templates (in circuly) is called Subscription Cancellation Received. Edit the email template to your liking and branding and include cancellation specific variables of your choice.
Important note: If you are using the “Auto cancel subscription” setting option to process the cancellation requests, remember to add return instruction in the Subscription Cancellation Received email because this option (that is using the “auto cancel subscription setting to process cancellation requests) bypasses the Subscription almost over email (which typically contains the return instructions for the product when the subscription is about to end).
The “Auto cancel subscription” setting is used when you want a subscription to be set to pending return automatically and bypass the minimum subscription duration period when a customer makes a cancellation request from the self-service portal.
Setting the subscription status as pending return triggers the return workflow which means that the minimum subscription period is not valid anymore and the subscription cancellation request will take effect as soon as the subscription status is set up pending return.
Example: Your customer made a cancellation request via the Customer Self-Service on 1st of July. If the “Auto cancel subscription” setting is enabled then the subscription is set to pending return immediately and the return workflow is triggered. Now the customer has “x” no. of days to return the product back to you (x is defined in the Return until period setting) after which the reminder emails will be sent and if the customer does not return the product the subscription will be reactivated and the recurring payments will continue to be charged again.
Go to Settings > Customer login > CANCEL OPTIONS > Enable the switch for Auto cancel subscription.
When this setting is enabled and when the customer makes a cancellation request from the self-service portal, the following happens:
When the “Auto cancel subscription” setting is disabled then the following happens:
Cancellation request is valid: If you want to process the request, you don't have to do anything. The circuly system will wait until the minimum subscription period is over and will send the “subscription almost over email” x days before the actual end date of the subscription. (You can define the value for “x”, that is when the subscription almost over email is sent to the customer is your settings. To define a value for this go to Settings > Email > SUBSCRIPTION NOTIFICATIONS > Enable the switch for Subscription is almost over > Add a numeric value in the Days calculation before ending input field.
Cancellation request is not valid: the only reason why a cancellation request is not treated as valid is when the request has been made while the subscription is still under the minimum subscription period. In this case the cancellation request is still valid but only after the minimum subscription period is over. Since auto renewal is turned off automatically and the subscription is not extended by another month, the system will follow the same process, that is it will wait until the minimum subscription period is over and will send the “subscription almost over email” x days before the actual end date of the subscription.
Support email is the email you’ve entered in the circuly operations backend under the Support email address setting.
If you haven't added an email yet you can do so by logging in to your circuly operations backend > Go to Settings > Customer login > COMPANY INFORMATION > And enter an email Id for support and contact matters in the Support email address input field.
The cancellation reasons are displayed to your customer in the customer self-service portal and can be edited.
To add cancellation reasons, follow these steps:
When you process order in the Return List you can either "mark the asset as returned or as bought". The option you pick depends on whether the asset has been returned to you or has been bought by the customer and is not expected to come back.
When should you mark an asset as returned: assets that have been successfully returned to you by the customer should be marked as returned in order to stop the subscription and the recurring payments attached to it.
Note: To stop recurring payments check the box for Delete future recurring payments when you mark the product as returned in the return workflow.
What happens when an asset is market as returned: when an asset is marked as returned the asset moves from the Return List to the Repair List (If you've set up the repair process in the repair section). Since the product needs to be repaired first (at least as per the circuly system) it is not directly pushed back into stock and made available for further renting.
The asset is displayed with “to repair” status in the Asset and Repair List denoting the location of the asset.
Additionally the Subscription ended email is sent to the customer as soon as the product is marked as returned.
When should you mark an asset as bought: assets that are not expected to be returned to you because they have been bought by the customer should be marked as bought.
What happens when an asset is marked as bought: when an asset is marked as bought the asset moves from the Return List but doesn't end up in the Repair List because the product is bought by the customer ans is not expected to be returned or repaired.
The asset is displayed with “bought out” status in the Asset List to denote the location of the asset.
Tip: This process can be automated via our customer API. This is the PUT request you can use https://api-docs.circuly.io/docs/customers-api-docs/vmtn0hvkkbc79-update-a-customer that you can use for updating the customer information.
Customer information can be edited either by your customer in the Customer Self Service or by a circuly user in the Customers and Orders tab.
The reason why not all customer related information is editable in the same place is because, a customer can have multiple orders and subscriptions under their profile. A customer may only want to change the address of a particular order for a particular subscription and not the overall address. For this reason the personal details of the customer such as phone number, email, address (shipping and billing) can be edited but not in the same place.
If you have a rental model that allows subscription products to be bought in the middle of the subscription period or at the end of the subscription period, you can tackle the operations associated with subscription product buyouts (such as charging the remaining product amount via a one-time transaction, sending an invoice for the charge, stopping recurring payments etc.) in your circuly Operations Backend.
The difference between the two is the process itself. If you want to offer a custom price without influencing the price of all the other products of the same type, then the best way to proceed is to initiate the buyout manually from the circuly Operations Backend.
However, if you do not plan on offering custom prices, then the buyout can be initiated by the customer from the Customer Self-Service Portal. Before getting started with this, please make sure that you’ve checked the retail prices of all products and edited them if there are any errors. You’ll learn more about editing the retail price of this product in this article.
If you do wish to offer custom product prices when a customer request to buy the product, continue reading this article.
The product buyout request affects the following aspects of an existing subscription:
As part of the return workflow, products are expected to return at the end of the subscription period. If products are not returned until the “Return until period” the circuly system Reactivates the subscription so that the customer can be charged for the unreturned products. But when a product is bought by the customer, there is no product being returned. The circuly system differentiates between products that are expected to come back and products that are not expected to come back and accordingly takes the next actions.
Steps:
Note: The text you insert in the Invoice line item text input field will be included in the email that is sent to the customer. Make sure that you include the variable {{description}} in the Email Template if you want the text you add in the Invoice line item text input field to be shown in the email that is sent to the customer.
When you confirm your action by clicking on the BUYOUT button, the following actions occur simultaneously:
Learn more about the buyout process.
Usually subscriptions go into an inactive (that is pending return) state when:
Subscriptions can be reactivated if needed either through an automated process or manually by a circuly user. Please keep in mind that only subscriptions with "pending return" or "pending buyout" status can be reactivated. Subscriptions with the status "ended" and "bought out" cannot be reactivated.
Important: You can only reactivate subscription that do not have the “active”, "ended" or "bought out" status
What happens next?
Reactivating subscriptions also reactivates the recurring payments only if recurring payments were planned in before or will be due to outstanding subscriptions / auto renew. If recurring payments were deleted already with pending return and a subscription is then reactivated it also checks whether old payments need to be charged based on the setting: recurring payments > Past billing dates
This feature should be used to reactivate subscriptions when you use the auto-cancellation and automated auto-renewal of subscriptions. Subscriptions where the auto-renew switch has been manually turned off, can be reactivated but in that case the auto-renew switch needs to be enabled first and the reactivation of a subscription can be done.
You can only edit orders as long as they do not have a subscription attached to the order. As soon as you create a subscription for an order, it can no longer be edited.
With the "Edit item" function you can change the Product name, SKU, Frequency, Duration, Price, Subscription start date and tracking number of an Order. If you wish to change these aspects of an order, you can continue reading this guide.
In case you wish to add/remove items, follow the guide on Learn more about editing an order instead.
To edit an order item:
If you are shipping your products to customers within the European countries, you are subject to pay VAT. The tax obligations apply to your business if you are located within or outside the European Union (EU) and plan to ship your products to customers within the European Countries.
Furthermore, it's important to note that even if your operations are limited to a single country, you may encounter varying tax rates depending on the specific states or regions (such as USA) to which you are shipping. In such cases, the information provided in this article remains relevant and valuable to your business.
Note: If you are planning to operate in the USA, we have an integration with Taxjar for tax calculation. Get in touch with us via service desk to discuss the next steps.
You do not need to do anything with tax rates:
VAT is a consumption tax that is charged as a percentage on the value of goods and services that the consumer intends to consume or purchase. Consumers pay the VAT as part of the price.
VAT applies to nearly all goods and services but different products may be subject to different tax rates depending on which category they fall in.
The EU has set a threshold amount for businesses situated within the EU and selling to customers in another EU country.
If the business makes less than 10,000 euros in the long-distance country (that is not the country where the business is actually situated but where the customer is) then the company charges the VAT rate of the country it is actually situated in.
Once the business reaches the threshold, the business should charge the VAT rate of the EU country where it is shipping to or the customer is situated in.
This article covers the procedure for setting up the tax percentages in the circuly Operations Backend and mapping them to different products.
As mentioned above, the VAT is calculated and applied on the basis of three things:
Note: If you are below the threshold you can choose to apply the tax rates of either the country you are located in or the country you are shipping to.
Before getting started with the tax rate set up you need to do the following:
Defining your base country
In your circuly Operations Backend > Go to the Settings Tab > Click on Company Settings from the Settings menu > Under COMPANY DATA > Go to Country and from the dropdown menu select your default country > Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the SUBMIT CHANGES button.
Defining your delivery countries
In your circuly Operations Backend > Go to the Settings Tab > Click on Checkout from the Settings menu > Scroll down to DELIVERY > Go to Delivery countries and from the dropdown menu select your delivery countries >Click on the SUBMIT CHANGES button.
If you do not set up the delivery countries in the Settings, you will only see the tax collection from the country that you have entered in your company address (company settings). As a result you will not be able to set up tax rules in the Products tab for countries that have different tax percentages and where you want to offer shipping.
Navigate to the Products Tab. In the Products Tab you’ll find a section called “Taxes”.
In the Taxes section your default (organisation) country and your delivery country are displayed. The view changes if you change your default and delivery country in the Settings. The tax rules for your organisation country cannot be deleted but can be changed by checking a different checkbox. By default the checkbox with the highest tax percentage is checked for your default or organisation country.
This is also the status quo before you set up this feature.
There’s also the PRODUCT COLLECTIONS column. By default all products are mapped to the default collection. When you add more collections (for example for low tax percentage or no tax percentage) all the new collections will be displayed under this column and you’ll be able to set up tax rules for the default and delivery countries for the newly setup product collection.
You’ll see a new collection category and with it another row of tax percentages for your default and delivery country.
Here’s an example.
Scenario: Your default country is Germany and you’re shipping to Austria and Norway. In Austria you earn a revenue of over 10.000 euros and in Norway, you’re under the threshold amount.
How should the tax percentage boxes be checked for the above scenario?
Click on the MAP TO PRODUCT COLLECTION.
In the Map to product collection window > Select the right collection from the dropdown menu > Click on MAP TO COLLECTION button.
Once you’ve set up everything, here’s how the tax rates will be calculated on the checkout page and applied to the products.
On the left side of the checkout page the tax calculation is done under Sales tax and is influenced by the (1) the product(s) in the cart and (2) the country of selection for the delivery country.
When the customer selects a country for delivery, the tax calculation changes accordingly.
If the selected delivery country is a country where you earn revenue below the minimum threshold then the default country tax rates are used.
Important: The tax rates are taken over from the circuly database. The tax rates that are displayed for every country are fixed and cannot be changed. If you have special tax programs currently active in your country kindly let us know via the service desk and we’ll change that on an individual basis for your company.
Typically an Order appears in the circuly Operations Backend when a website visitor goes over your checkout page and places an order. The next step is to create a subscription for the order to start collecting recurring payments.
However if you have B2B customers that want more than “x” units of a product or operate on a quote-to-order basis, then the Manual Order feature enables you to manually create orders in the circuly Operations Backend and send the order as quotes to the customer.
The customer receives the quote via email and can use the link in the email to finalise the order with minimum effort.
The link in the email takes the customer to the checkout page where all the fields are pre-populated with information that you previously added while creating the draft order (such as billing address, name, contact details etc) and the only manual input required from the customer is adding the payment details and make address changes (if any).
Once the customer finalises the order, the status of the draft order changes from Pending to Ordered and an Order is created in the Order List. You can proceed to creating a subscription like you normally would to start collecting recurring payments.
Note: Only limited number of products are visible in the dropdown menu. Therefore if you can’t find a product, simply type the name of the product in the input field.
Available options for sending the draft order to the customer:
Note: when you toggle on the switch for Send order as quote for customer, the customer will receive an email from the Email Templates. The email contains the link to the checkout page where the order can be finalised. Additionally there is also an offer enclosed in PDF format that can be used to finalise the order and can be used to upload to your customers purchasing systems.
If you do not toggle on the switch then the customer will not receive any email. This is a slightly different process as the customer then has to login into their Customer Self Service portal and add their payment details.
This switch can be only enabled, when the switch for Send order as quote to customer is disabled. Instead of sending the order to the customer in the form of a checkout link the order is instead sent as an Invoice than can be paid by the customer.
Keep in mind that the payment processing will need to be managed outside of circuly. You can still mark the invoices manually as Paid to keep an overview of the outstanding invoices.
Note: You can also work with the circuly API to create manual order. You can find the documentation here. Please keep in mind that this works only for offline payments. If you want to create an order with other payment service providers, kindly write a service desk ticket to our customer support.
Note: The email templates used to send the email are: Order Offer and Order Offer PDF. Set up the email template before you start using this feature.
Next steps:
Refund Order is a feature available in the circuly Operations Backend that you can use to refund any charged one-time payment or recurring payment.
In order to refund an order a payment needs to exist in the first place.
If the refund is successful, the payment status changes to refunded. The Transaction refund email is automatically trigged from the Email Template and sent to the customer along with the Refund Invoice. The Refund invoice email contains the invoice for the refund.
Learn more about possible status options in the payment list.
Learn more about how to process a refund.
Charge initial payment is a feature available in the circuly operations backend that lets you manually charge the initial payment. The reason why you may want to manually charge an initial payment could be because you use the delayed charge feature.
Tip: This process can be automated via our customer API. This is the POST request you can use https://api-docs.circuly.io/docs/customers-api-docs/3ouxo0e215vwt-charge-initial-payment-by-id that you can use to charge the initial payment.
In some countries customers have the right to cancel their subscriptions within a specified time period known as the early cancellation period (Widerufsfrist in Germany) and as a business you are mandated by law to approve the cancellation.
In the circuly Operations Backend, when a customer makes a cancellation request within the early cancellation period, the subscription is cancelled immediately, even if the setting for Auto cancel subscription setting is disabled. This is because the customer has the full right to cancel the subscriptions.
Info: It is mandatory as per German law to provide a cancellation button to your customers and the possibility to cancel subscriptions within the early cancellation period.
Here's how the process looks for your customers and actions they take to make a cancellation request that is within the early cancellation period.
A window slides in from the right. The customer continues the cancellation process by selecting a "cancellation type" (normal or extraordinary cancellation) and "cancellation reason" (displayed as soon as the customer selects the cancellation type).
When a cancellation request is made, the circuly system checks is the request is within or outside of the early cancellation period.
If the request is within the early cancellation period, the customer sees two options under the field Return the product: immediately and after minimum subscription duration (See image below).
Option 1: The customer selects "immediately" as an option to return the product.
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Option 2: The customer selects "after minimum duration" as an option to return the product.
However if the cancellation request is outside of the early cancellation period then the customer does not see any return option and can instead only make a cancellation request.
Kindly go through the settings explained above to set up the process once.
Your connected customer care email inbox receives an email about the cancellation.
Depending on the choice of the customer under "Return the product" the actions and process will vary.
The subscription gets the tag "cancelled by customer".
If Auto cancel subscription setting is enabled > The subscription status is set to "pending return", the subscription gets the tag "cancelled by customer", the subscription additionally gets the "cancelled on end date" status.
If Auto cancel subscription setting is disabled > The subscription status is NOT set to "pending return" and remains active, the subscription gets the tag "cancelled by customer", the subscription additionally gets the "cancelled on end date" status, the subscription will go to "pending return" state when end date has arrived.
If you have access to the Admins section in the circuly Operations Backend, you can add users to your company instance and customise their permissions.
When adding user to your company instance in the circuly Operations Backend you need to do only one thing and that is to create a user.
Admin - when you give a user the role on an “Admin”, the user is able to see the Admins section in the left navigation bar and access everything that comes under it, such as Settings, Repair Questions etc.
User - when you give a user the role of a “User”, the user is only able to access the non-admin tabs in the circuly operations backend.
Function lets you add the new user under an operational role such as Logistics, Customer Support etc.
Note: The invitation is valid for 24 hours meaning that the new user needs to access the link within 24 hours.
The most common reason why a newly added user might be unable to create a profile is due to the expiration of the link. The link that is sent to the newly added user is only valid for 24 hours. If the receiver fails to create a password within the 24 hours, the link is no longer valid. In that case, please get in touch with our Customer Success team by raising a Jira ticket.
Please make sure that the user creates a profile and sets a password within 24 hours of receiving the link to avoid any problems with account and user creation.
Remove a user
Currently the option to remove a user is not available in the circuly Operation Backend on a merchant level. If you want to remove a user, kindly write us a service desk ticket.
Each tab in circuly (Orders, Subscriptions, Customers, Invoices) has an index page that displays a list (Order list, Subscription List, Customer List etc).
You can use filters to segment the list and display the information you want.
To filter a list under the given tab:
The steps are explained in detail below.
If you would like to save your filter view while you navigate in and out of records, click on the back arrow of the browser instead of the back arrow in the circuly Operations Backend.
Click on the filter icon to access the filter functionality.
Under “Field” select your desired option.
Note: the available options are custom and depend on the tab you are in. For example if you are in the Customers tab then you’ll find the column heading of the Customer List available under the “Field” option.
The next step is to select an “Option” to set a criteria for the selected “Field”.
Available options:
Note: When working with the date range option, click once on your desired date to only select a date and not a date range. After clicking on the date click on the “ok” button to save your selection.
Click a second time on another date to set a range and click on the “ok” button to save your selection.
The last step is to add a value for your selected “Field” and filter criteria.
Note: In case of Field options related to date or date range, the “Option” and “Value” input fields are not displayed as the date or the date range is the option and the value itself.
The input in the "Value" field is simply what you see under the various columns. For example if you are creating a filter for Create date, Start date, end date etc., then the possible value is a date or a date range. If you are filtering by status, then the possible value are the different status options such as Active, Swapped, Cancelled etc. For fields like Auto renewed, the possible values are FALSE and TRUE.
You can further narrow down on the filter to get more specific information by clicking on the + ADD FILTER button.
Note: You cannot use the same Field option to narrow the results. You must use two different Field options.
After clicking on the + ADD FILTER button continue by selecting a “Filter”, defining an “Option” and adding a “Value”.
Tip: This process can be automated via our customer API. This is the GET request you can use https://api-docs.circuly.io/docs/customers-api-docs/tyvbuteuftq44-get-the-order-s-update-payment-link that you can use to get the link for updating the payment details. You can forward the link to your customer via email.
Your customers can change their payment details in the Self-Service Portal in the same window as their address.
Given below are the instructions you can pass on to your customer about updating their payment details from the Self-Service Portal:
To change payment details > Go to Your Orders > Choose an order and click on the arrow icon > You will be taken to your order overview page > in the order overview page scroll down to Current payment method > Click on UPDATE PAYMENT METHOD.
Note: If you wish to add a custom description to this window, you can write us a service desk ticket, with your desired text.
You will be taken to a new browser window where you will have the option to update your payment method > Click on your desired option > Fill in your payment details > Confirm your selection.
Your payment method will now be updated.
As the title suggests Prepaid Subscriptions are subscription orders where your customer agrees to pay the recurring fees in advance and upfront. It is a win-win-situation for you and your customer, as this makes it easier to plan your cash flow, and many vendors offer their customers a certain discount for their upfront payment and commitment to the subscription service.
Prepaid subscriptions need to be set up as variants in your shop system. You can define in your variants set up whether the payment should be charged monthly or in one payment.
See example image below:
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With upfront payments, you likely want to extend the subscription duration after the upfront paid months are over to make your customer stick to you. Typically circuly only receives the total payment amounts from your shop system which becomes a problem when your subscription should extend monthly after the prepaid duration. Therefore, we have introduced the extension price field in our product list.
To set up the extension of Prepaid Subscriptions > Go to Products > Variants > Select all variants you would like to edit > Click on the Edit extension price button.
Now enter the extension prices in the given input field.
This price will then be used after the prepaid duration is over and when the auto renew becomes active. Learn more about the extension price function.
The change subscription frequency feature allows you to customise the billing frequency. The action can be performed by either a circuly user in the circuly Operations Backend or by your customer in the Self-Service Portal.
To change the billing frequency:
Note: the option to Change subscription frequency is only available for consumable subscriptions and will be greyed out for all other subscriptions.
As you already know every payment has an invoice attached to it. If and when a payment fails you can charge it manually or you can automate the process to retry the failed payment.
Alternatively you can also manually charge the invoice attached to the failed payment.
To charge an invoice:
Note: You can spot a failed invoice by looking at the Paid column. If there is a cross (❌ ) under it and there is a value under the Tries column then that means that the invoice failed to be charged.
Only a cross just means that the invoice has not been charged yet.
Your customer will receive an email notification about the charge.
Tip: This process can be automated via our customer API. This is the POST request you can use https://api-docs.circuly.io/docs/customers-api-docs/eb7ac5d762d9d-fulfill-order-by-id that you can use for marking order as fulfilled.
For Bulk Update follow this link: https://api-docs.circuly.io/docs/customers-api-docs/7qbwc0gwj2t9q-fulfill-orders-in-bulk
When your customer completes the checkout process and finalises the order, an order is created in your Shopsystem and in the circuly Operations Backend. To start collecting recurring payments, a subscription needs to be created for the order.
In the circuly Operations Backend, you can find multiple ways to create a subscription. circuly provides you both, manual and automated workflows for creating a subscription.
The decision to choose a manual option or an automated one depends on the number/quantity of incoming orders and the amount of control you want over the operations.
Available options for creating a subscription:
In this article we’ll go over the Mark as fulfilled option. For all other ways to create a subscription, refer to this article: All Different Ways to Start a Subscription in the circuly Operations Backend
You can automate the process of creating a subscription by making the subscription create process dependent on the "Mark as fulfilled" button.
Typically the mark as fulfilled button is used to indicate that an order has been successfully delivered. Fulfilling order is part of the shipping process. You want to use the fulfilment function to mark that the order item has left the warehouse.
However it can also be used to automatically create subscriptions.
If you enable the Auto activate subscription setting in your Settings then subscriptions will be automatically started after they are marked as fulfilled by a circuly user.
To access the setting > Go to Settings > Subscriptions > CREATE SUBSCRIPTION > Enable the switch for Auto activate subscriptions.
Note: The subscription start date value will be taken from the Auto activate offset setting. Make sure that you define the value in the respective setting.
What does ‘mark as completed’ do?
(setting: Auto activate subscriptions)
What set-up is necessary for the fulfil order function?
As the name defines, a "bundle" is a collection of products that are grouped together. In subscription terms, a bundle is a collection of products that are categorised under one subscription.
Examples
1. Bike + lock + helmet + basket
2. Baby Stroller + stroller rain cover + cup holder
3. Motor + spring cradle + attachment
A bundle is a collection of different products. All products under a bundle collection do ideally have their unique serial number and for internal reporting you may want to track the individual items. However your customers should ideally see all the products under the same subscription bundle and not as individually subscribed products.
And this is made possible via circuly's Bundle Collection Feature. The circuly feature allows you to freely track all products under a bundle and at the same time displays the products as one subscription to the customers.
Note: Bundles are predefined meaning that your customer will not be able to swap individual items under a bundle collection and will ONLY see one subscription for the whole service / product.
Good to know
1. Your products and product variants are always set up in your individual shopsystem. circuly only takes over the product information (product name, price etc.) from your shopsystem via a product sync and displays the information under the Product tab in the circuly Operations Backend.
2. The product prices are also taken from the shop system, and the bundle collection feature makes use of the default shop system prices (as set up by you). However, it is also possible to have the same price for the entire bundle collection, irrespective of the product selected. If you would like to have this logic, kindly get in touch with us via service desk.
3. The possibility to select products from a predefined collection is only available for new orders. If you want to make the feature available for your old subscriptions, get in touch with circuly via service desk.
Setup guide
Note: each bundle can only have a maximum of 10 items.
Tip: This process can be automated via our customer API. This is the POST request you can use https://api-docs.circuly.io/docs/customers-api-docs/cd491d414ce62-set-a-product-to-in-repair that you can use for the return handling process.
Mark, as returned, is commonly used to indicate that the subscription that was in the "pending return" state can be processed because the product has been returned. Sometimes the mark as returned option is also used when the subscription status is set as pending return but the product was not delivered to the customer and as a result the return needs to handled immediately so that the subscription can be ended. Mark, as returned, changes the status of the subscription to "ended".
The "ended" status means that the subscription has ended because the product has been returned.
When the product is returned to you by your customer and is in your warehouse, you should ideally go to the Returns tab in your circuly Operations Backend > Search for the serial number associated with the returned product in the Returns List > Click on the button that says HANDLE and in the Handle return window > Mark the product as returned by clicking on the MARK AS RETURNED button.
The following message will be displayed.
If you've set up the Repair questions and process repairs from the circuly Operations Backend > Navigate to the Repairs tab and complete the repair process for the product.
The "delete future recurring payments", as the title suggests deletes any future recurring payments if the checkbox for it is checked. It is available in two places:
- When you handle a return.
- When you mark a subscription as pending return.
When you do not interact with the subscription at all, all subscriptions can potentially automatically go into the pending return state when the end date arrives and if there are no auto-renew settings in place. In that case a circuly user has no interaction with the "Delete future recurring payments" checkbox and the recurring payments are planned to be charged even if the subscription is in a pending return state.
If you manually set a subscription status to pending return, you have the possibility to check the box when you are in the process. Your course of action depends on whether or not you want to avoid that your customer is being charged for the next month already while sending the item back. Some vendors want to keep the incentive up to return the product in time and as a result do not check the box in order to indicate that if the product is not returned in time, the customer will get charged.
When you handle a return and want to mark the product as returned, the option to delete future recurring payment is auto checked because the circuly system assumes that the at this point in time the product has been returned and any future recurring payment should be stopped.
Update stock on SKU level after return: if you want to update the stock on a SKU level (makes sense if you have more than one subscription duration for the same variant), you should activate this setting. If the switch for this setting is disabled then the stock is updated on a variant level.
To access the setting > Go to the Settings tab > Subscriptions > RETURN SUBSCRIPTION > Update stock on SKU level after return.
Note: If you do not want your stock to be updated at all by circuly, please write to us via the service desk.
A typical situation in e-commerce, both regular and subscription, is processing a refund for situations such as cancellations, wrong product, product breakage etc. When you use circuly to manage your subscriptions you can process refunds in a very efficient way. circuly not only takes care of the transactional communication that follows after a refund is processed but enables you to customise the refund value so that you can account for important costs like delivery costs, existing usage etc.
The refund option can be used to refund recurring payments, one-time transaction payments (such as initial payment or any other one-time payment) and buyout payments. As soon as a payment is created for a payment type (that is recurring, one-time or buyout payment) in the Payments tab, an invoice is created for the payment in the Invoice tab.
IMPORTANT: The refund action is performed on the invoice level and not the payment level.
To differentiate between the different payment types, look at the "Invoice type" column in the "Invoices" tab.
You can ONLY refund payments that have been charged in the first place. If a payment has not been charged yet or if the payment is to be charged in the future, the option to refund such a payment will not be available.
As you can see in the image below, the refund button is not available (the button is greyed out) if the payment has not been charged yet.
To check whether or not a payment has been successfully charged, look at the "Paid" column un the "Invoices" tab.
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Important: If you do not see the Paid column in your Invoice List, navigate to the eye icon on the right side of the table and check the box for "Paid" to display it has a column heading in the Invoice List.
Once you've determined the invoice that needs to be refunded, follow the steps mentioned below to process a refund:
Note: Please click on the coloured text under the ID column to open the invoice and access the invoice actions.
Quick guide on different options in the Refund Order window:
Note: The input value in the Message to customer field is only included in the email if you've added the required email variable, that is {{description}}, in the Refund Invoice email template.
Your customers may get a speeding ticket for their car subscription or require repair support for which you need to charge a one time transaction. What do you do when you need to charge your customers an extra amount besides their recurring payment?
To charge a one-time payment follow the steps given below or wathc the video tutorial:
Note: The input value in the Message to customer field is only included in the email if you've added the required email variable, that is {{description}}, in the One-time transaction email template.
When your customer completes the checkout process and finalises the order, an order is created in your Shopsystem and in the circuly Operations Backend. To start collecting recurring payments, a subscription needs to be created for the order.
In the circuly Operations Backend, you can find multiple ways to create a subscription. circuly provides you both, manual and automated workflows for creating a subscription.
The decision to choose a manual option or an automated one depends on the number/quantity of incoming orders and the amount of control you want over the operations.
Available options for creating a subscription
All incoming orders are displayed in the Order List under the Orders tab. To create a subscription from the Orders tab, you need to click on an order and go inside the Order Overview.
Detailed steps: How to get started with circuly when your first order comes in.
All orders are displayed in the Order List in the Orders tab and the customer attached to the Order is displayed in the Customer List in the Customer tab. You can also create a subscription for an order from the Customer tab.
Here are the steps:
In order to create a subscription in the regular way you have to select an order (or customer if you are using the customer tab to create the subscription) and go to the Order Overview to create a subscription. You can skip that by bulk updating Orders into Subscriptions.
Detailed steps: How to bulk update orders into subscriptions.
You can automate the process of creating a subscription by making the subscription create process dependent on the "Mark as fulfilled" button.
Typically the mark as fulfilled button is used to indicate that an order has been successfully delivered. However it can also be used to automatically create subscriptions.
If you enable the Auto activate subscription setting in your Settings then subscriptions will be automatically started after they are marked as fulfilled by a circuly user.
To access the setting > Go to Settings > Subscriptions > CREATE SUBSCRIPTION > Enable the switch for Auto activate subscriptions.
Note: The subscription start date value will be taken from the Auto activate offset setting. Make sure that you define the value in the respective setting.
With circuly you can create subscriptions in bulk and skip manually assigning serial number to a product in case you have thousands of orders coming in on a daily basis.
Detailed steps: How to create subscriptions in bulk.
Currently the option to delay a charge in the checkout or the initial payment is only available if you use the following Payment Service Providers:
Here’s when you might want to delay a charge:
Here’s what happens if you delay the charge in the checkout:
Alternatively you can enable the Allow unpaid subscription setting that allows you to create a subscription for unpaid orders. When you use the Allow unpaid subscription setting, you no longer need to charge the initial payment manually as it will be automatically triggered by the circuly system when you create a subscription for an order.
To enable the Unpaid subscription setting > Go to Settings > Subscription > CREATE SUBSCRIPTION > Enable the switch for Allow unpaid subscriptions.
Here’s how you can set up delaying the charge of the initial payment in the checkout:
Only applicable if you use Stripe and Braintree as Payment Service
Note: Please make sure you have the resource capacity to charge the initial payment manually once you want to confirm the order. Then do the following:
Note: The change applies to all orders only after you have activated the associated setting.
Here’s how you can charge the initial payment:
Note: You can only Create a subscription once the initial payment has been processed. The button/option to so will now we be available to you or you've enabled the Allow unpaid subscription setting.
If you have a rental model that allows subscription products to be bought in the middle of the subscription period or at the end of the subscription period, you can tackle the operations associated with the purchase of the subscription product (such as charging the remaining product amount via a one-time transaction, sending an invoice for the charge, stopping recurring payments etc.) in your circuly operations backend.
The difference between the two is the process itself. If you want to offer a custom price without influencing the price of all the other products of the same type, then the best way to proceed is to initiate the buyout manually from the circuly Operations Backend.
However if you do not plan on offering custom prices, then the buyout can be initiated by the customer from the Customer Self-Service Portal. Before getting started with this just make sure that you’ve checked the retail prices of all products and edited them if there are and errors. You’ll learn more about editing the retail price of this product in this article.
If you do wish to offer custom product prices when a customer request to buy the product, you can check out this article on initiating the buyout process manually from the circuly Operations Backend.
To learn more about the buyout process initiated by the customer from the Customer Self-Service Portal, continue reading this article.
Getting started:
Before you enable the product buyout feature and make it available to your customers in the Customer Self-Service Portal, double check the retail price of all your products. To do that:
There are additional settings options available that enable you to customise certain aspects of the buyout process from the Self-Service Portal.
See the image below to see how the terms and conditions appear to your customer.
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Your customer then sees a second page where they have to check the box for the terms and conditions set by you.
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IMPORTANT: The additional terms and conditions are hard coded in your Self-Service Portal. To define the additional terms and conditions for the two step buyout process, get in touch with our customer success team by raising a ticket.
However if you have operational costs or any other costs that you would like to take into account while calculating the buyout price then you can define a percentage value in this input field and this amount will be subtracted from the retail price.
Retail price = 200
Initial payment already made = 20
Recurring payments already made = 10
Discount payments for buyout calculation = 80
In this case only 80% of the initial payment and recurring payment will be taken into consideration as payment made (that is 16€ and 8€ respectively instead of 20€ and 10€) and deducted from the retail price. The buyout price will then be 176 euros.
However if Discount payment for buyout calculation = 100 then 100% of the initial payment and recurring payment will be taken into consideration as payment made (that is 20 and 10 respectively) and deducted from the retail price. The buyout price will then be 170 euros.
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Important: The buyout price may vary based on your settings. Read information under point 2 and 3.
IMPORTANT: If you've enabled the Two step buyout process setting then the button will say CONTINUE. Read information under point 2 and 3.
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Note: Buyout payments can take some time to process when SEPA is chosen. This should be mentioned in the email communication with the customer. Example text that you can include in your buyout email: "Thank you for your order. You will receive an order confirmation by e-mail shortly. Depending on the payment method, it may take several days to process your payment. As soon as the payment has been successful, your subscription will be changed to "{statusBoughtOut}" and you will receive an email with your purchase invoice. If your payment cannot be processed, we will also notify you by email.
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Charge initial payment is a feature available in the circuly operations backend that lets you manually charge the initial payment. The reason why you may want to manually charge an initial payment could be because you use the delayed charge feature or if there has been some issue with the Payment Service Provider that prevented circuly from charging the initial payment when the order was placed on your white-label checkout.
Note: Typically, subscriptions can only be created if the initial payment has been charged. If you use the delay charge feature you will be required to charge the initial payment before you can create a subscription for an order.
However if you have enabled the "Allow unpaid subscriptions" setting subscriptions can be created/started without having to manually charge it. In this case the circuly automatically triggers the payment service provider to charge the initial payment.
To charge the initial payment manually follow these steps:
From the Customers Tab
From the Orders tab:
Delayed charge - delayed charge is a feature available in the circuly operations backend that you can use if you do not want to charge the initial payment in the checkout and instead delay the charge until a later point in time.
Currently the option to delay a charge in your white-label checkout or the initial payment is only available if you use the following Payment Service Providers:
Here's when you might want to delay a charge:
Learn more about delaying initial payments in this article.
Given below are the instructions you can pass on to your customer about buying out their subscription products from the Self-Service Portal:
If you fall in love with your subscribed products, you can buy them and change your subscription to a purchase.
Here's how the process looks:
There can be various reasons for swapping subscription products, such as product breakage, product loss, upgrades, downgrades or simply because of the nature of your business.
The set up and the process of changing products in a subscription also depends on the reason why the product needs to be changed.
The set up process based on the use case for exchanging a product.
If you have a business model that allows your customers to exchange products from a predefined group, continue reading this article about Exchange Groups.
What are exchange groups?
When you want your customers to select a product for exchanging from a predefined group, you can set up exchange groups in the circuly Operations Backend. Typical use cases include an exchange group for consumable subscription products such as protein powder, where the customer can change between the different flavours, an exchange group for kids bike, where the customer can select a bigger size, or an exchange group for toys, where your customer can swap between toys.
Since lost products are not expected to come back, the swap process for such products looks slightly different than the regular swap process.
The reason why Lost product swaps are treated differently from other product swaps is because Lost products are not expected to come back. Speaking in technical terms, Lost products will not have a Pending Return status. This essentially means that normally you would expect a product to come back and if the customer doesn't send the product back, you can keep billing them. But in case of Lost products there is no possibility to get the product back hence no reason to bill the customers for two subscriptions.
In order to utilise the swap feature within the circuly Operations Backend, it is important to go through the following steps:
Step 1: Review and configure the swap settings.
Step 2: Add swap reasons. Swap reasons are used for internal communication.
Step 3: Learn how to process a swap request for missing products.
Make sure you’ve configured the swap settings and added the swapping reasons.
Continue reading this article to learn more about swapping broken products.
In the ever-evolving landscape of subscription-based businesses, circuly has taken a giant leap forward with the introduction of a significant addition to its software. While circuly has been a pioneer in managing operations for durable product subscriptions, it now extends its capabilities to consumable subscriptions, marking a significant evolution in its offerings.
Consumable subscriptions involve products that are designed to be used up or consumed over time. Unlike durable products, these items are finite and need replenishing regularly.
The operations associated with consumable subscriptions are distinct from physical products subscriptions.
The unique distinction lies in the increased customer interaction associated with consumable subscriptions. Customers may wish to adjust quantities, delivery schedules, and other preferences autonomously, minimising the need for frequent customer support interactions.
This heightened customer engagement adds a layer of complexity to the management of consumable subscriptions, emphasising the importance of a robust and user-friendly solution like circuly's newly expanded software.
Subscriptions of all types (digital, tangible and durable) help consumers solve certain “issues”. These “issues” define the added value that consumers get from subscribing to products instead of purchasing them.
As consumable subscriptions have become ingrained in the market, businesses are actively encouraging consumers to opt for subscriptions by offering them at attractive price points. This strategic pricing not only makes one-off purchases appear comparatively expensive but also allows businesses to provide such appealing rates due to the predictability inherent in subscription models. The predictability factor enables businesses to plan and manage inventory more efficiently, contributing to the overall affordability and attractiveness of consumable subscriptions.
With the new expansion, circuly wants to empower you to diversify your subscription offerings by seamlessly integrating consumable products into their existing subscription.
This strategic move enables you to increase Customer Lifetime Value, fosters brand loyalty and keeps yourself highly relevant to the evolving needs of your customer base.
As mentioned earlier, Consumable Subscriptions come with increased customer interaction However, the increased interaction doesn’t mean more workload for you as the circuly Self-Service Portal (which you may be already using) allows the consumer to manage their subscriptions independently of you.
Every subscription has a subscription action dropdown menu that offers your customers the possibility to take certain actions. Consumable Subscriptions have a dropdown menu of their own.
When your customer have consumable products on top of physical products in their cart, both categories of products can be seen in the Self-Service Portal with their own individual subscription action dropdown menu..
All the available subscription actions are as per current industry needs and standards and provide a unique level of customisation and personalisation to the customers. The circuly Consumables Subscription enables you to deliver a seamless subscription experience to your customers and ensures that you have satisfied and loyal subscribers.
If you're interested in offering consumable subscriptions, kindly get in touch with our customer success team. Our team will support you in the setup of the consumables function.
With circuly you can create subscriptions in bulk and skip manually assigning serial number to a product in case you have thousands of orders coming in on a daily basis. Subscription automation takes action by simply importing a list to circuly. This is specially handy if you have a warehousing or an ERP system connected to your shop system that takes care of sending out products to the customer.
To bulk upload subscriptions:
Once the file has been imported, a feedback window will be displayed that tells you how many orders have been imported. In case there is an error, it will be displayed in the feedback window. To know the reason for the error, you can download the error report and check the reason for the error message. All the orders that are now imported have a subscription created automatically.
Note: Here's an example of how the CSV upload should look.
You can easily select and deflect what you want to see in the Order List view by following these steps.
Unlike digital services physical products can break down or stop working. When your customers request product replacement, acting fast on their request will be the deciding factor when it comes to customer satifaction and loyalty. With the swap/replace feature in the circuly operations backend you can set replacement process in motion by following these steps:
For more details on processing a swap for stolen or missing products, check out this article.
Learn more about adding and editing swap/replacement reasons.
In the circuly backend it is possible to edit an existing voucher code or even delete one. To edit a voucher code, follow these steps.
After creating a subscription for an incoming order, the order shows up in the Subscription List under Subscriptions.
The term “Lost” is used in the operations backend for products that are either stolen or go missing. In your operations backend, whenever an existing customer needs to be supplied with a new product, you follow the process of swapping the product.
The swap a product:
Now the previous order will either have a Lost tag in the Order List and an Ended status in the order details (if you treated the product as a Lost product and initiated the swap process for it) or a Replacement tag in the Order List and Pending Return status in the order details (if you did not check the box and initiated the regular swap process).
The reason why Lost product swaps are treated differently from other product swaps is because Lost products are not expected to come back. Speaking in technical terms, Lost products will not have a Pending Return status. This essentially means that normally you would expect a product to come back and if the customer doesn't send the product back, you can keep billing them. But in case of Lost products there is no possibility to get the product back hence no reason to bill the customers for two subscriptions.
In Summary when your existing customers request a replacement (for lost products, broken products or wrong products) you initiate the swap process in the operations backend.
What do you do when your payment service provider does not enable you to adjust or change the recurring payment amount as and when you want? Amount once set and created cannot be changed within the payment service provider limiting your business case options such as providing a special discount to your customers during off season days to reduce seasonal churn. circuly makes payment service providers smart. circuly's recurring payment logic for subscriptions allows us to give you more flexibility with your recurring transactions.
You may wish to change or edit a recurring payment because of xyz reason. Follow the video tutorial or the steps mentioned below to edit/change a recurring payment:
Watch the video tutorial:
You may wish to change or edit a recurring payment because of xyz reason. Follow these steps to edit/change a recurring payment:
Note: You can only change/edit recurring payments that have not been settled yet and the Payment Settled column displays the status as "no". If the Payment Settled column displays the status as "yes" then the payment can no longer be changed because the payment has already been settled and billed and can no longer be edited.
Your editing options:
Use case: when your customer says that they haven't received any information or have changed their email address.
There are three different tabs in the circuly operations backend to send out emails manually:
Whether or not emails can be sent manually can be seen in the dedicated tab overview (for example Order overview, Subscription overview etc.) if an email icon is present in the top right corner (see image below for reference).
Steps to send out emails manually:
List of available emails that can be sent:
With circuly you get access to a list of editable email templates. All emails in the Email Template tab are attached to specific subscription operations and belong to either one of the following categories: Orders, Subscriptions, Payment and Return.
Here’s are a few example:
Whenever your customer should get an email related to their subscription, order, payment or return they do so from the circuly operations backend.
Every email available in the circuly operations backend can be customised to fit your branding. The emails available in circuly are transactional emails and not marketing emails. This means that emails that are sent and can be sent from the Email Template tab are related to subscription operations. You cannot send an email about new offers, new vouchers or new discounts from the circuly operations backend. For that you need a Marketing automation tool.
Each email has an email trigger attached to it. When an action is performed, the email associated with that action is triggered and the email is sent out automatically from your circuly operations backend. In this article, we cover each email template, available in the circuly operations backend, in detail and also identify their triggers so that you know exactly which action triggers which email.
The emails are described as and how they appear in the Email Template section of the operations backend. The names that you see below are for internal use only. You can always adjust the subject line and other aspects of the email by editing the Email template.
Category: Payment
Trigger: When a “Your invoice” email is sent.
Explanation: The “Invoice” email is sent in combination with the “Your Invoice” email. It is sent to your customer as a PDF attachment whenever a recurring payment has to be charged. It is sent before the payment has actually been charged. The “Invoice” as the title suggests, just contains the invoice of the payment.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Payment notifications > Enable the switch for Upcoming Recurring payments and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
As per german law you are required to include the "service period" aka Leistungszeitraum (german translation) in the invoice to the customer.
In your circuly operations backend, there is a variable you can use for this called {{current_period}}. Kindly make sure to include this variable when designing the email template for all payment-related emails
FYI, for the initial invoice (the one that is sent to the customer when they go through your checkout) you do not need the "service period" aka Leistungszeitraum. The "Leistungszeitraum" is only required for recurring payments.
Therefore, when setting up your email templates, remember to add the following to the email template so that the variable for Leistungszeitraum is only rendered if the invoice is for a subscription/recurring payment and not the initial payment.
ADD THIS ➡️ {% if initial_invoice == false %}
<p>Service period: {{current_period}}</p>
{% endif %}
Category: Order
Trigger: When a customer requests login details in customer login.
Explanation: The “One Time Password” email is triggered when your customer is in the customer login area and requests login details to access their subscriptions.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Order notifications > Enable the switch for all All order-related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Category: Order
Trigger: When you charge a One-time transaction in the circuly operations backend.
Explanation: The “One Time Transaction” email is sent to your customer in combination with the “Your invoice” email when you charge a one-time transaction from your circuly operations backend. The “One Time Transaction” email contains the invoice for the one-time transaction.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Order notifications > Enable the switch for all All order-related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Category: Order
Trigger: When an order is cancelled manually in the circuly operations backend.
Explanation: The “Order Cancellation” email is sent to your customer when you manually cancel an order from the circuly operations backend.
If you check the “Fully refund this order” checkbox the "Refund Invoice" will be sent to the customer as a pdf with the "Transaction refund" email.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Order notifications > Enable the switch for all All order-related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Category: Order
Trigger: When an order is placed on your website on the circuly checkout.
Explanation: The “Order Confirmation” email is sent to your customer when the customer places an order on your website. This is just a confirmation to your customer that the order has been received by you.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Order notifications > Enable the switch for all All order-related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Note: If you do not want to send an “order confirmation” email to the customer, you can either delete the template or not create it in the first place. You would not send an “Order Confirmation” email when you already have an order confirmation email in your shop system and dont want to send the same email two times.
Category: Order
Trigger: When an order is manually set to completed in the circuly operations backend.
Explanation: The “Order Fulfillment Completed” email is sent to your customer when you manually set an order as completed (Mark as completed) in the circuly operations backend.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Order notifications > Enable the switch for all All order-related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Category: Payment
Trigger: When a payment attempt fails
Explanation: The “Payment has failed” email is sent to your customer when a payment that should have been completed/charged fails. This email can be triggered every time a payment fails and doesn’t go through. Failed payments are retried x times after every x days and if they fail to go through, then each time that the payment fails, the “Payment has failed” email is sent to your customer.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Payment notifications > Enable the switch for all payment-related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Note: In the Recurring payments settings you can define how many times a failed payment should be retried, what should be the interval between them (in days/weeks) and if the customer should be informed every time the payment fails or only on the final attempt.
Read the article on retrying failed payments and the associated settings.
Category: Payment
Trigger: When a payment attempt was successful.
Explanation: The “Payment was successful” email is sent to your customer when a payment goes through or in other words is successfully charged.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Payment notifications > Enable the switch for all payment-related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Category: Payment
Trigger: When a "Transaction Refund" email is sent.
Explanation: The “Refund invoice” is sent to your customer in combination with the “Transaction refund” email. The “Refund invoice” contains the invoice for the refund that has been made by you to your customer for xyz reason in the form of a pdf. The "Refund invoice" is also sent to the customer with the "Transaction Refund" email as a pdf when you check the checkbox for "Fully refund this order" when you manually cancel an order.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Payment notifications > Enable the switch for all payment-related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Category: Return
Trigger: Sent Manually when customer support gets information from the customer that they want to return a product or can be automated when cancellation request is made from the Customer Self-Service portal.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Subscription notifications > Enable the switch for Return instructions.
Category: Return
Trigger: After the last retrial attempt of a failed payment in the second payment cycle.
Explanation: The "Return Unpaid Product" email is sent to your customer after 2 failed payment cycles.
Payment cycle: 1 payment cycle has “x” number of payment retrial attempts. You can define the default value for “x” in your Recurring Payments settings. Go to Settings > Recurring Payments > PAYMENT TRIES & INTERVALS > Insert a numeric value in the “Maximum number of payment retries” input field.
Note: In the Recurring payments settings you can define how many times a failed payment should be retried, what should be the interval between them (in days/weeks) and if the customer should be informed every time the payment fails or only on the final attempt.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Payment notifications > Termination needs to be enabled to send the email.
Category: Subscription
Trigger: At the subscription start date
Explanation: The “Subscription activated” email is sent to your customer on the subscription start date. The “Order Confirmation” email and the “Subscription activated” email are differentiated because there can easily be a time difference (days, weeks, months) between when an order is received and when a subscription starts.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Subscription notification > Enable the switch for all subscription related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Category: Subscription
Trigger: When a product is marked as returned and thereby the subscription ended
Explanation: The “Subscription ended” email is sent to your customer when a product is marked as returned.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Subscription notification > Enable the switch for all subscription related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Category: Subscription
Trigger: x days before subscription end date (can be adjusted)
Explanation: The “Subscription is almost over” email is sent to your customer usually x days before the subscription end date (the time duration of sending out the email can be adjusted).
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Subscription notification > Enable the switch for all subscription related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Note: Set the default value for sending out the Subscription is almost over email by going to Settings > Email > EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS > Insert a numeric value in “Days calculation before ending input” field.
Best practice: Active subscriptions are not automatically ended when subscription end date = date because every subscription potentially has the possibility of extending and being renewed. Therefore it is best to ask the customer whether or not they would like to end their subscription and return the product in the “subscription is almost over” email.
Category: Subscription
Trigger: When customer support manually sets a subscription to "pending return" (after accepting customer return request).
Explanation: The “Subscription pending return” email is sent to the customer by your customer support when a subscription is manually set to pending return by the customer care.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Subscription notification > Enable the switch for notify pending return and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Note: The “Subscription pending return” can also be automatically trigged. The action associated with this email will then be when your customer makes a cancellation request from the customer login, and in your Customer login settings, you’ve enabled the switch for Auto cancel subscription.
Category: Subscription
Trigger: When a SWAP (new product: upgrade/repair/exchange) is initiated manually or requested from the customer login
Explanation: The “SWAP confirmation” email is sent to your customer when a SWAP request is either initiated manually by a circuly backend user or when the customer makes a SWAP request from the customer login.
Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Subscription notification > Enable the switch for all subscription related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Category: Payment
Trigger: When a payment is refunded manually.
Explanation: The “Transaction refund” email is sent to your customer when you manually process a refund from your operations backend. The “Transaction refund” email is sent out together with the “Refund invoice”.
Settings: Enable the switch for Payments (Settings > Emails > EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS > enable the switch for Payments) in the Email Settings and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Category: Payment
Trigger: When a one-time transaction or recurring payment is triggered.
Explanation: The “Your Invoice” email is sent to your customer when a payment (recurring and one-time) is to be charged but hasn't been charged yet. If the payment is a recuring payment, then the “invoice” email template is attached to it as a PDF. If the payment is a one-time transaction, then the “one-time transaction” email template is attached to it as a PDF.
Settings: Enable the switch for Payments (Settings > Emails > EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS > enable the switch for Payments) in the Email Settings and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.
Note: The customer gets an invoice for both failed, and successfully charged payments before the payment is actually charged and accordingly gets the “Payment was successful” or “Payment failed” email depending on not the payment was successfully charged.
A serial number is what separates one product from the other. In order to track important product-related KPI’s such as product value, product life expectancy, product wear and tear and so on it is important that you differentiate products on the basis of their serial number.
You may want to replace an existing serial number because of reasons such as typing errors. To replace the serial number of a product follow the steps given below.
Editing the serial number from the Orders tab:
Watch the video tutorial:
Editing the serial number from the Subscriptions tab:
When you get a return request from your customer either via email or via the customer login, there are two different ways to process the request.
NOTE: the process is not interchangeable as the workflows for the return request depends on how the request was made, that is was it via email or via the customer login.
In this article, we will cover both topics.
When you get a return request via email. Follow these steps to process the return request:
Note: The subscription is still active as the product hasn't been returned to you. Once you receive the product, you have to end the subscription in the operations backend. To end the subscription follow the steps given below:
To extend the end date of a subscription, follow the steps given below:
In the circuly operations backend, you can charge a single recurring payment.
Watch the video tutorial:
Read the steps:
When you want to export certain data from the operations backend, you can do so by:
Note: when the “Export underway” window says that “you will be notified when the export is ready to download”, this doesn’t mean that you will be notified via email. The notification about the export being ready will be in the notification panel.
In case the notification doesn’t pop up, then the most likely reason for that is that your session has timed out. Simple login again and check the notification panel.
Watch the video tutorial:
Follow the instructions given below to connect your shop system with to circuly:
- Scroll to Orders > click on the dropdown menu > select Read and write from the menu options.
- Scroll to Products > click on the dropdown menu > select Read and write from the menu options.
Then our customer success team will add your API keys to our backend so that the two systems get connected and data can flow between them.
IMPORTANT INFO: Email Templates are used for automating your customer communication throughout your rental business cycle. It enables you to give your customers transparency and make them feel well taken care of. You can set up the email templates in different languages. If multiple languages are enabled in the settings, and the customer preferred language template is missing; the default language template will be used as a substitute . However, in the case that a template under the default language AND preferred language is missing, the event will be skipped, and the customer will not receive this email .
Please be careful: if you have created a template BUT it is not finished (empty) it will still be sent out.
To create an email template, follow these steps:
Blank template: if you decide to go with the Blank template option, you can create a template from scratch with your own CSS and HTML code and you can add the variables you need. f you want to check how your mail looks, you can always click on the Preview button in the upper right corner to take a look at your email template.
circuly Predefined: with the circuly predefined option, you'll get a preset template that can be edited to fit your branding.
Learn how to modify:
When you use the circuly predefined email templates, the emails already have a subject line. However the subject line can be edited.
To Do:
Every email comes with a predefined set of email variables and not all email variables available are used in an email. If you would like to edit the body text of the email templates and use variables that fit the text, you can do so by editing the email temples.
To Do:
Note: Variables are custom to an email template meaning that not every variable is available for every template.
In the predefined circuly email templates, the logo is defined by the <img> tag with the class "logo", containing the source url and a height of 36 pixels.
To Do:
Step 1 - Connect your font
The code is used in HTML to include a font from Google Fonts. It helps by establishing a connection to the font server in advance, allowing faster loading. It also ensures cross-origin access for the font resources. The code specifies the font URL and loads the font stylesheet.
To Do:
Place the following snippet within the <head> section.
The third <link> tag specifies the URL of the font file you want to use. Modify this tag to link to your font from Google Fonts. For example, you can change the family attribute value to the desired font and weight.
Step 2: Import your font
The CSS code snippet provided in our example is used to define a custom font. It allows you to specify the font family name and the source URL or path where the font file is located.
To Do:
Place the following snippet within the <head> section.
Step 3: Style specific class attributes with your customised font
Styling specific classes allows you to target and apply styles to specific elements within your HTML structure. By using classes, you can selectively style certain elements while leaving others unaffected. This provides more control and flexibility in designing your template. It allows you to create consistent styles across multiple elements that share the same class, without affecting other elements on the page. (In our example we have styled the custom font for the card-header element)
To Do:
Identify the elements in HTML that you want to style and apply the font rule within the CSS section for this specific class.
Using colour codes in the hexadecimal format #ff0000or rgb(255, 0, 0) - both serve the purpose of defining colours. However, there are a few reasons why using hexadecimal colour codes is considered more advantageous because of its simplicity, memorability, flexibility, and compatibility with CSS. In our given example, the color of the text inside the <h2> element is styled using CSS. The colour property is set to #ff0000, which represents the hexadecimal value for the colour red.
To Do:
Pick your hexadecimal colour (f.g. HTML Color Picker) and apply the colour code as a rule to your CSS element
To use a link in HTML, you need to use the <a> element, which is used to create clickable hyperlinks.In our example, the email address "example@circuly.io" is added as a mailto link within the <a> element. This allows users to click on the link to open their default email client with a pre-filled email to that specific address.
To Do:
Set the <a> element to create the link, specifying the destination URL or relative path in the href attribute and add the desired link text. Use <a href="URL">Link Text</a> as a general link or <a href="mailto:EMAIL">Link Text</a> as a mail link.
To add an image to your HTML document, use the <img> tag. Place the tag where you want the image to appear within the HTML structure.
In our example we have the class attribute assigned to the image tag. It specifies a CSS class name ("image-main") that can be used to style the image using CSS later on. The src attribute specifies the source of the image. In this case, the image source is a URL pointing to an image file hosted on the web.
To Do:
Use <img src="URL" alt="Description of the image"> and set the URL of your hosted image.
If desired, delete unwanted default circuly images by removing the <img> tags.
Our example HTML shows a <section> element with the class attribute class="card", which can serve as a container for your footer content. Within the section, there is a nested structure consisting of <div> elements with various classes for styling purposes. The innermost <div> with the class attribute class="card-body--image" contains the actual content of the footer. It includes a <strong> element for emphasising the text "We are here to help you," followed by plain text and an <a> element for adding a hyperlink. The relevant CSS styling classes for the provided code snippet are .card-body .card--list and .card-body--image
To Do:
If desired, modify the text and hyperlink in HTML or if you want to change the image to a custom picture, you can replace the 'URL' in the background-image CSS property with the URL of your custom image.
In our HTML example, the button's URL is dynamically populated by a variable called shop_url. This variable is used within the href attribute of the <a> element to determine the destination to your shop when the button is clicked. While the current default implementation uses the shop_url variable to automatically populate the button's URL, it is technically possible to replace this variable with any other URL redirection. Within the CSS below you can easily modify the styling of the button, such as background colour, text colour and shape.
To Do:
If desired, modify the text in HTML and button design in CSS.
Within the one-time password and refer a friend template, per default we have set up boxes to highlight the OTP and voucher code.In our example of the OTP template, the default HTML represents a paragraph element (<p>) with the class otp-backdrop. Inside the paragraph, there is a placeholder ({{otp_code}}) that suggests the usage of a variable to dynamically populate the code content.Within the CSS below you can easily modify the styling of the box, such as background color, text color and shape.
To Do:
If desired, modify the box design in CSS. Please do not replace the default variable.
Instead of marking products as returned while processing returns in the Return List you can now also mark products as bought if they have been bought by your customer and hence will not be returned to you.
To mark a product as returned, follow these steps:
Checkbox for Delete future recurring payments: Checking this box will, as the text suggests, delete all future recurring payments.
When you should not check it: in case the customer is still under the minimum contract duration and returns the product anyway then you might want to uncheck this box as you still want to change the customer for the remainder of the contract period even through they have returned the product.
Additionally, in the Asset List, the status will be reflected as bought out for products that have either been bought out or are marked as bought in the return handling process.
With circuly you can export data from the circuly operations backend and plug it into a tool of your choice. The best way to do this is via Zapier where you can also create automations.
If you decide to use Zapier, then the first thing you need to do is to make sure that the tool you want to send information to from circuly is available on Zapier.
circuly also provides you with the option of using webhooks to take data out of circuly and plug it into a tool of your choice to create automations. You can use an API endpoint of our choice or work with Zapier (our recommendation is to use Zapier) to make two apps talk to one another.
Webhooks are automated messages sent from one app to another in case something happens or something is updated/changed. It’s a way for different tools to “communicate” to each other and get automated information when something new happens. With webhooks you can push data from one app to another.
Here’s a simple analogy from Zapier about Wehbooks
“There are two ways your apps can communicate with each other to share information: polling and webhooks. As one of our customer champion's friends has explained it: Polling is like knocking on your friend’s door and asking if they have any sugar (aka information), but you have to go and ask for it every time you want it. Webhooks are like someone tossing a bag of sugar at your house whenever they buy some. You don't have to ask, they just automatically punt it over every time it's available.”
When you use Webhooks there’s a sender that send the data and a receiver that receives that data. So there is a place where the action is “triggered”, and a place this action goes to, to convey that something has happened.
You can use Webhooks to create all sorts of automations. You can use an API endpoint of our choice or work with Zapier (our recommendation is to use Zapier) to make two apps talk to one another.
There’s a lot of room for creativity when it comes to creating automations. The automations you make depends on what exactly you want to automate. Based on that you can think what information you will need from a tool to make that automation work.
Note: Webhooks by Zapier is only available to Zapier users on a paid plan.
Create a Zapier account - to work with zapier, you need to create an account.
Create an account on the tool you want to use - you also need to create an account on the tool you want to use with Zapier.
With webhooks you first have to figure out what you want to automate and the information you will require to automate it. Then you need to match it with the information that is available and can be used to create the automation.
Connecting a shipping tool (we’re using Easyship as an example) to circuly via Zapier and using webhooks to transfer data to the shipping tool.
Detailed steps given below
Now everytime anything in a Subscription is updated, Webhook will catch that update/change and send it to Zapier.
Optional: If you have test orders and subscriptions in your operations backend, you can change something in the subscription to test the trigger. But if no change or update has been made in the Subscription at the time you are creating a Zap then the Test trigger button will not lead to any results.
Note: Make sure to connect your tool with Zapier. Here’s how it works for Easyship > In your Easyship account > Go to Connect in the left nav bar > Click on + New Integration > Select Zapier from the list > Click on the Connect button.
Once you’ve completed the necessary steps in the tool, go to Zapier
To fill in details, either type in the input field or click on the field to get a list of values that can be automatically taken from the data retired via webhooks.
Given below are common reasons why your customers are prevented from placing an order
A prospective customer is prevented from completing the checkout if they do not fill the date of birth input field even if you have the setting for making the date of birth as a mandatory field disabled.
Explanation: One of the many custom checkout field options available on the circuly white-label checkout is Date of Birth. You can decide to make the field a mandatory or an optional field depending on your business case.
The date of birth custom field option is by default disabled and can be enabled If you want to ask for the date of birth of the customer on the checkout page in the Settings tab.
However you might have noticed that your customers are prevented from proceeding to the payment page if they do not add their date of birth in the date of birth input field, even though it is not mandatory (that is the setting for making date of birth a mandatory field is disabled).
This happens if you use CRIF to do credit checks on your checkout page to prevent fraud and to check the credit worthiness of the customer.
Date of birth is a mandatory piece of information that CRIF needs to perform the credit check.
That is why it is recommended to make the date of birth field mandatory, if you use CRIF to do credit checks.
Your customer is prevented from completing the checkout and advancing to the payment page if they have reached the limit of the maximum number of allowed items in the cart.
Explanation: Your customers will be prevented from completing the checkout if they have reached the limit for the maximum number of items allowed in the cart.
This happens when you’ve defined a value for the maximum number of cart items that a customer can proceed with to the payment page in your Settings.
Your customer is prevented from completing the checkout and advancing to the payment page if they have reached the limit of the maximum number of allowed items per SKU in the cart.
Explanation: Your customers can be prevented from completing the checkout if they have reached the limit for the maximum number of items allowed in the cart per SKU
This happens when you’ve defined a value for the maximum number of items allowed in the cart per SKU that a customer can proceed with to the payment page.
The customer is unable to place an order if there are problems with the payment method of the customer such a insufficient card balance, wrong card details etc.
Explanation: when your customer adds their payment details in the payment input field and clicks on the checkout button, circuly sends a payment token to your connected payment service provider to charge the payment.
The payment service provider then tries to charge the payment. If the payment service provider is unable to do so the customer is not able to place an order due to problems with their chosen payment method.
The reason why the payment service provider is unable to charge the payment can vary from insufficient balance to wrong information.
When a payment fails, the customer gets either of the following prompt:
When an order fails due to payment reasons, you will not be able to see it in the circuly Operations Backend. You can however see an overview of your failed orders in connected your shop system.
The customer is unable to place an order and gets an error message of insufficient stock.
Explanation: circuly enables you to prevent your customers from proceeding to the payment page if they have a product in the cart that is not in stock.
There is a setting available in the Settings tab that can be enabled if you want to prevent customers from placing orders that you cannot fulfils due to stock limitations.
The setting is by default disabled and can be enabled.
A customer will be prevented from proceeding to the payment page if you set a minimum age for placing the order in your Settings tab.
When a customer enters their date of birth on the checkout page, the circuly system checks the year of birth against the minimum age setting. If the age is below your defined number, then the customer is prevented from proceeding to the payment page.
A customer can be prevented from proceeding to the checkout if they’ve inserted an invalid number in the phone input field. Enable the setting for validating phone number under Checkout in the Settings tab.
Certain fields like Name, address and contact details are mandatory fields. In order to advance to the payment page, these fields must be filled.
There are additional fields such as company name and VAT number that can be added to the checkout and can also be converted into mandatory fields.
When these fields are converted into mandatory fields, the customer on the checkout will be prevented from proceeding to the payment page if these fields are left blank.
To access the additional fields > Go to Settings > Checkout > PERSONAL INFORMATION > Enable the switch for the additional fields you would like to add to the checkout > Then decide if you would like to convert them into mandatory fields.
9. Checkout not possible due to payment failure.
Customer doesn't get to the order confirmation due to payment failure.
You may want to add limitations to your cart and/or checkout page for cases such as fraud prevention, accepting certain groups of customers, testing demand for products etc.
Given below are use cases of a few limitations.
Options for cart limitation:
If you would like to limit your cart and have some limitation logics, we recommend doing so on the product page level with the support of your developers if you do not use the circuly cart.
NOTE: You still may want to apply the above mentioned visual suggestions on your product page to avoid confusion.
There are several options and settings available in the circuly Operations Backend to customise your checkout page.
Limitations means that you can alter the behaviour of your checkout by adding certain conditions to it. To access these settings go to Settings > Checkout.
Given below is an example image of a checkout including all the possible limitations and custom fields.
Given below are the available limitation options:
You can choose to display or hide information on the checkout page. Given below are few options that can be customised.
Your customers can switch between languages in the self-service portal. When your customers change their language, the language preferences of the customers are updated and saved in the circuly system. the circuly system then sends the email communication to the customer in the language selected last by the customer in the self-service portal.
Here's how your customer goes through the process
To change the language in which the CSS is displayed > Click on the small grey button in the top right corner > From the given list, select a language of your choice.
Implication: When you change your language preferences in the self-service portal, the language of the email communication that you receive from us also changes.
To access the language settings, that is to customise the languages available to your customer to choose from in the self-service portal > In your circuly Operations backend > Go to Settings > Company settings > LOCALE > Allowed languages > Select the languages from the dropdown menu.
Setup Instructions
To connect Adyen to circuly follow the steps given below:
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Your Adyen account is now connected to circuly.
You can only edit orders as long as they do not have a subscription attached to the order. As soon as you create a subscription for an order, it can no longer be edited.
Note: This action will create a draft copy-order with all order items, customer and payment information. You can then edit the order and convert it to a real order that is also sent to your shop system.
To get started with adding new order items to the existing order, click on the Add button.
In the Add order item window > Edit the information you want > Once you're done click on the SUBMIT CHANGES button. The price will be automatically updated as soon as have you have selected the product variant.
To get started with deleting order items to the existing order, click on the delete (red cross) button. This will remove the order item from your order. Please note that this action will not automatically trigger a refund. Make sure to manually refund the item amount via the refund action afterwards.
There are two locations in which you can edit order items - please select the suitable function for your individual use case:
1. To get started with editing order items in your existing order, click on the EDIT button. Now you can edit the item information as needed. Make sure to confirm by clicking on the EDIT button once you are done.
2. For editing the order item directly in the product list, learn more here. This makes sense, if you don't want to create a new draft order but only edit an order item before starting a subscription.
In case your customer may also want to get the order information delivered to a different email address or the order items to a different address, you can adapt the information before saving the order changes.
What if I want involve my customer as little as possible into the order update?
The toggle is deactivated per default since most likely you will not want to or not need to send an updated order offer to your customer for confirmation. In this case, you can keep the toggle deactivated as is and your customer will not have to do anything. The customer will automatically receive an updated order confirmation and the payment method from the original order will be taken over to the new order.
What if I need an active approval for the updated order?
Enabling the toggle send order as quote to customer gives you the possibility to send out your adapted order to your customer again with a prefilled checkout link. The order will then get into a draft order status and once the checkout has be finalized by your customer, the draft order will be converted into a real order. Hence in this case your customer will need validate their personal details and enter their payment details again. Also note that the previously used payment data will NOT be taken over.
CONFIRM UPDATED ORDER: Once you have done all the changes, make sure to click on CREATE ORDER to confirm the changes. This will create the new order which you can then fulfill as normal.
Important: You must cancel (and refund) the old order manually with a suitable message so that your customer understands why he / she is charged (again).
Please open the order > click on the three dots at the top right > select cancel order to do so and select the checkbox "full refund". If you only want to partially refund an order, please learn more about refunding an order here.
Once the updated order is created, you have to charge the initial payment manually.
To charge the initial payment open up the updated order > click on the three dots at the top right > select Charge Initial Payment.
When charging the initial payment, you can add a custom message to explain why your customer is charged. Make sure to click on charge xx,xx so that the payment will be initiated through your payment service provider. The customer will then also automatically receive an invoice.
You can identify edited orders easily since they marked as Origin: Clone. You can always find the original order by copy / pasting the parent ID in the order search (for example if you want to cancel and refund the original order).
You will also find this information in the order list:
Due to the unique nature of a subscription business, common terms such as variants and SKU have a different meaning and a different setup logic.
Therefore before we get started with the topic of stock management with circuly, let us first understand a few terms such as product, variants and SKU when they are used in a subscription-based ecommerce business.
1. Product - in any business (ecommerce or subscription) a product refers to a specific item that is available for sale. Each product has a unique name and description. A product is unique if it can have an influence on the number of units available for it.
Assuming that you offer iPhones on a subscription basis, the “iPhone 14 Pro - 128 GB - Black” is a unique product and is different from the “iPhone 14 Pro - 512 GB - Black”, therefore the two are treated as two different products.
In an ecommerce business the 128 GB and the 512 GB are treated as variants.
However a regular ecommerce business does not have anything to do with length of subscription contracts and therefore has a different setup logic.
In order to understand the next term, that is variants, let’s assume that you have a stock of 10 units for the iPhone 14 Pro - 128 GB - Black and a stock of 20 units for the iPhone 14 Pro - 512 GB - Black.
2. Variants - Variants are different versions or options of a particular product. They represent variations of the same product that may differ in certain attributes and the difference affects the customers choice.
In a subscription business the most important attribute that affects a customers choice is the length of the subscription contract.
Therefore the variants of a product (in a subscription business) are defined based on the length of the subscription contract.
In the iPhone example, if a customer chooses the iPhone 14 Pro - 128 GB - Black for a duration of 12 months, this choice will have no effect on the number of units available for the iPhone 14 Pro - 512 GB - Black but will have an effect on the number of units available for the iPhone 14 Pro - 128 GB - Black.
So according to the example of the iPhone 14 Pro - 128 GB - Black available as a subscription, the various variants will be set up as:
Variant 1: 6 months (10 units)
Variant 2: 12 months (10 units)
Variant 3: 18 months (10 units)
Variant 4: 24 months (10 units)
And will change to the units mentioned below due to the sale of one of the variants.
Variant 1: 6 months (9 units)
Variant 2: 12 months (9 units)
Variant 3: 18 months (9 units)
Variant 4: 24 months (9 units)
3. SKU (Stock Keeping Unit): in a regular ecommerce business a SKU is a unique code assigned to each specific variant of a product. It is a combination of letters, numbers, or both, that helps identify and track items in inventory. SKUs help identity and categorise products based on various attributes such as colour, style, subscription duration or any other distinguishing characteristics.
In an ecommerce business each variant of a product will have its own unique SKU, enabling businesses to differentiate between similar products and maintain accurate inventory records.
However in a subscription business, the variants are defined on the basis of the length of the subscription contract.
Please note that while SKU help in categorisation of products, each product itself needs a unique serial number for accurate tracking.
So when a customer chooses the 6 months variant of the iPhone 14 Pro - 128 GB - Black, the number of units of the other variants (12, 18, 24 months) needs to be reduced by 1 as only 9 units are available of the iPhone 14 Pro - 128 GB - Black as result.
In Shopify, woocommerce and Shopware, product variants can have the same SKU. However in Saleor, product variants cannot have the same SKU and therefore need additional setup steps.
You’ve set up your products in your shop system, created variants, defined the SKU and you’re ready to receive your first order or perhaps new orders.
And you want to know how circuly interacts with your stock. Good question.
In a growing business, automating processes is key to scaling operations. circuly provides you both - a manual way and an automated way to handle stock.
Important to know is that stock management with circuly is dependent on the shop system you use as different shop systems have different setups that circuly needs to navigate through.
In Shopify, woocommerce and Shopware variants of a given product can have and typically do have the same SKU. Therefore the stock is updated based on variants and is updated for all variants for a SKU.
Order placement
If you enable the “Check system stock” setting the circuly system will automatically check your existing stock before finalising the order.
To access the setting > Go to Settings > Checkout > PRE CHECKOUT > Check system stock.
Scenarios: Product is available
If the product selected by the customer is available then the customer will be able to proceed with the payment and finalise the order.
A webhook event is triggered because an order event (order placement) took place and the circuly system will update the stock in your shop system and reduce for all the variants with the same SKU.
Scenario: product is not available
If the circuly system detects that there isn’t a unit available for the selected product variant, the customer will be prevented from finalising the order.
Order cancellation
If an order is cancelled, a webhook event is triggered. The webhook event updates the stock in your shopsystem (this time its a +1 to the stock) for all variants and SKU under the variant.
If you want the circuly system to automatically restock items after an order is cancelled, you can enable the Restock items after an order cancellation setting.
To access the setting > Go to Settings > Orders > CANCELLATION > Restock items after an order cancellation.
Return
When you mark a product as returned in the circuly Operations Backend, there is a webhook event that updates the stock in your shopsystem (this time its a +1 to the stock) for all variants and SKU under the variant again.
To access the setting > Go to Settings >Subscriptions > RETURN SUBSCRIPTION > Update stock on SKU level after return.
However, if you would like to define whether the stock should be treated as a secondhand stock or new stock we recommend to progress the stock management in this case manually instead.
Swap
When processing a swap if the same product is replaced, the stock will be automatically updated since a new order will be created. If you exchange the product with another product make sure to select the product from the dropdown menu and the stock will be updated automatically.
Note: We recommend using a warehouse management system - especially for larger stock & order quantities. Warehouse management systems are usually directly connected to your shop system to track the stock more efficiently. If you use a warehouse management system, circuly will then just trigger the events and the stock update will be taken care of in the WMS. For questions please contact us via the service desk.
In Saleor the SKUs cannot be the same for the different variants. The SKUs are not connected and therefore need to be harmonised with the help of automatic N8N flows.
Order placement
Since the SKUs are not the same an N8N flow will update the stock for all the durations and will harmonise the stock for all variants with an update event.
Order cancellation:
When an order is cancelled, a webhook event is triggered and sent to Saleor. The event updates the stock to +1. All the variants are updates based on an N8N flow.
If you want the circuly system to automatically restock items after an order is cancelled, you can enable the Restock items after an order cancellation setting.
To access the setting > Go to Settings > Orders > CANCELLATION > Restock items after an order cancellation.
Return
When you mark a product as returned in the circuly Operations Backend, there is a webhook event that updates the stock in your shopsystem (this time its a +1 to the stock) for all variants and SKU under the variant again.
To access the setting > Go to Settings >Subscriptions > RETURN SUBSCRIPTION > Update stock on SKU level after return.
However, if you would like to define whether the stock should be treated as a secondhand stock or new stock we recommend to progress the stock management in this case manually instead.
Swap
When processing a swap if the same product is replaced, the stock will be automatically updated since a new order will be created. If you exchange the product with another product make sure to select the product from the dropdown menu and the stock will be updated automatically.
Note: We recommend using a warehouse management system - especially for larger stock & order quantities. Warehouse management systems are usually directly connected to your shop system to track the stock more efficiently. If you use a warehouse management system, circuly will then just trigger the events and the stock update will be taken care of in the WMS. For questions please contact us via the service desk.
Subscription fatigue poses a challenge for consumers in managing their subscription payments and contract renewals. While the renewal of a subscription contract is typically viewed as a positive sign of customer retention, unexpected charges and renewals can lead to frustration among consumers. This presents a significant issue for subscription companies, as they desire customers who willingly extend their contracts without causing dissatisfaction or annoyance.
When you use circuly to manage your subscriptions, you can easily solve this pain point by sending a reminder email to your customers before the end of their subscription. Additionally the circuly system enables you to automate the renewal of the subscription if the customer doesn't actively cancel.
In this article, we’ll explain the process of subscription renewal, reminder emails and the associated settings in detail.
An average person is subscribed to multiple products (avg. 5) at the same time. As the number of subscription services available continues to grow, it becomes challenging for individuals to keep tabs on all the services they have signed up for, along with their renewal dates and costs.
The extra tasks associated with subscription contracts are slowly becoming unappealing for consumers and can lead to issues like:
Luckily consumers still appreciate companies that take these pain points away.
Multiple subscription companies offer to send reminder emails when the subscription contract is about to end so that the customer can decide whether or not they would like to continue using the product and staying subscribed.
This benefit often proves to be extremely attractive for the customers and reduces the burden of subscribing. Additionally it makes the subscription company stand out among its competitors and other related services.
Typically every subscription contract has a start date and an end date that is assigned to it when a subscription is created. However subscription contracts can in theory always be extended beyond the minimum duration.
In circuly subscription contracts are extended if you make use of the auto-renew feature.
When a subscription is renewed the end date becomes fictitious meaning that as long as the auto-renew function is active, a subscription will have an end date but the end date will continue to change as the subscription continues to be extended.
With the auto-renew feature subscription contracts are automatically extended at the end of the subscription period. Your customers actively need to cancel their subscription if they would like to stop their subscription contract.
Automatically renewing a subscription has its pros and cons. The benefit is that if the customer wants to extend the subscription contract, they are not required to take any action and the process remains lean, requiring no effort from their side.
However, subscription fatigue can leave customers feeling annoyed when they see an unexpected renewal charge on their card.
In order to solve this problem you can set up a workflow with circuly that reminds your customer when their subscription is about to end and renews the subscription automatically if the customer doesn't express any interest in cancelling the subscription.
With circuly you can easily set up an automated process for sending a reminder email to your customers “x” days before the end of their subscription.
Email used: Subscription is almost over
Settings: Subscription is almost over when auto renew is off, days calculation before ending.
To access the settings > Go to the Settings tab > Emails > SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION.
Enabling the switch means that you would like to send the “subscription is almost over” email to the customer.
Then decide when you would like to send this email. If you would like to send the email 14 days before the end of the subscription, add 14 in the input field.
Here’s what will happen
When the subscription end date is approaching, the circuly system will trigger the subscription almost over email and send it to your customer 14 days (custom value in the Days calculation before ending input field) before the end date.
Conditions
The subscription is almost over email is triggered and sent to the customer ONLY IF the auto renew button switch in the subscription overview window is in a non-active state.
Active and non-active state of the auto renew button switch
The auto renew button is in a non-active state as long as the Auto-renew subscriptions setting is disabled. When the auto-renew setting is enabled the auto-renew button becomes active.
Important to note: The auto-renew button only becomes active for subscriptions that are created AFTER the auto-renew subscription setting was enabled.
Why is the auto-renew button not activated for all existing subscriptions?
The auto-renew button is only activated for subscriptions that are created AFTER the auto-renew subscription setting is enabled to prevent the scenario in which subscriptions that should be ended because the customers want to end the subscription, are renewed.
Note: Simply enabling the auto-renew button without enabling the Auto-renew subscription setting will not renew the subscription.
Summary
As explained above the subscription is almost over email serves as a reminder email that can be sent to the custom to inform them their their subscription is about to end.
However the email is skipped in a few cases, such as:
If you still wish to send a reminder email in situations where the subscription is almost over email is skipped, you can enable some settings available in the Settings tab. Given below are the available options:
In circuly there are two manual ways and one automated way to renew subscription contracts.
The manual way to renew a subscription is via the extend subscription duration functionality and the automated way to renew a subscription is via the auto-renew settings.
As you can imagine, the extend subscription duration function can only be performed on one subscription at a time while the auto-renew setting is for all subscriptions.
Learn more about renewing subscriptions in the article about subscription renewals.
Sending a reminder email before your subscription ends is a smart idea with some great benefits:
Even if they decide to cancel, it's actually a positive thing as it means you're not trapping them in the subscription. This makes them more likely to come back to you in the future or speak positively about your brand to others.
So, by using reminder emails, you make it easier for customers to stay engaged, increase their satisfaction, and build a positive reputation for your brand.
The circuly generated Order ID can be replaced with the Shopify Order ID. The reasons why you would want to do are given below:
As you already know, when an order is placed on your connected white-label circuly checkout, an order is created in the circuly Operations Backend and in your connected shopsystem. The order that is created in the circuly Operations Backend has an Order ID attached to it. The order ID is created by the circuly system. However, the order that is created in your Shopify shopsystem has an order name which may also be referred to as the order ID but has a different value than the order ID created in circuly.
The "order ID" is generated by circuly. Whereas the "order name" is the order ID generated by Shopify for every order that is being created.
The order ID generated by circuly is used as a variable in the email templates and displayed in the Self-Service Portal.
When should the order ID generated by circuly replaced by the order name from Shopify?
When you want to cross-reference, it is recommended to have the same value for the order ID. Additionally when you send additional emails to your customers, that are not provided by the circuly email templates, it can make sense to replace the circuly order ID with the Shopify order ID so that your customer doesn't get confused as a result of mismatching numbers.
To replace the circuly order ID with the Shopify order name > Edit all the emails that you typically send to your customers in the circuly email templates and replace the order_ID variable with the order name variable.
The order name is displayed in the following places:
1. Order confirmation email
2. Customer Self-Service Portal
When you go to Orders in the left navigation bar, the Order List is displayed. The Order List shows the order List Columns that can be customised to display only what you want to see. In the order List are also additional functionality, explained below:
Every time a customer places an order on your website and goes through the circuly checkout a new order is created and appears in the circuly operations backend. When that happens, you have to create a subscription for it in order to start collecting recurring payments.
When you create a subscription for an order, in the create subscription window, there is the subscription start date picker calendar (see the image below). If you’ve defined the Subscription Start Date in the setting, then every time you create a subscription the subscription start date will automatically be selected based on the custom value you define in the Subscription start date setting.
To define the Subscription start date custom value, go to Settings > Subscription > GENERAL > And enter a numeric value in the Subscription start date input field.
Now every time you create a new subscription, the subscription start date will be 1 + this value.
You can base this value on the shipping duration of your orders. If it takes 3 days to deliver an order to the customer, then your subscription start date should be 1 + 3.
Subscription plans can be added to existing products or you can start from scratch and create new products with subscription plans. The approach you take depends on whether or not you have an existing shop with existing products and if you want to keep your subscription business separated from your sales business.
A subscription plan is a term used to describe the agreement between the vendor and the customer, that covers the terms for usage of a product for an agreed upon price and an agreed upon duration.
Typically there are four important components in a subscription plan:
These four components together define and make up a subscription plan. A subscription plan usually consists of components that have a price implication but it also include components that do not have a price implication.
Important: When you get circuly on board to manage your subscriptions, subscription plans are always created in Shopify by using product variables and metafields and not in circuly. circuly is only connected to your shop system via API and can easily retrieve the necessary information about the product and subscription and process it accordingly.
This gives you more flexibility in creating, maintaining and editing your subscription plans as your business approach changes.
Here’s an example: Bugaboo Flex by Bugaboo
Bugaboo Flex is a subscription service by Dutch baby goods manufacturer, Bugaboo. Bugaboo uses Shopify to set up their subscription products, catalogue them and create subscription plan.
Given below are different components of their subscription plan.
As you can see the subscription plan varies as per the different components and these components vary from one business to another.
Therefore before setting up your subscription plan it is important to work out all the components that will have an impact on the price and also the components that will not have an impact on the price but are included to provide more customisation option to the customer.
There are two steps involved in setting up a subscription plan:
Adding products
Adding variants
Add variants if your product comes in more than one option such as size, colour, storage etc. Use variants to define the components of a subscription plan for the same product.
For example: You want to create a subscription plan for renting Macbook Pro which is available in two colours and in different subscription durations. One variant option will be colour, that is Silver or Black and another variant option will be subscription duration, that is, 1 month, 6 month, 12 month and 18 month subscription.
If the variant options have an impact on the price, add the price in the Variants fiel as shown in the image below.
Steps:
Here’s an example of how the variants look.
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Pro tip: give all the variants the same SKU so that the stock descreses as soon as an order is placed for all subscription durations
Metafields enable you to customise the functionality and appearance of your Shopify store by allowing you to save specialised information that isn't usually captured in the Shopify admin. You can use Metafields to display specialised information on your website/online store in a variety of ways. For a renntal/subscription business using metafields helps to define whether a product is a “rented” product or a “bought” product.
Once you’ve created a few products with its product variants continue to create a subscription plan using Metafields.
Steps:
Note: Creating metafields to define whether the product is a subscription product or a regular product, the subscription duration and the subscription period.
Bulk action
For bulk action, filter all variants and map them with the conditions mentioned above. You can filter them by Product ID, Product Name etc.
If you want to add more components to your subscription plan besides the one mentioned above, you can easily do so by using the Metafield Guru App. To set up additional fields such as a countdown, description, color etc, read this article.
Use case: when the product was not delivered to the customer in time but the subscription was already created and as a result you need to edit the subscription start date.
The subscription start date can either be manually selected while creating a subscription or the process of selecting a subscription start date can be fully automated. But this is only for order that do not have a subscription yet.
If a subscription has already been created for a rental order then the procedure to change the start date for the said subscription is different.
To change the start date of an existing subscription:
When you swap a product for an existing subscription you can specify the reason for the said action. The reasons will be displayed in the Replacement window when you process a product swap request.
Note: Only meant for internal use and internal communication.
Here’s how you can add reasons for swapping or replacing a product:
If your customers do not actively cancel their subscription from the Customer Self-Service Portal or write an email to you to cancel the subscription, you can decide to auto renew the subscription either manually or you can automate the process.
Typically your customers agree to a subscription duration when placing an order on your website. This duration is treated as the minimum subscription duration by the circuly system and also the entire subscription duration. When this duration is over there may be a number of possibilities such as subscription contract renewal, subscription cancellation and therefore product return, product buyout etc.
You can freely decide if you do not want the circuly system to auto renew a subscription at the end of the subscription period and want to extend the subscription contract manually based on individual use case.
Subscriptions can be manually renewed via the extend subscription functionality.
This function is specially handy when the customer tells you the exact duration for the extension of their subscription.
You can use the extend subscription functionality to increase the subscription duration. You do not need to do anything with the auto renew button or the auto renew settings.
Simply select the subscription that needs to be extended > Click on the three dots to display the menu options > Select the Extend subscription option from the menu options > In the Extend subscription window > Add the number of wants you want the subscription to extend by in the given input field.
When you use the extend subscription function to change the end date of a subscription, there is no impact of this action on the auto renew button in the subscription overview window.
If you do not want to manually take action for every subscription, you can also automate the process of subscription renewal.
Here you have a few settings options depending on what’s your goal.
Option 1: If you want to auto renew or extend the subscription by its original duration then turn on the switch for the Auto renew subscriptions setting. From now on subscriptions will be renewed by the original subscription duration. For example if it was a 12 months subscription then towards the end of the subscription period it will be extended for another 12 months.
Option 2: If you do not want to renew the subscription by its original subscription duration then you can define a custom value for the renewal. To do this > First go to the Auto renew subscriptions setting and turn on the switch > Next go to the Custom auto renew subscription setting and turn on the switch for this setting > Then add a numeric value in the Custom auto renew duration input field. From now on the subscription will be renewed by the value defined in this input field.
Important: Do not enable the switch for the Auto renew subscriptions setting if you want to renew subscriptions manually on an individual subscription level as every subscription will be renewed automatically at the end of the subscription period if you enable the auto-renew subscription setting.
When a subscription has been auto-renewed because of the auto-renew subscription setting, the auto-renew switch in the subscription overview window will be enabled. The button provides a visual reference to determine which subscription is renewed and which is not.
The Subscription settings contains settings that can be applied on a subscription or are related with a subscription operation.
Given below is an overview of all the available settings:
Default value in settings: 0 (Zero)
When you create a subscription for an order, in the Create Subscription window there are some default input fields, such as serial number and start date and there is also the option to add additional input fields such as driver licence, car number etc. (See image below)
These additional fields can be defined in the Subscription meta data setting.
Default value in settings: 5 (five)
The subscription start date setting allows you to automate the process of selecting a subscription start date when you are in the step of creating a subscription. The value you add here defines the start date for all subscriptions. Based on the value you add here, the subscription start date will always be today + this value.
Use case
Adding a value in the Subscription start date setting input field lets you automate the process of selecting a subscription start date so that you dont have to manually select a date every time you create a new subscription from an order.
The value you add here should ideally be based on the amount of time you need to deliver the product to your customer.
Default value in settings: disabled switch
Subscriptions usually have a start date in the future. But if you have orders with a subscription start date in the past, this setting allows the creation of subscriptions even if the date is in the past.
Default value in settings: disabled switch
Enabling the switch for the Unpaid subscription setting allows a circuly backend user to create a subscription even if the initial payment hasn't gone through or been collected yet.
Use case
When your customer goes through your checkout and places an order an initial payment is charged and an order is created in your shopsystem and in circuly. In the circuly Operations Backend you can then create a subscription for the order to start collected recurring payments.
Typically subscriptions cannot be created if the first initial payment fas failed. The reason why the first payment fails could be anything from insufficient card balance to some other problem with the payment method. When that happens you ideally don't want to create a subscription for an order until your customer has given you confirmation that the payment method is updated and can be charged again.
However if you do not collect any initial payment on the checkout and still want to allow a circuly backend user to create a subscription for such order, you can enable the switch for this setting.
Default value in settings: disabled switch
Enabling the switch for this setting allows you to automate the process of subscription creation when you mark an order as completed.
Use case
In the circuly Operations Backend there are multiple ways to create a subscription for a new order (manually, bulk update, list upload, marking as completed). One of the ways is to mark an order as completed (the MARK COMPLETED button in the Orders tab).
When you mark an order as completed, the status of the order changes from open to fulfilled. But you still need to create a subscription manually for the orders you mark as completed because marking an order as completed is only for internal use and to differentiate completed orders from open orders.
However if you want to automate the process of creating a subscription when an order is marked as completed, you can turn on the switch for Auto activate subscriptions.
After you turn on the switch for this setting, subscriptions will be automatically created when you mark an order as completed.
Dependent settings
The Auto activate offset setting is dependent on the Auto activate subscriptions settings and the two work together in combination.
Default value in settings: 0 (Zero)
When you use the Auto activate subscriptions settings to automatically create a subscription for orders that are marked as completed, the start date for these subscriptions is based on the value you add in the Auto activate offset setting input field. The subscription start date is always today + the value you insert in the Auto activate offset setting input field, unless the start date is selected during the checkout and is further in the future. In that case, this setting does not override the start date selected during the checkout process.
Use case
All subscriptions have a subscription start date. When you create a subscription in the regular way, you have the option of selecting a start date for the subscription in the Create subscription window. However if you do not want to select a subscription start date manually every time, you can define a value in the Subscription start date setting. Now every-time you create a subscription, the subscription start date is automatically selected based on this value.
However when you mark an order as completed (the MARK COMPLETED button in the Orders tab) and automate the process of creating a subscription by turning the switch for the Auto activate subscriptions setting, the start date of these subscription is not as per the subscription start date setting but instead the Auto activate offset setting.
Dependent settings
The Auto activate offset setting is dependent on the Auto activate subscriptions settings and the two work together in combination.
Default value in settings: disabled switch
If you turn on the switch for the Auto renew subscriptions setting then subscriptions are auto-renewed at the end of the subscription period.
The duration for the auto-renewed subscription is variable:
Dependent settings
Custom auto-renew subscription duration and Custom auto-renew duration.
Explanation
If you want to auto-renew the subscription by its original duration then do not turn the switch on for the Custom auto renew subscription duration setting and do not add a value in the Custom auto renew duration setting input field.
However if you want to auto-renew the subscription by a custom duration then turn on the switch for the Custom auto renew subscription duration setting and add a value in the Custom auto renew duration setting input field.
Default value in settings: disabled switch
The Custom auto-renew subscription duration setting allows you to renew a subscription by a custom duration instead of subscription’s original duration.
Use case
In some countries (like Germany), there are consumer laws that prevent companies from renewing subscription contracts for extended periods of time. However, as per the law, subscription contracts can be extended for an additional month until the customer requests a cancellation.
Dependent settings
The Custom auto-renew duration is dependent on the Custom auto-renew subscription duration. When you turn the switch on for Custom auto renew subscription duration, you also need to add a numeric value in the Custom auto renew duration setting input field and vice-versa.
Additionally, remember to turn on the switch for Auto renew subscriptions setting for Auto renew to work.
Default value in settings: 1 (One)
The custom auto renew duration setting allows you to define a custom value for the extension of the subscription duration.
Use case
When you want to auto renew subscriptions by a custom value and not by the original subscription duration, you can do so by turning on the switch for auto renew subscriptions and Custom auto renew subscription duration and then adding a numeric value in the input field for custom auto renew duration.
Default value in settings: no value
The Maximum Duration setting enables you to define the upper limit for a subscription renewal via the auto-renew feature.
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Default value in the settings: no value
The early cancellation period setting enables you to specify a duration within which the customer can cancel their subscriptions without any reason.
It is important to define this for two reasons:
Default value in the settings: disabled switch
The auto refund immediately cancelled subscriptions enables the circuly system to trigger a refund without any manual input from a circuly user for subscription cancellation requests made within the Early cancellation period.
Note: your customers have the right to cancel their subscriptions without giving any reason if the cancellation is made within the Early cancellation period. You can define the value for the Early cancellation period in the Settings or see the explanation above under Early Cancellation period.
When your customers make a cancellation request within the Early Cancellation Period, you are required to refund any payments already made. WIth the Auto refund immediately cancelled subscriptions, you can automate the process of doing a refund.
Default value in the settings: no value
The Notice period settings lets you define a custom value as notice period for cancellation of a subscription contract by the customers.
Example: The subscription of Mr. Weber is ending on the 31st of March and will be auto-renewed if Mr. Weber doesnt give any indication that he would like to cancel his subscription.
You have defined a notice period of 7 days meaning that if Mr. Weber decides to cancel his subscription he needs to do so 7 days before the end date of the subscription for the cancellation request to be valid.
Default value in settings: 14 (Fourteen)
The Return until period setting allows you to define the number of days within which your customer is supposed to return their subscription product. When a subscription gets a pending return status, the system automatically starts counting the number of days within which the customer should return the product.
If the customer does not return the product within the Return until period a few things happen:
Dependent settings
If you do not want to reactivate a subscription even if the customer has not returned the product within the Return until period, then you do not have to turn on the switch for Reactivate subscription and insert a value in the Reactivate subscription period (days) setting.
If you want to reactivate a subscription if your customer fails to return your products within the Return until period then turn on the switch for Reactivate subscription and insert a value in the Reactivate subscription period (days) setting.
Default value in settings: disabled switch
The Reactivate subscription setting allows you to automatically reactivate subscriptions with the “pending return” status if they are not returned to you until the Return until period.
Subscriptions are reactivated after x days. You can define a value for x in the Reactivate subscription period (days) setting input field.
Use case
Subscriptions go into pending return for reasons such as cancellation, swap, subscription duration end etc. In all these cases, you expect the product to be returned to you. If your customer does not return the product until a specific time period, you want to reactivate the subscription and continue charging the customer for their subscription.
To do so, you can turn the switch for Reactivate subscription, then add a value in the Return until period setting and also in the Reactivate subscription period (days) setting.
The Reactivate subscription setting switch reactivates the subscription when turned on, after x days if the product hasn't been returned until the value defined in the Return until period setting.
Dependent settings
The Reactivate subscription setting works together with the Reactivate subscription period (days) and the Return until period.
Default value in settings: 7 (Seven)
The Reactivate subscription period (days) settings allows you define the number of days after which a subscription is reactivated if it hasnt been returned until the Return until period.
Dependent settings
The Reactivate subscription period (days) setting works together with the Reactivate subscription and the Return until period setting.
Default value in settings: Empty list
In your customer self-service portal your customers have the option to cancel their subscriptions. You can additionally add a list of cancellation reasons and make it available in the customer self-service portal, so that your customers can select a cancellation reason when cancelling their subscriptions.
Your customer ordered the wrong product or you sent the wrong item to your customer.
Here’s what you can do about it:
Subscription status: Active
If there is an active subscription attached to an order and the product has already been sent then you can simply initiate a product swap to replace the wrong product with a right one.
Initiating a product swap creates a new order and sets the status of the subscription with the wrong product as pending replacement (same functionality as pending return) to trigger the return workflow for the replacement product.
If the product has already been sent then besides replacing the product you should also aim at getting the wrong product back.
NOTE: In the circuly system the return process is triggered when a subscription has the pending return or pending replacement status.
If you cancel the order or mark the subscription status as pending return manually before swapping/replacing the product, then the swap option is no longer available as only subscriptions with active status can be swapped/replaced.
Since you ideally want to exchange the wrong product with the right one and keep the subscription as is, you can simply initiate the swap process.
Step 1: Cancel the existing subscription
If the subscription hasn't started yet and the product has already been sent, then you should still aim at getting the wrong product back.
But since there is no active subscription, the swap/replacement option is also unavailable. The best thing to do in this case is to start the subscription and then initiate the swap process.
Initiating the swap process will create a new order automatically and set the status of the subscription with the wrong product as pending return to trigger the return workflow.
The product has not been sent and the subscription has not been started then the first thing to do is to stop the shipment of the product. You can ideally do that with your shipping tool. Once you’ve stopped the wrong product from being shipped, you still need to change and update the product attached to the order for tracking reasons.
Before you change the product you need to first figure out whether it was a wrong product (different SKU) or wrong variant of the product (SKU and serial number).
Note: How you categorise and catalogue your product varies from one company to another. Once you know what is wrong with the product you can either Edit the Order Item or Replace the serial number.
Editing the order item allows you to change the product, the SKU, and things like duration, frequency, price and subscription date.
Important: In order to allow editing of order item you need to enable the associated setting in the Settings tab.
To enable the setting go to the Settings tab in the your circuly operations backend > Go to Orders > ORDER > And enable the switch for Allow order item editing setting.
For replacing the serial number, you need to start the subscription. When you are in the process of creating a subscription you get the option of adding a serial number. Make sure you enter the correct serial number and that the product with the same serial number is being shipped to the customer.
In today's highly competitive online marketplace, shipping is one of the key factors that can set a business apart and drive sales, making it a critical component of any successful ecommerce strategy.
With circuly you can do multiple things when it comes to providing shipping options to your customers in the checkout.
See how the Shipping options are displayed on the checkout page.
Step 1: Locate the Shipping settings
Step 2: Set up the Shipping Methods
Step 3: Set up the Shipping countries
Step 4: Connect the Shipping method to the Shipping countries
To access the Shipping method feature > In your circuly Operations Backend go to the Settings tab > navigate to Shipping in the settings menu.
Define the different shipping options (such as DHL, DPD, Postal Service, International Delivery etc.) and customise them based on the various shipping logics (such as free delivery, postal code restrictions, product collection validation etc.)
In the Shipping Methods section you can define the following:
To begin the setup process > Under Shipping Methods > Click on the plus “+” icon to display the setup options.
1. Title and tag - the title and tag input field are only for internal use to differentiate between the different shipping methods.
Use case: You offer shipping in Netherlands and Germany via DHL and the associated costs are 7,99€ and 4,99€ respectively.
Create two separate shipping methods and add the title and tag as DHL Germany and DHL Netherlands to differentiate between the two when selecting the shipping method under shipping country.
When you are adding the shipping countries and connecting them to the shipping methods, having the name of the country makes it easier to pick the right shipping method.
From here on we’ll explain the remaining options in the Create Shipping Window by highlighting some of the most popular use cases for shipping.
If you offer both subscription-based and one-off purchase based products, one of the most common shipping option is to offer free shipping if their is even one subscription-based product in the cart.
Example: If there are rental products in the cart, shipping cost is 0€. If there are one-off purchase products in the cart, shipping cost is 10€
To make this available in the checkout > Add 10€ in the Fixed shipping cost input field and toggle on the switch for Free Shipping for rental products.
When you toggle the switch for free shipping for rental products and add a value in the Fixed shipping cost input field, the circuly system will do the following:
Only rental products in the cart = no shipping cost
Rental + Purchase products in the cart = no shipping cost
Only purchase products in the cart = charge shipping cost as per value in the Fixed shipping cart input field.
Another popular use case is to make the shipping cost dependant on the total cart value. You can define a range that qualifies for free shipping and a range that does not qualify for free shipping.
Example: Free shipping if the cart value is over 50€. And charge shipping costs of 5.99€ if the cart value is below 50€.
To make this available in the checkout > Toggle on the switch for Shipping costs based on cart value > Type 0 in the Cart value start range input field and type 49.99 in the Cart value end range input field > Type the cost, that is 5.99 in the Shipping price for cart value range input field > And click on the plus icon.
Next, Add the free cart range by typing 50 in the Cart value start range input field and typing a random high number (10000002) in the Cart value end range input field > Type the cost as 0 > And click on the plus icon.
If none of the above two options are met then the system will use the value under Shipping costs.
Note: You can define upto 5 price ranges.
The third common shipping option is to make the shipping costs dependent on the products in the cart. This option is useful specially when you have products that cost extra for shipping and products that can be delivered with your standard delivery options.
Prerequisite: Create the required product collections. Learn more about creating a product collection.
Example: You offer free shipping for products that are under 15kg and charge 89€ for shipping products that are over 15kg and are considered bulky.
Here’s what you need to do to display the right shipping method in the checkout depending on what products are in the cart.
One: Create a shipping method for ALL product collections including bulky goods. The checkout page will display this shipping method if there is even 1 bulky product in the cart and therefore a higher shipping price will be charged. This shipping option will also be displayed in combination with the standard shipping option of there are ONLY non-bulky products in the cart. In that case the customer can simply select the cheaper option.
Two: Create a shipping method for all product collections and EXCLUDE bulky goods from it .The checkout page will display this shipping method if there are no bulky items in the cart.
Creating two shipping methods is important for a scenario in which there are BOTH bulky and normal goods in the cart. In this scenario the shipping method for bulky goods will be available on the checkout since there is a bulky good in the cart.
Here are the steps:
Step 1: create the required product collection.
Create a separate product collection for bulky goods.
Step 2: Assign products to these product collections
Step 3a: create a shipping method for all product collection including bulky goods. Simply check the box for all product collections while creating the shipping method.
Type 89 (the desired value of the shipping costs) in the Fixed shipping cost input field.
Step 3b: create a shipping method for all product collections and EXCLUDE bulky goods from that shipping method.
Note: You can exclude a product collection by selecting the “only for selected product collection” option and not including the Bulky goods from the product collection options.
Here’s how the shipping methods will be displayed on the checkout:
Normal goods + Bulky goods > Bulky goods shipping
Normal goods > Standard shipping and Bulky goods Shipping (the customer can then choose the standard or more cheaper shipping option)
Bulky goods > Bulky goods shipping.
Another possibility it to make the shipping costs dependent on postal codes.
Example: Higher shipping costs for difficult to reach locations such as islands or postal codes outside the city.
Step 1: create a shipping method of the difficult to reach locations, for example Island.
Step 2: Toggle on the switch for Enable postal code restrictions.
Select a country under the Country dropdown menu, the postal code that should be more expensive in the Postal code input field and click on the INCLUDE button.
Step 3: Restricting the other shipping method(s)
Exclude the same postal code (the one you included in the Island shipping method) from the other shipping methods so that the shipping costs are rightly calculated on the checkout page.
Language & translations - Under language and translation you have the following options:
Language - add a language clicking on the plus icon.
Title and Description - Write a title and Description (optional) for the shipping method in the translated version. The text that you write here will be displayed to your customer on the checkout.
Tip: You can use the description to inform your customers about how much more they need in their cart to qualify for free shipping.
Connect the shipping method to a particular country to make it available when the country is selected in the checkout.
You have to create both, Shipping Methods and Shipping Countries, and connect the Shipping Methods to the Shipping Countries.
Connecting the Shipping Method to the Shipping Countries is important because you may or may not offer a particular shipping method for a specific country. Therefore, the option to select a said shipping method for the said country should or should not be available on the checkout
Once you’ve set up the Shipping Methods you can assign and link the Shipping Methods to the different countries where you are operational.
Note: When you are setting up the Shipping Methods and Shipping countries you can add as many shipping countries as you want but they will be available on your checkout only when you add them to your list of Delivery countries in the Checkout settings.
Here’s how you can access the Delivery countries setting > In Settings > Go to Checkout > Scroll down to DELIVERY > Click on the arrow icon to expand the settings > Enable the switch for Limit delivery countries > Select all the countries you want to make available on your checkout from the Delivery countries dropdown menu.
Learn more about how the shipping methods are displayed on the checkout page.
A chargeback is a term used to describe a customers request to reverse a payment by disrupting the charge on their account statement. Chargebacks were introduced to offer customers an easy way to dispute suspicious transactions and to protect them against financial fraud.
A chargeback need not always be due to fraudulent activities but can also be due to simple processing errors such as charging the customer twice or sending a damaged product.
A customer can file a chargeback with their bank. Once approved, the customer receives the amount back. But merchant have the option of disagreeing with the chargeback and claiming it back.
Chargebacks and refunds both involve the return of funds but a major differentiating factor between the two is that for refunds the customer directly gets in touch with the merchant while for a chargeback they contact their bank. The process also tends to be longer for chargebacks and the fees are often significantly higher.
Chargebacks often come with additional fees which are to be paid by the merchant. Banks and card providers also tend to penalize the merchant if the chargeback ratio becomes too high.
Background
Your customers typically receives an Order Confirmation email when they go through your checkout page and place an order. Additionally they receive a payment confirmation email when the initial payment is successfully charged and subsequent payment confirmation emails when the recurring payment is charged.
It can happen that the customer receiving the email does not authorize the payment and wants to requests a chargeback.
They click on the Payment Service Provider (PSP) link in the email to request a chargeback for the payment. The PSP conducts the chargeback and the customer receives the money back.
Chargebacks in the circuly operations backend
To see the chargeback > Go to the Payments Tab > You’ll see a list of all the payments > Use the filter function to only display payments with the chargeback status. Here’s how you can use the filter function:
Go to the Subscriptions tab and select a subscription from the Subscription List > In the Subscription Overview Window scroll down to Payments and Recurring Payments.
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Follow up with your customer manually to find out why they have initiated a chargeback. Depending on the outcome of the call you can either agree to the chargeback or charge the customer a one-time payment if the chargeback was mistakenly reported.
Failure is sending a transactional email and delivery of an email to the customers inbox are two separate issues. If there has been a failure in sending the email from the circuly operations backend, you can manually try to send the email to the customer and check if everything is working on that front.
However most commonly the issue is with the delivery of the email to the inbox of the customer. Given below are some of the most common reasons why an email was not delivered to your customer’s inbox.
Start by checking whether the email was sent or not. To do that, you have two options:
Option 1: Go to the Email History Tab in the left navigation bar > In the Search bar, type the email of the customer you suspect that the email was not sent to > Check if the email was sent out.
Option 2: Go to the Customers Tab in the left navigation bar > Select the customer from the Customer List > In the Customer Profile click on the History tab (see image) > In the History tab you’ll find an overview all actions, operations and emails associated to the customer profile > Look for the email under question and check the status of the email > If the status says success then the email was sent out. If it doesnt say success or if you can’t find the email there, either try Option 1 or continue reading below.
Note: If the mail was successfully sent, there may be other reasons why the mail could not be delivered to your customer:
Note: Since it is a matter related to your mail provider, it is outside of circuly scope.
If none of the above mentioned applies to you, then feel free to send us a service desk ticket.
You can customise the checkout page by adding custom input field to it. Custom fields can be used to collect additional information from your customer besides payment, address and contact details.
Possible custom field option in the circuly Operations Backend include:
Custom fields are hardcoded into your checkout. If you want to add custom fields to your checkout, get in touch with your customer success team by raising a ticket.
All data from custom fields can be accessed from the Orders tab.
In your circuly Operations Backend > Go to Orders > Select an Order from the Order List > Scroll down to DETAILS > You’ll find all your custom fields in this section.
Examples of custom fields:
Use case: The date picker can be used if you want to offer your customers the possibility to select a delivery/pickup date for their subscription product when they are on your checkout page and finalising their order.
The date picker feature can be used to display a calendar in checkout. You can use the calendar for either a delivery or a pick up logic for the product or both.
In order to access the date picker settings go to Settings > Checkout > DELIVERY DATE > Click on the down arrow to expand the options > Enable the switch for Allow selecting delivery date.
Once you enable the switch the option to set up the date picker will be displayed. Click on the down arrow to see the options.
Given below is an explanation of the options available:
In the image below you can see that the text "please be aware of our opening.....". This is how the input in the Custom note settings is displayed.
See the image reference below to see how the time slots are displayed when the timeslot duration is 2 hours.
The Customer Self-Service Portal enables your customers to perform a number of actions on their own with regard to their subscription such as cancelling subscriptions, downloading invoices, changing personal information etc. Additionally, your customers have the possibility to stay in touch with you via the Customer Self-Service Portal and report issues.
Learn more about how your customers can report issues from the Customer Self-Service Portal.
In this article you’ll learn how you can access the reported issue.
Issue reported from the Customer Self Service Portal by your customer are sent to an email address of your choice. You can define this email in your Settings.
There are two email settings available in the settings:
The customer care email address is the email that receives notifications from the circuly system for various operations such as cancellation requests made by the customer.
This email address is used by the circuly system to inform a circuly user.
To access the setting > Go to Settings > Company Settings > BASE SETUP > Customer care email address > Add an email address in the given input field.
The support email address is displayed in the Self-Service Portal and can be used by the customer to get in touch with you.
The option to display a support email address is optional and can be skipped. However we recommend adding a support email address as doing so gives the impression to the customer that you are reachable and that increases the customers trust in your product.
If your customer uses the email to make a cancellation request then there are no automated steps or operations followed.
To update or add an email address go to your circuly Operations Backend > Settings > Customer login > GENERAL > Support email address > Type an email address in the input field.
When your customers want to report an issue from the Customer Self-Service Portal they can use this email address. Refer to the image below to see how the email is displayed.
Note: You can only add one email address in this input field.
We also recommend adding a BCC list to get copies of all emails sent from the circuly Operations Backend.
To add a BCC list > Go to Settings > Email > GENERAL > BCC list > Click on the plus icon “+” to add an email > Repeat the step if you want to add more email addresses.
Here’s how the shipping options are displayed on the checkout page.
Learn more about setting up shipping methods.
When your customers add their details on the checkout page, under "Country", your customer selects the country where the order will be shipped. When they select a country, the options under "Choose a shipping method" change based on their selection in the "Country" dropdown menu. (See example image below)
If your checkout page is available in different languages, then the information about the shipping method is also displayed in the language selected by the customer for the checkout page.
Note: If it is possible for your customer to select different languages on the checkout page then while setting up the Shipping Methods make sure that you set up the shipping methods in all the languages you offer. This means that the title and the description of the Shipping method needs to be translated and set up in the different languages.
Note: When you set up and create shipping methods, there is the option to add languages and transitions. Whatever you type in these two fields will be displayed on the checkout page to your customer.
Make sure that you add the correct translations under the selected language.
Product collections enables you to group products together and have common functions, actions, logics and rules for these group aka collection instead of having a separate rule for each product.
By default all products are mapped to the default collection.The default collection can therefore not be deleted. You can add more collections (for example for bulky goods, special goods, service goods etc.) and map the products to these collections to create a product collection.
All the new collections will be displayed under this column and you’ll be able to set up tax logics and shipping logic the collections.
By default all products are mapped to the default collection. If you have more categories then the first step is to set up the product collections. To set up the product collection click on the + PRODUCT COLLECTION button > In the Create product collection window give a title and a description to your collection so that you can differentiate it from other collections > Once you’ve given your collection a title and a description click on the CREATE button.
You’ll see a new collection category and with it another row of tax percentages for your default and delivery country.
By default all products are mapped to the default collection. You can change that by going to the products section under the Products tab.
If you are unable to create a subscription for an order or process open orders the most likely cause is an issue with your settings.
If you’ve enabled the Delay charge in checkout setting you also need to enable the Allow unpaid subscriptions setting.
Explanation of the two settings:
Delay charge in checkout - the delay charge in checkout setting enables you to accept orders without charging the initial payment, that is, the initial payment is delayed and can be charged manually at a later point in time.
Learn more about delayed charge in checkout.
Allow unpaid subscriptions - typically you can only create a subscription for orders for which the initial payment has been charged. However if you work with the Delay charge in checkout setting, you can enable the Allow unpaid subscription setting if you would like to not only accept unpaid orders but also create subscriptions for these orders and charge the initial amount manually at a later point.
To enable this setting go to Settings > Subscriptions > CREATE SUBSCRIPTIONS > Enable the switch for Allow unpaid subscriptions.
Downloading invoices in the Customer Self-Service Portal
Your customers can download their invoices from the Customer Self-Service Portal thus eliminating the need for them to get in touch with your customer support.
To enable your customers to download their invoices make sure that you have the right setting enabled.
Go to Settings > Customer login > FEATURES > Make sure that the Hide invoice download switch is disabled.
When enabled the icon to download the invoices is not available in the Self-Service Portal.
Educate your customers on how they can download invoices from their Self-Service Portal by writing an article on including a FAQ section on your website.
Here’s how the process looks for your customers:
Note: Only invoices that have been settled can be downloaded. Upcoming invoices are not displayed in the Customer Self-Service Portal.
One time payment is a feature available in the circuly operations backend that you can use, as the name suggests, to charge non-recurring, one-time payments to your customers payment method.
The reason why you need to charge a one-time payment can be anything from product buyout to product repair charges.
Read more about how to charge a one-time payment.
Checkout and Self-Service Portal
The checkout and the self-service portal can be displayed in the following languages. The translations for the languages mentioned below are provided by circuly.
Email Templates
The email templates are also supported in all the languages mentioned above. However the translations of the email templates are only available in English and need to be translated for all other languages.
In the Settings tab of the circuly Operations Backend you can select the language you would like to provide to your customers to choose from on the checkout page and in their self-service portal.
The associated setting is “Allowed languages” and can be accessed by going to Settings > Company settings > LOCALE > Allowed languages.
Allowed languages are the languages that you pick from the dropdown menu in the Allowed language settings to make available to your customers in the Self-Service Portal and the checkout.
Note: When you select an allowed language, a language column is add to the Email Templates tab.
This is because selecting a language from the dropdown menu of Allowed Language setting indicates to the circuly system that you would also like to send email communication to the customer in the selected languages.
Note: When a language column is added to the Email Templates tab, the associated email is not automatically set up. If you wish to send emails in a different language, please set up the emails templates.
When you select a language from the dropdown menu of allowed language, the language option is also available under the cancellation reasons settings.
When a prospect lands on your webshop, proceeds to the checkout page and switches the language from the list of Allowed languages, the language preferences of the prospect are saved as preferred language in the circuly operations backend.
The circuly system uses this information to send any form of communication to the prospect such as emails, invoices etc.
We also recommend defining a default language.
The default language is the language used by the circuly operations backend to send any form of communication to your customer such as emails, invoices etc in case information about the preferred language of the customer is missing or if an email template for the preferred language is not set up.
Therefore it is the language the circuly system uses as a fallback language in case the information about the preferred language is missing.
To set up the Default language > Go to Settings > Company settings > LOCALE > Default language.
Note: You can only have one default language.
Example: You have three language options available on your webshop; English, German, and Dutch. A prospect lands on your webshop and proceeds to the checkout page in Dutch. The preferred language of this customer is saved as Dutch in the circuly operations backend. If you have email templates set up in Dutch then the circuly operations backend will use Dutch as the language of communication with your customer. If you do not have email templates set up in Dutch then the circuly operations backend will use the default language and the email templates set up in the default language.
As you can see, setting up a default language is important to avoid any communication gaps and operation hassles.
Tip: If you do not see your desired language under the Default language dropdown menu, make sure that the language is selected under the Allowed language dropdown menu.
Preferred language is the language used by the customer as the browser language or the language selected by the customer from the list of allowed language when they are on the checkout page or in their self-service portal.
When a customer switches between languages, the circuly system saves the information about the language as the preferred language of the customer and uses this information to send email communication to the customer.
What language will be shown to the customer when they access the checkout for the first time t?
The language shown in the checkout is based on the browser preference. Hence if your browser preference is English but your default language is German, the checkout would still be shown in English and the email communication will also be in English.
What triggers the email to be sent in a different language?
If the customer changes the language after checkout in the self-service portal, the preferred language of the customer changes and as a result the language in which the emails are sent also changes.
In what language will the email be sent if I trigger the email manually again from the circuly backend?
The email will be always sent out in the saved preferred language that the customer selected.
In your circuly Operations Backend you can specify an email address that will get notified by the circuly system when certain events happens.
The circuly system sends an email to this email address for the following events:
To access the setting > Go to Settings > Company Settings > BASE SETUP > Customer care email address.
Given below are examples of the email notification that a circuly user receives.
1. Unreturned product notification
2. Failed payment notification
3. Issues reported from the self-service portal
4. Subscription cancellation request from the self-service portal
5. Chargeback notification
