Subscriptions General Settings

Once installed, WooCommerce Subscription extension settings can be found and set at WooCommerce > Settings > Subscriptions. This guide explains each section of settings and what it controls: 

• Button Settings
• Role Settings
• Renewal Settings
• Switch Settings
• Synchronized Renewals Settings
• Miscellaneous Settings
• Subscriptions Shortcode

Button Settings

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“Add-to-Cart” and “Place Order” buttons include the default text “Sign-Up Now” when a subscription product is being added to the cart or purchased. You can customize this text by using the boxes in this section to change the text that displays to . Here is where each of t

• Add to Cart Button Text – on the store page and individual product page for subscription products
• Place Order Button Text – at the bottom of the checkout page when the cart contains a subscription

Role Settings

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Unlike non-subscription orders, a user must create an account on your store when signing up for a subscription. This is regardless of what is set in the general WooCommerce Settings. This is because a subscription is an agreement between the store and the customer for future transactions, therefore the customer’s information needs to be stored in an account on your store.

• Subscriber Default Role – choose the role assigned to customers when they create a subscription. By default, this is WordPress’ built-in Subscriber role.
• Inactive Subscriber Role – choose the role assigned to subscribers when their subscription expires, is canceled, or is suspended (by you, the payment gateway or the customer). By default, this is WooCommerce’s built-in Customer role.

If you sell memberships and want to add a “member” role, WooCommerce Memberships may be a good option for you.  Memberships also allows setting different per-product permissions for users.

Renewal Settings

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The next few sections give a brief overview of the general renewal settings you can configure in WooCommerce > Settings > Subscriptions.

The subscription renewal process is a fundamental component of Woo Subscriptions. To understand the intricacies of how renewal settings affect subscriptions and subscription payments, see: Subscription Renewal Process. 

Let’s take a look at the different general settings available: 

Accept manual renewals

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It’s possible to accept payments via payment gateways that do not support automatic recurring payments.

If you enable this setting, it offers all active payment gateways as a payment option when purchasing a subscription, not just gateways that support Subscriptions. If a customer chooses to pay via a payment gateway that does not support automatic payments, then the subscription will use the manual renewal process.

To accept manual payments:

1. Go to: WooCommerce > Settings > Subscriptions.
2. Tick the Accept Manual Renewals option:

For a list of payment gateways that support automatic and manual payments, see Subscription Payment Gateways. For more information about the difference between automatic and manual renewal payments, see Subscription Renewal Process.

Turn off automatic payments

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By default, manual renewals are only used for payment gateways that cannot process automatic payments.

If you do not want new customers to be automatically charged for a subscription renewal payment, even when the payment gateway used to purchase the subscription can process automatic payments, you can deactivate automatic payments.

To turn off automatic payments:

1. Go to: WooCommerce > Settings > Subscriptions.
2. Select Accept Manual Renewals.
3. Select Turn off Automatic Payments when it appears.
4. Save changes.

Display the auto renew toggle

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By default, Subscriptions via a payment gateway that allows automatic renewals will be set to automatically renew, unless automatic payments are deactivated. The “Auto Renew” toggle allows subscribers to easily turn off the auto-renewals and switch to manual renewals from their My Account page.

To enable the toggle switch:

1. Go to: WooCommerce > Settings > Subscriptions.
2. Enable the Display the auto renewal toggle setting.
3. Save changes.

Switch Settings

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Customers are able to switch between variable subscription options or grouped subscription products if this setting is enabled. This process has a its own set of nuances that are best explained in a separate guide – Store Manager’s Guide to Subscription Switching. 

Synchronize Renewals Settings

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To align subscription renewal dates to a specific day of the week, month or year, enable Synchronize Renewals. Much like the settings to switch subscriptions, Subscription Synchronization has specific criteria and options that require its own guide – Renewal Synchronization.

Miscellaneous Settings

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The final group of settings you’ll find under WooCommerce > Settings > Subscriptions are the “Miscellaneous” settings. Let’s take a look at each: 

Allow $0 initial checkout without a payment method 

This allows for a subscription product with a $0 initial payment to be purchased without providing a payment method. This is helpful if you offer a free trial on a subscription product and don’t want to force your customers to add a payment method right away. At the end of a free trial period, customers will need to add a payment method to continue their subscription. 

Drip Downloadable Content

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By default, after a customer has purchased a downloadable subscription product, they will be able to download any files associated with that product from their My Account page for as long as the subscription is active. However, you may also wish to provide existing subscribers with access to new files.

Woo Subscriptions provides two options to handle this situation: 

1. Default Setting – Immediately –  This requires no change in settings. Adding files to a downloadable subscription product gives existing customers access to those files immediately.  

Drip Downloadable Content: With this setting activated (tick box), existing customers only receive access to new downloadable content after the next renewal is processed (know as dripping)

Customer Suspensions

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This setting either allows or limits the amount of customer suspensions on a given subscription. You have three options, setting a maximum number of suspensions allowed, setting to unlimited, or deactivating the option entirely: 

• Maximum Number of Suspensions: Set a maximum number of times a customer can suspend their account for each billing period. For example, with a subscription billed yearly, a value of 3 would mean that once a subscriber suspends their account 3 times that year, they cannot suspend their account again until the next billing year.
• Unlimited: Set the amount to “unlimited” to allow any number of customer suspension during the billing period. 
• Deactivate: By default, customer suspensions are set to 0.  Set this to 0 to turn off the customer suspension feature completely (no suspensions allowed). 

Mixed Checkout

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Activate Mixed Checkout to allow a subscription product to be purchased with other products in the same transaction, including simple, variable and other non-subscription products as well as multiple different subscription products.

Activating this feature makes it easier for customers to buy more from your store and to include subscription products in bundles created with extensions such as Product Bundles. Because of this, it is on by default and will only be disabled if manually unchecked.

With the default setting enabled, here’s how a mixture of products would appear on the cart and checkout pages:

Cart Page:

Subscriptions and no-subscriptions in cart with mixed checkout enabled.

Checkout Page:

Payment Gateway Settings

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Payment gateways can include support for automatic subscription payments or not. Gateways that do not support automatic payments, like Cheque or Bank Transfer, can be used for subscription purchases only if you accept manual renewals in your store (set in the Renewal Settings).

For more information about payment gateways and the difference between automatic and manual payments, see Subscription Payment Gateway Guide.

Subscriptions shortcode

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To display a list of subscriptions on pages other than the customer My Account page, add the [subscriptions] shortcode to a page or post.

Shortcode Arguments

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Optional arguments:
- user_id: show only subscriptions owned by a user with this ID (default: 0, the currently logged in user)
- status: show only subscriptions with this status. Can be active, on-hold, cancelled, switched or all (default: active)

Example usage

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	[[subscriptions]]
	[[subscriptions user_id="33"]]
	[[subscriptions status="all"]]
	[[subscriptions user_id="42" status="all"]]

view raw subscriptions-shortcode-examples.php hosted with ❤ by GitHub

More at: How to Use Shortcodes.