Do you want to charge customers on specific days "of the year"?
In your selling plan, you can specify exact dates for when your subscription orders should renew and deliver, giving you more control over your subscription cycles. Whether you want to align your subscription deliveries with seasonal events or specific months.
How to set it up?
Please note that you can only set "Specific day of the Year" (year date anchor) for the following selling plan frequencies:
Every 2 months
Every 3 months (Quarterly)
Every 4 months
Every 6 months
You can follow these steps to charge your customers on specific days of the year:
Create a new selling plan.
Select one of the above mentioned frequencies.
Enable the billing day feature in your selling plan: "Do you want to charge customers on specific days?"
Set "Specific day of the" to "Year"
Before diving into the next steps, it’s important to understand two key concepts:
When do you want to deliver the first order? (pre-anchor behavior)
and
What should we do if an order comes close to a specific day? (cut-off)
When do you want to deliver the first order? (Pre-anchor behavior):
It determines how new subscriptions are handled relative to the billing dates. There are two options:
Immediately (ASAP)
Closest specific day (NEXT)
What should we do if an order comes close to a specific day? (Cut-off):
The cut-off is the threshold before the billing date when new orders are either included in the current cycle or deferred to the next cycle. You can choose:
Deliver on the closest specific day: No cut-off applied
Skip the order if it comes close to a specific day
Understanding Pre-anchor behavior and Cut-off:
It is essential to understand what these terms mean in the context of Shopify. Here's an example to illustrate how anchors work:
Imagine a gym that offers course registrations, and these courses start on specific days of the year (for example, the beginning of spring, summer, autumn, and winter).
Now, if someone joins the gym in the middle of a term, two scenarios are possible:
New member registration
No new members until the next term
1. New member registration
In the case of accepting a member in the middle of a term, the gym might set a date for the start of registration for the next term. This means: anyone who comes after this date will go to the next term. This date might be, for example, 10 days before the start of each term (it doesn't make sense for someone to come 9 days before the next term and want to participate in the current term. They would essentially be wasting their money).
The first case is:
When do you want to deliver the first order? = Immediately
with a cut-off of 10 days.
2. No new members until the next term
However, if the gym does not accept new members until the next term, the gym might set a registration deadline for the next term. This means: if someone is going to participate in the next term, they have until this date to register. If their registration is after this date, they go to the term after the next. This date might also be 10 days before the start of the next term (the gym probably needs time to prepare for the new term and can't accept a member after this deadline).
The second case is:
When do you want to deliver the first order? = Closest specific day
with a cut-off of 10 days.
It's important to note that the concept of "cut-off" differs in the "Immediately" and "Closest specific day" scenarios. One means "the start time for registration for the new term," and the other means "the deadline for registration for the new term."
If a store has a seasonal box, it could mean "start of delivery for the new seasonal box" and "registration deadline for the delivery of the new seasonal box."