Subscription shipping profile

Outline:

• Overview
• What is Subscription Shipping?
• How do I set up a Subscription Free Shipping profile?
  • How do I see the profile in Shopify?
  • How do I update my subscription shipping profile?
  • How do I Resync Shipping Prices?
  • How do I delete the profile?
• Checkout Shipping Rates
• FAQs

Overview 

You can set up a subscription shipping profile to allow your subscriptions to receive free shipping or use your existing profile.

What is Subscription shipping?

Similar to one-time purchases, any subscription orders that go through your store will have a shipping rate associated to it. This is determined by using the shipping profiles created within your Shopify admin.

When setting up your Skio account, you can decide if you want to use an existing shipping profile, such as your General Profile, to determine how much to charge that customer for shipping for their subscription. Or, you can create an entirely new shipping profile just for the subscription versions of your products. Within Skio, we call this the "Subscription Free Shipping" profile. This can be a great option if you want to provide free shipping for all of your subscriptions.

How do I set up a Subscription Free Shipping profile?

1. Go to your Skio Dashboard
2. Click on Account > Settings on the left-hand menu
3. Click on Shipping in the top bar

1. You can choose an existing profile to base your subscription shipping profile based on. This will copy over any shipping zones that you've already set up, and exclude any areas where you do not ship.
2. If this is your first time creating a subscription shipping profile, you'll want to change the drop down on the right to Create new profile. If you ever want to update the profile, you'd select Use existing profile. More on why you'd want to update below.
3. Click Apply button to use the existing or new profile you've chosen. Once it's made, you'll now see the Subscription Free Shipping profile listed under Available profiles.

How do I see the profile in Shopify?

1. Go to your Skio Dashboard
2. Click on Account > Settings on the left-hand menu
3. Click on Shipping in the top bar
4. Click See profile in Shopify admin. This will open up a new tab in your Shopify admin with the shipping profile displayed.

   

How do I update my subscription shipping profile?

If you've added new products into Skio to provide subscriptions on them, you'll want to re-sync your subscription shipping profile to make sure they are added in. Please note, if you've customized the rates, you'll need to redo this after re-syncing.

1. Go to your Skio Dashboard
2. Click on Account > Settings on the left-hand menu
3. Click on Shipping in the top bar
4. Select Subscription Free Shipping in the dropdown on the left. If you've renamed your subscription shipping profile in Shopify, it may appear with a different name, so keep that in mind.
5. Change the drop-down on the right to Update existing profile.
6. Click Apply. The re-sync will completed shortly and will add in any new products.
   

How do I Resync Shipping Prices?

Resyncing shipping prices is necessary to make any changes you have made take effect on existing subscriptions right now. It is highly recommended that you resync shipping prices after making changes to your shipping settings. The resync may take a while if you have a larger number of subscriptions.

1. Go to your Skio Dashboard
2. Click on Account > Settings on the left-hand menu
3. Click on Shipping in the top bar
4. Click on Resync button present in the "Resync Shipping Prices" section
   
   

How do I delete the profile?

1. Go to your Skio Dashboard
2. Click on Account > Settings on the left-hand menu
3. Click on Shipping in the top bar
4. Click See profile in Shopify admin
5. In the new page that opened in your Shopify admin, scroll down to the bottom of the profile, click Delete profile

   

Checkout Shipping Rates

Shopify has updated how shipping rates show in checkout and on the initial subscription order. On the initial subscription order (in the Shopify checkout) it will allow customers to select their desired shipping rate for the first order, then all recurring orders will default to the lowest applicable rate. This means BOTH rates will show in the initial order. 

This is how the checkout shipping options look: 

This is how the first orders shipping rates look: 

FAQs

Can I create a shipping profile in Shopify myself or use a subscription shipping profile I created for another app for my Skio subscriptions?

No, Shopify does not allow subscriptions to be associated (more specifically, they don't allow selling plans to be associated) with a user (that's you or any human basically!) created shipping profile, so you aren't able to make a shipping profile in Shopify then add in your subscriptions there. In order to make one specific to just your subscriptions, this has to be made in Skio first.

Help! I can't find my subscription shipping profile when I go to the shipping profiles in Shopify. Where is it?

Shopify automatically hides any subscription shipping profile within the Shopify admin, so you won't be able to find it there. There's no way to unhide it currently. Instead, to find it, you'll need to use the link we've created in your Skio dashboard to take you to the shipping profile.

Help! I set up a subscription shipping profile and now I've noticed when my customers order a subscription product and a non-subscription product, their order is split into two different fulfillments and has two different shipping rates. What's going on?

This might look confusing but rest assured, this is intended behavior by Shopify.  When an order is placed in Shopify, Shopify matches the items in the order to the shipping profiles, and essentially, puts each of those items into two different shopping bags, then when it comes time to calculate shipping, Shopify looks at each of the shopping bags separately. Shopify calculates each of these, then charges the customer for the entirety of the cart, including the two different shipping rates for the two different shopping bags. It'll look something like this:

Because of how shipping profiles are handled using Shopify, we don't have a way around the split shopping bags (or split fulfillment as it's sometimes called) without removing the subscription shipping profile entirely and using the same profile you use for your one-time products. When setting up your subscription shipping profile, this is definitely something to keep in mind when weighing the pros and cons.

If you're in Shopify Plus, you can use Shopify Scripts to manipulate the shipping rates so if a cart has a subscription item in it, discount all shipping rates to be free shipping, and more.

Help! I've made manual changes to my subscription shipping profile. Why does the “Subscription” shipping option in the Checkout flow only show 1 option, even though I have added more than 1 option to my subscription shipping profile?

By default, Shopify does not allow Subscription-specific shipping rulesets to offer more than 1 rate for subscribers to select in the Checkout flow. If multiple shipping rates are configured in your subscription shipping profile, only the least expensive option will be displayed for “Subscription” in the Shipping step of the Shopify Checkout flow.

Help! I want to charge custom pricing / rates for subscription shipping. Are there any limitations to adjusting the “Subscription Free Shipping” ruleset once it has been generated by Skio?

If you adjust the "Subscription Free Shipping" ruleset and configure rates with prices (i.e. not Free shipping), keep in mind that these rates will stack with any onetime shipping ruleset for orders containing both onetime products and subscription products. This means that if your "General" shipping ruleset charges $9.99 shipping, and your subscription shipping ruleset is also set to charge $9.99 shipping, an order containing both onetime and subscription products would charge $19.98 shipping ($9.99 for the onetime products, and $9.99 for the subscription products). You can otherwise delete the subscription shipping ruleset so that all onetime and subscription products are in the same shipping ruleset / group, in which case the above order would only charge $9.99 shipping for the first order (onetime + subscription products), while each recurring subscription order would charge $9.99 shipping.