Warning
The Sunset Prepaid action in Journeys does not work if the prepaid selling plan has max cycles set up in the configuration.
Before you start
Review our Understanding Skio Journeys help doc here to learn more about how Skio Journeys work.
Review our Skio Journey setup guide here to learn how to get started with setting up a Journey.
What is the Sunset Prepaid Journey action?
The Sunset Prepaid Journey action converts prepaid subscriptions into recurring subscribe and save plans at the end of a billing cycle. This Journey action allows you to transition customers from upfront payment models to traditional recurring billing automatically.
When should you use the Sunset Prepaid Journey?
Use the Sunset Prepaid journey action when you want to:
Transition away from prepaid selling plans due to business strategy changes
Convert to standard subscribe and save billing for operational simplicity
Maintain existing customer relationships while changing your billing model
Apply new pricing or product variants during the conversion process
This action is particularly valuable for merchants who initially offered prepaid options but have decided that recurring billing better serves their business model and customer preferences.
How Sunset Prepaid conversion works
Timing and billing cycle requirements
The conversion only executes at the end of a prepaid billing cycle, never mid-cycle. For example:
Prepaid billing schedule: Every 3 months (customer pays upfront for 3 months of deliveries)
Delivery schedule: Monthly (customer receives product monthly)
Conversion timing: Conversion can only happen on the 3rd, 6th, 9th order, etc.
After conversion, customers transition from paying upfront to being charged for each individual order on the new billing schedule you set.
Variant-level conversion flexibility
You can convert subscriptions at the variant level, giving you options to:
Keep the same product variant with different pricing or selling plans
Switch to a completely different product variant
Apply new subscribe and save discounts automatically
Set custom pricing in your store's local currency
You have the option to keep the new variant’s pricing, or set a custom price.
Quantity handling with multipliers
The "new product quantity multiplier" scales quantities proportionally rather than setting fixed amounts. Typically, you'll set this multiplier to 1 for direct one-to-one conversions.
You might change this number from 1, for example, if you're discontinuing a 30-pack of protein bars and replacing it with a new 10-pack SKU. You want to automatically move existing subscribers over while maintaining the same total number of bars they receive.
Instead of setting a fixed quantity (where everyone gets 3 of the new 10-packs), you use a multiplier of 3 to scale proportionally based on their original subscription:
Customer A had 1 x 30-pack > converts to 3 x 10-packs (30 bars total)
Customer B had 2 x 30-packs > converts to 6 x 10-packs (60 bars total)
This approach maintains a consistent product experience for each customer based on their original quantity, ensuring you don't under-deliver or over-deliver on their expected order value.
Important considerations and limitations
Critical setup requirements
Always use the "is prepaid renewing" condition when stacking multiple journey actions. This prevents subsequent actions from firing incorrectly when the Sunset Prepaid action skips mid-cycle subscriptions.
Add "product contains" conditions to ensure only relevant subscriptions enter the conversion flow, matching the old product you're swapping from.
Limitations
Single-product subscriptions only: Multi-line prepaid subscriptions are automatically skipped.
End-of-cycle requirement: No mid-cycle conversions are possible.
Step-by-step instructions
Step 1: Start building your Journey
Follow the steps in our setup guide to create a Journey. When you reach Step 3 (Add a Condition node), use the following steps to complete your configuration.
Step 2: Set a “Contains products” condition
Under Product-based from the condition type menu, choose Contains products as your condition logic.
Select the old variant (the prepaid product you want to sunset) from your product catalog.
Click Apply conditions.
Note
This condition ensures only subscriptions with your specific old variant enter the conversion flow.
Step 3: Configure the Sunset Prepaid action
Click Add Action in your journey flow.
Select Sunset Prepaid from the available actions.
Configure your conversion settings:
New variant: Choose the recurring subscription variant to convert to
Pricing: Keep the new variant's pricing or set a custom price
Quantity multiplier: Set to 1 for direct one-to-one conversion (or adjust based on your strategy)
Review your conversion settings.
Click Save changes to save your new action.
(optional) Step 4: Add the "is prepaid renewing" condition if stacking multiple actions
Note
When stacking multiple actions (for example, sending an email after converting prepaid to recurring), the "is prepaid renewing" condition acts as a safety mechanism. It ensures subsequent actions only fire when the Sunset Prepaid action successfully executes a conversion. Since conversions only happen at the end of billing cycles, this prevents follow-up actions from triggering incorrectly when mid-cycle subscriptions are automatically skipped.
Click into the Condition node before your Sunset Prepaid action.
Scroll down to Subscription based condition types and choose “Is prepaid renewing” from the available options. This prevents the action from firing incorrectly on mid-cycle subscriptions.
Step 5: Test and activate your journey
Test with a small group of subscriptions first (you can use customer tags as a condition to only run this Journey on select customers).
Monitor the conversion timing to ensure it executes only at billing cycle ends.
Activate your journey when ready.
Best practices for implementation
Test thoroughly with the "is prepaid renewing" condition to ensure proper execution timing when stacking multiple actions.
Communicate changes to affected customers before implementing conversion journeys.
Monitor conversion rates to identify any subscriptions that aren't converting as expected.
Set appropriate multipliers based on your specific product strategy (typically 1 for direct conversion).
Plan pricing carefully since converted subscriptions will use your specified custom pricing or new variant discounts.