Product Subscriptions

You can create periodic subscription programs of any length with products you have created alredy by going to Products > Subscriptions.

Please Note: This feature is a special function that is not part of the normal Rain system service, so if you are interested in using this feature, you will need to call or email Support to have this added to your service plan. 

Once this is active for you, you can go to Products > Subscriptions and create new product subscriptions for your customers. Please note that you must have the following three things in place to start a subscription:

1. You must be set up for integrated processing with the Rain system in order for this to work.
2. The Subscription module uses tokenization to safely and securely do the periodic charges to the customer's card, so you also must have your Recurring Payments tokenization set up with the processor. For more detail on how to get that set up, please click here.
3. You must also have all products created and saved that will be sold in the subscription.

Before setting up your first Subscription, you will want to go into the Settings area and configure your Autobilling. On the far right side of the blue Admin Toolbar, click on the Gear-Shaped Button and go to Settings > POS Settings > Subscriptions.

If you want the system to make repeated attempts to charge a card if it fails, turn the function ON. 

Next, click the Configure button to set how often and for how long the system will continue to retry charging a card:

Once you have your preferences set, click the Save button to close the Credit Card Retry Settings panel, then click the Save button at the bottom of the Subscriptions tab to save your final settings. Now you're ready to start your first Subscription!

Go to Products > Subscriptions. Here is the main Subscriptions page:

To create a new Subscription, click the New Subscription Plan button, and you will see a blank version of this:

1. Name - Give your subscription a full, intuitive name.
2. Description - Make sure your subscription has all details provided so subscribers will know what to expect. You can format text in limited ways and create small tables to organize information, if needed.
3. Images - You can add as many images as you like. Please follow the same rules you would with any product: Images need to be Jpeg or PNG, 600+ pixels, and the file size should not be larger than 4mb / 2000px.
4. Assign Category - Click in the box to choose as many saved product Categories as you like, or you can choose 'This Is a New Category' and assign one later.
5. Payment Frequency - Click the drop-list to choose either Every 7 Days or Every 30 Days.
6. Plan Start Date - Click in the date field to bring up a calendar and choose the date the subscription will start. Note that the selected date will determine when the billing cycle starts and when the first order is placed. The start date cannot be changed once the subscription has started.
7. Subscriber Limit - If you have limited availability for your subscription, e.g. you can really only handle twenty-five of them a month, you can set the number here by either typing it in or using the arrow keys to get to the number. If you leave this blank, the subscription will be able to take an unlimited number of customers.
8. Allow Previous Months - This option will allow anyone signing up in the middle of your subscription to catch up to the current month. Basically, in either the web shopping cart or in the point of sale Register, it will load whatever weeks or months have already passed as individual line-items and then start the subscription from the current upcoming week or month.
9. Delivery Method - Use the radio-buttons to choose either In-Store Pickup, Shipping, or Both. On checkout, the customer can choose their method if you offer both.
10. Subscription Price - This is the periodic fee each subscriber will pay, NOT the total of the whole subscription. So this would be the base monthly or weekly payment they will make throughout the subscription.
11. Registration Fee - This optional fee is a one-time, up-front fee to get the customer registered for the subscription series.
12. Shipping Fee - If you know what the shipping will be on your subscription items, you can set this fee to automatically charge every month.
13. Assign Products - You can assign a product to each periodic instance of the subscription, e.g. every month in the year, every week, for however long your subscription runs. You can only assign one product per period, so if you need to bundle multiple products in a single billing cycle, build them into a kit using the Assemble Kits module.
14. When you're finished, be sure to click the Save button at the bottom of the panel. You can also Deactivate your Subscription if you need to delay it becoming visible on your website and/or in your Register.

Working With Your Subscriptions

Once your subscription is in process you can always click on its title to view or change details. You can also see how many people are subscribed in the gray circle on the left. You can click on the circle to bring up your Subscriber list, with each customer and their subscription status listed, as pictured below.

You can sign people up through the Register with the customer loaded, just by searching for the Subscription name in the item search area:

Your customers will also be able to sign up and subscribe online. Here is what the same test subscription looks like on a web page:

If you have selected Both for your delivery method, your customers will have a drop-list to select either having the items Shipped or doing Store Pickup:

If your customer chooses to have it shipped, just as in the Register example above, they will enter their shipping address directly on this web page. They will later put in billing information once they click the Add to Cart button.

If the customer chooses In-Store Pickup, they will still need to put in subscriber information, as this may be different from the person paying for the subscription during checkout:

Once the Subscription has started, if the card on file is declined, you have the ability to email the customer a request to update their card information. You can open this panel by going to Products > Subscriptions, clicking on the number in the gray circle on the far left, then clicking on the Name of the subscriber who needs to update their card. Here is what that looks like:

The email that is sent will look like this: