Subscription Intervals

This is a custom built bank of interval option sets to be applied on products for subscription. This is also the first step of creating a subscription plan to a product. Follow the instructions below to learn what to do and what NOT to do.

Create New Intervals

Go to Apps –> Rebillia –> Click on your name on the top-right corner –> Settings.

Under the settings interface, click on the “Subscription Intervals” tab.

Here, you will creata ALL possible interval option sets to be applied on products that you would offer for subscription.

Furthermore, you will also choose the display name (Seen by customers) and the internal name of each set (Seen by merchant).

How does it work?

The internal name carries no special meaning, but serves as an indicator for a specific option set. For example: “20%-1,2,3” for a plan that offers 20% discount when subscribing for delivery every month, every 2 months or every 3 months.

The display name is the actual name of the option set that the customer can see in the product page, just like “Choose a size” on a shirt. You may want to reflect the offer in this text. For example: on the “20%-1,2,3” internal name plan, the display name can be “Subscribe & Save 20%”.

The Intervals must be ONLY the intervals that take part in this specific option set. For example: on the “20%-1,2,3” internal name plan, the intervals for the customer to choose from would be every 1 month, every 2 months and every 3 months.

Interval Types

Rebillia offers 3 different types of intervals for the merchant to choose from:

1. Frequency Based Intervals are intervals that are decided by time-frames, like “1 week”, “3 months” or “1 year”. These itnervals allow customers to subscribe to that set frequency and receive their orders dynamically accross the dates and days of the year.
2. Date Based Intervals are a “once a month” (cutoff is optional) subscription that is set to a specific date of the month, like “10th of the month”, disregarding when the customer originally bought the product. Their first purchase will still process normally.
3. Day Based Intervals are a “once a week” (cutoff is optional) subscription that is set to a specific day of the week, like “every Monday”, disregarding when the customer originally bought the product. Their first purchase will still process normally.

Quick Tips

The internal name should be recognizable as it will display the intervals and the special discount it offers for you to attach it to a product. recommended guidelines and examples:

A. “20%-month-1,2,3” would be a plan that offers 20% discount when subscribing for delivery every month, every 2 months or every 3 months – with no option to purchase without subscribing.
B. “10%-onetime-month-1,3,6” would be a plan that offers 10% discount when subscribing for delivery every month, every 3 months or every 6 months – and also offers no discount and gives an option to purchase without subscribing.
C. “week-1,2-month-1,2” would be a plan that offers subscribing for every week, 2 weeks, 1 month and 2 months. Also, no discount on subscribing and no purchase without subscribing.

*This is optional to create a common language between Rebillia and you, but you can write it any way you want to.

The display name is what the customer will see in the product page, so make it atractive. While “Subscribe & Save” is the most common form of text, consider catching your customers directly from the text line with an incentive, such as: “Subscribe & Save 20%”. For that reason, you might want to condiser building 2 separate option sets, even if they have the exact same intervals, so the customer would see a custom text line on the product itself.

The Intervals are an endless bank of option sets. Don’t fill it up before you have products in mind, but try to knock several sets at the same time. You can always create a new set, even if it has the same values of another, already existing, set.

What To Avoid Doing

As Rebillia automatically creates new “Options” and “Option Sets” to your BigCommerce store, these carry sensitive information that enable our system to work. Listed below are ALL the customizations to the “Options” and “Options Sets” that will cause the subscription to malfunction:

1. Changing the name of a recurring interval – Rebillia offers default names to the intervals (i.e “Send every 2 weeks” or “Send every 6 months”). These names carry a segnificant meaning into our software’s understanding of the chosen interval. Should you edit those names (i.e “I want it every 2 weeks” or “Send every six months”), Rebillia will lose the connection with this interval and will not subscribe customers that choose said intervals.
2. Changing the order of options in your product’s option set – When a customer subscribes to your product, Rebillia will capture all his chosen options (i.e “Size: L | Color: Red | Subscribe & Save: Send every 1 week”) by order. When returning to create the recurring purchase, Rebillia will look for those options by order of which they were purchased (i.e “Size | Color | Subscribe & Save“). If the order of options has been changed in the product (i.e “Color | Size | Subscribe & Save“) – Rebillia will not be able to complete this purchase. Furthermore, Rebillia will be able to work with new customers that entered the subscription with the NEW order.
3. Adding or Deducting options from the option set – As explained in bullet #2, Rebillia looks to match the chosen options from the original order to the current options on the product. Adding new options and/or deleting old options will cause the subscription to malfunction.
4. Copying an “Option”/”Option Set” that was created by Rebillia – By doing so, you will either duplicate special IDs we create, or nullify the original IDs. This will cause Rebillia to either subscribe the customer to the wrong product or the subscription will not work at all.
5. Removing options from the Interval before migrating customers – For example, want to convert a “send every 1 month” subscription into a “send every 1st of the month”? FIRST – migrate all customers from the old option to the new. Only then, delete the old option.

Changing The Interval Name

According to BigCommerce functionality, editing an option’s display name does not update the display name of that option in an already existing option set. For that reason, in order to change the display name of the subscription option on your products, you will need to implement the new name in two separate locations, The Interval in Rebillia and The existing subscription product option set in BigCommerce.

1. Changing the Interval Name in Rebillia: This action is to make sure the display name will update for future subscription products. To accomplish this, follow the instructions below:

Go to the Rebillia app –> click on your name on the top-right corner –> select “Settings” –> Click on “Subscription Intervals” tab and then edit the interval you wish to update.

2. Changing The Display Name Of An Already Existing Subscription Option: This action is the only way to affect an already existing display name on an already existing subscription product. To accomplish this, follow the instructions below:

‌Go to “Products” –> “Options” –> “Option Sets” –> Edit all the option sets that have the names of products on subscription –> Edit the subscription option (in the box to the right) and change the display name to the new display name.