Manage Subscriptions

Every active subscriber in your store is represented by a subscription contract — the record that controls what gets billed, when, and where it ships. Manage Subscriptions is where you monitor, troubleshoot, and update those contracts day to day.

Subscription operations directly affect revenue retention. A contract stuck in a failed-payment state is revenue leaking; a customer who cannot skip a cycle is a cancellation waiting to happen. This guide covers every action available on the Manage Subscriptions screen so your team can handle routine requests and billing exceptions without guesswork.

How subscription contracts work

When a customer completes a subscription checkout on Shopify, the platform automatically creates a subscription contract. That contract stores the product lines, delivery schedule, shipping address, and payment method. subZwallet reads and manages these contracts through Shopify's Subscription Contract API ([Shopify: About subscription contracts](https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/build/purchase-options/subscriptions/contracts)).

Each contract carries a status that determines whether billing continues:

Understanding these statuses prevents mistakes — for example, cancelling a contract when the merchant intended to pause it.

Navigating the contract list

Open **Manage Subscriptions** from the subZwallet sidebar. The list displays every contract across your store, organized under five tabs: All, Active, Paused, Cancelled, and Inventory error.

Manage Subscriptions list showing Active, Paused, Cancelled, and Inventory error tabs

Use the search box to find contracts by contract ID, customer name, or email address. For stores with thousands of subscribers, filtering by tab first and then searching narrows results significantly.

Bulk actions

Select one or more contracts using the checkboxes in the list, then choose an action from the bulk actions bar: Pause, Activate, or Cancel. Each action requires confirmation before it executes. Bulk actions are useful when you need to pause all contracts before a warehouse shutdown or reactivate a batch of contracts after resolving a supplier issue.

Bulk cancel is irreversible. Double-check your selection before confirming — cancelled contracts cannot be reinstated.

Contract detail page

Click any contract to open its detail page. This is the operational hub for a single subscription:

**Subscription lines and next billing date** — the products, quantities, and when the next charge fires.
**Customer name and email** — links to the Shopify customer record.
**Shipping address** — editable via the address card.
**Payment method** — card brand and last four digits. The customer updates this through the customer portal or a payment update email.
**Upcoming billing cycles** — future charges with per-cycle skip/unskip controls.
**Past orders** — full billing history with order links.
**Action buttons** — Pause, Resume, Cancel, Bill now, Create manual order, Edit subscription.

Subscription contract detail page showing billing cycles, address, and action buttons

Common scenarios and how to handle them

Payment failure

When a charge fails (declined card, insufficient funds, expired payment method), a failure banner appears at the top of the contract detail page. The contract remains Active — subZwallet does not auto-cancel on first failure. Your options:

Ask the customer to update their payment method through the customer portal or a payment update link.
Once the payment method is updated, click **Retry** on the failure banner.
If the customer is unreachable, click **Skip** to move past this cycle or **Ignore** to dismiss the banner.

For automated recovery, configure retry schedules and dunning emails in [App settings](/help/how-to-set-up-dunning). Proper dunning setup recovers the majority of failed payments without manual intervention.

Skip a billing cycle

Open the contract detail page and scroll to Upcoming billing cycles. Click **Skip** next to the cycle you want to bypass. Shopify indexes billing cycles starting from 1, and skipping a cycle does not shift subsequent cycle dates — it simply marks that specific cycle as skipped ([Shopify: About billing cycles](https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/build/purchase-options/subscriptions/billing-cycles)). To undo, click **Unskip** before the cycle date passes.

Update shipping address

On the contract detail page, locate the Shipping address card and click **Edit**. Update the address fields and save. The new address applies to every future billing cycle on that contract. If you need to change the address for a single upcoming order only, edit that specific billing cycle instead.

Bulk pause before a warehouse shutdown

Go to the contract list, filter to the Active tab, select all relevant contracts, and choose **Pause** from the bulk actions bar. Confirm the action. When operations resume, return to the Paused tab, select the contracts, and choose **Activate**. Pausing preserves every contract detail — nothing is lost.

Edit subscription: Products, Schedule, and Review

From the contract detail page, click **Edit subscription** to open the three-tab editor:

**Products** — add or remove product variants, adjust quantities.
**Schedule** — change the delivery policy (frequency, anchor date) and the next billing date.
**Review** — see a summary of all changes with a price breakdown before saving.

Edit subscription modal with Products, Schedule, and Review tabs

Shopify uses a draft-commit workflow for contract edits: subZwallet creates a draft of the changes, lets you review them, and commits only when you click Save. If you cancel, no changes are applied.

Bill now and manual orders

**Bill now** triggers an immediate charge and creates the associated order, pulling the next billing cycle forward. Use it when a customer requests early delivery or when you need to test billing on a contract. **Create manual order** generates an order without advancing the billing cycle — useful for sending a replacement or courtesy shipment.

Next steps

If you have not created subscription plans yet, start with [Subscription plans](/help/subscription-plans) to define your delivery frequencies and discounts. For automated failed-payment recovery, configure your retry strategy in [Dunning settings](/help/how-to-set-up-dunning). Merchants migrating from another platform should follow the [Migration playbook](/help/migration-playbook-recharge-to-subzwallet) to transfer existing contracts. Review [App settings](/help/app-settings) for billing behavior, customer portal permissions, and notification preferences.

Ready to streamline your Shopify subscription management? [Install subZwallet](/shopify-subscription-app) and start managing contracts from a single dashboard.