Create a Subscription
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.
Creating a subscription: Manually vs Automated Process
When to manually create a subscription:
- If you just started with circuly and want understand and familiarise yourself with the processes first while being completely flexible and having full control.
- If you want to start the subscription with delivery, but your delivery is dependent on various factors (retailer store, shipping providers, pick up from customer) and cannot be standardised.
When to set up an automated process:
- When you have scaled and the manual processes become too time consuming.
- When your processes are meanwhile clear and you have learned what is the best way to tackle your delivery and subscription creation process
- When you want to improve efficiency and reduce resources needed for your subscription processes
Create a Subscription
There are multiple ways to create a subscription in the circuly operations backend. You can create a subscription from the following:
- Orders Tab.
- Customer Tab
- Bulk create subscriptions
- Bulk upload subscriptions
1. To create a subscription for an order in the circuly backend, from the Orders tab, follow the following steps:
- Login to your circuly backend with your login credentials and go to Orders.
- In the Order List locate the order you want to create a subscription for and click on it.
- In the detailed order window scroll down to Product List and click on CREATE SUBSCRIPTION
- In the Create Subscription window start by assigning a serial number to the product. Either select a serial number for the product from GENERATE or enter it manually in the "Enter serial number" input field.
- Once you’ve inserted the serial number you can move on to selecting a Start Date for the subscription.
- Select the Start Date in the same window and click on CREATE SUBSCRIPTION.
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.
- A subscription has been successfully created for the rental order.
- Once the order has been shipped out by your warehouse, mark the order as completed by clicking on the three dots (as shown in the image below).
- Once the subscription has been marked as fulfilled, the status of the order changes from Open to Fulfilled.
What happens next?
- The "Subscription activated" email is sent to the customer from the Email Templates.
- The order is displayed in the Subscription List under the Subscription tab because the order now has an active subscription attached to it.
2. To create a subscription for an order in the circuly backend, from the Customers tab, follow the following steps:
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 your circuly operations backend, go to the Customers tab > Select a customer from the Customer List and click on it.
- Click on the button that says PROCESS OPEN ORDERS.
- In the displayed window, create a subscription how you normally would, that is by entering/selecting/generating a serial number, filling in the additional details and selecting a subscription start date.
- The subscription has been successfully created.
- Once the order has been shipped out by your warehouse, mark the order as completed by clicking on the three dots (as shown in the image below).
- In the "Mark this order as completed" window confirm your actions by clicking on the MARK AS COMPLETED button.
- Once the subscription has been marked as completed, the status of the order changes from Open to fulfilled. You can see the change under Status in the same Customer Overview window under ORDERS.
What happens next?
- The "Subscription activated" email is sent to the customer from the Email Templates.
- The order is displayed in the Subscription List under the Subscription tab because the order now has an active subscription attached to it.
3. Bulk create subscriptions
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.
4. Bulk upload 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.
5. Create subscriptions via the circuly API
You can use the circuly API to create subscriptions. Follow the link to the circuly Customer API documentation.
Additional Features Explained
Generate
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.
Start Date
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.
Automation via API
You can also set up an automated process for craeting a subscription by using circuly's API. Refer to this API documentation.