Introduction

In a rental or subscription model, customers may eventually want to keep the product they’ve grown to love. Whether it’s at the end of their subscription period or somewhere in between, circuly gives you the flexibility to manage buyouts efficiently—without disrupting your operations.

This article explains how to initiate and manage product buyouts from the circuly Hub, especially when you want to offer custom prices. It also covers what changes take place in the subscription and what happens after the buyout is processed.

Feature Overview

There are two ways to initiate a product buyout in circuly:

1. From the Customer Self-Service Portal
   Once enabled, customers can initiate a buyout themselves. The process is fully automated.
2. From the circuly Hub
   You (or a circuly user) initiate the buyout manually—ideal when offering custom pricing for specific cases without affecting other product prices or if you do not offer buyouts for product as a default option but accomodate it on special request.

The difference between the two options:

The key difference between the two buyout methods lies in how much control you want over pricing.

• If you want to offer a custom price for a specific customer—without changing the default price for all products of that type—the best option is to manually initiate the buyout from the circuly Hub. Learn more here.
• If you're using standard pricing and don’t need to set individual buyout prices, the Customer Self-Service Portal is the more convenient choice, allowing customers to handle the process on their own.

What a product buyout changes in the subscription:

When a product buyout is initiated, several things happen in the background to update the subscription and inventory status:

• Outstanding amount is charged (if applicable)
  The system calculates and charges any remaining amount based on:
  Buyout price – total already paid = amount due
• The product is marked as "Bought Out"
  This tells the system that the product is no longer expected to be returned.
• Inventory is updated
  The product is removed from your shop system’s available stock, reflecting that it’s been purchased by the customer.

Why you should always use the buyout process (not just cancel the subscription)

In circuly, products are expected to be returned at the end of the subscription period. If a product isn’t returned by the “Return until” date, the system automatically reactivates the subscription and resumes charging the customer for the unreturned product.

However, when a product is purchased through a buyout, no return is expected. That’s why it’s important to formally initiate the buyout process—so Circuly can:

• Properly mark the product as "bought"
• Prevent the return workflow from triggering
• Ensure the subscription doesn’t reactivate unnecessarily

Skipping this step could cause confusion for your operations team and frustration for your customers.

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If you wish to enable your customers to request buyouts on their own from their customer portal follow this guide on Enable And Process Buyout/Purchase of Subscription Products.

For information of how to deal with buyouts from the circuly Hub, continue reading this article.

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Step-by-step guide

• Step 1: Check the retail price
• Step 2: Initiate the buyout

Step 1: Check the retail price

Before initiating a buyout, make sure the retail price of the product is correct:

• Go to the Products tab in the circuly Hub.
• Locate the product and verify the retail price.
• If needed, edit the price to ensure the correct amount will be charged during the buyout.

Step 2: Initiate the buyout

• Navigate to the Subscriptions tab in the circuly Hub.
• Find the subscription from the list > Click on the three dots to see the subscription action menu.
• Choose buyout subscription from the dropdown menu.
• In the Buyout Overview window:
  • Review the Buyout Price (adjust if needed).
  • Add a message in the Invoice Line Item Text field—this will appear in the invoice email sent to the customer.
  • Click Buyout to confirm the transaction.

Make sure the email template you use includes the {{description}} variable so the custom message appears correctly in the customer communication.

What happens next

• The status of the asset is marked as bought out. Assets with bought out status do not trigger the return workflow because they are not expected to come back (no further action is required from your side).
• Recurring payments are stopped so that the customer is not charged additionally for the bought out subscription.
• The customer receives the "Buyout Order Confirmation" email first from the email templates to confirm the subscription buyout.
• After the "Buyout Order Confirmation" email is sent, a one time transaction is triggered with the amount in the Buyout Price input field. The amount is charged immediately using the customer's stored payment method.
• Once the payment is successfully charged, an invoice is generated for the one time payment (the email template "One time transaction" is used to generate an invoice) and sent to the customers (the email template "Payment was successful" is used to send the invoice to the customer that the payment was successful)

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Additional things to note

Buyout payment 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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Learn more about the buyout process.