Introduction

In a subscription-based business model, customers don’t just purchase products—they use them for a defined period, often with the option to return, upgrade, or replace them. That’s where product swapping comes in.

Swapping allows customers to exchange one product for another during their subscription term. This can be due to breakage, loss, dissatisfaction, or a change in needs—like upgrading to a newer model or switching to a more suitable product. It's a critical feature in making a subscription model work smoothly, especially for physical products that require flexibility and long-term use.

To support this, circuly provides a swap feature within the circuly Hub and the Self-Service Portal. With the right configuration, businesses can streamline how swaps are handled—ensuring a smooth experience for both customers and operations teams while preventing misuse and managing logistics efficiently.

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Feature overview

circuly supports product swaps through two main channels:

• circuly Hub (Operations Backend): Swaps can be manually initiated and processed by your internal team.
• Self-Service Portal: Customers can initiate a swap themselves using the “Change Product” option.

Both methods integrate into your subscription flow and trigger a series of backend processes depending on how the swap settings are configured.

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Settings overview

Here’s a breakdown of the key swap-related settings in the circuly Hub:

• Maximum number of swaps per original order
  Set a limit on how many times a single order can be swapped. This helps prevent abuse or suspicious activity by stopping additional swaps once the limit is reached.
• Delay swapped order
  Instead of immediately creating a new active order after a swap request, enabling this setting creates a draft order. This ensures you can receive the original product before shipping a replacement—helping reduce fraud.
• Prevent swap if customer has failed payments
  Automatically blocks swap requests from customers with unpaid or failed payments and also prevents a user from processing a swap if a customer has failed payments, helping reduce risk.
• Swap reasons
  Add customisable reasons for swapping, which are then displayed to a circuly user when processing a swap.
• Tag after swap
  Add a label (e.g. "replacement" or "swap") to orders processed as swaps, making it easier to differentiate them from regular orders.
• Extend subscription on return
  Automatically extend the subscription end date by 7 days to account for the delivery time of the replacement product—especially useful if the customer is close to the end of their subscription.

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Setup guide

To configure the swap settings, navigate to the Settings tab in your circuly Hub. Under the settings menu click on Swapping and configure the settings you need.

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Learn more about exchanging and swapping products.