A guide for shops with regulars

How to let customers skip a week of a subscription on Shopify

Regulars go on holiday, have guests, or still have half a loaf on the counter. If the only way to skip a week is to email you, some of them cancel instead. This guide covers how to let customers skip a week of a subscription on Shopify: what plain Shopify does, a manual routine that holds up, and how Still Works Standing Orders lets customers skip on their own.

1. What a good skip looks like

From the customer's side, a skip should take one click, say clearly which day is skipped, and confirm they will not be charged for it. From your side, it should come off the list for that day before you plan the bake or pack the boxes. That means a skip needs a deadline: the same cutoff you use to close orders for the day. A skip after the bread is in the oven is a no-show, not a skip.

2. What plain Shopify can do

Shopify on its own takes one order at a time. Recurring orders need a subscription app, which adds the "subscribe" choice to the product page and charges the card on a schedule. So with no app installed, there is nothing to skip. Most small shops in that spot keep regulars on a list and rebuild the order every week.

3. A manual routine that works

If you are not ready for an app, this routine keeps skips under control with what Shopify already has.

Tag your regulars. In Customers, open each regular and add a tag such as "weekly-friday". Filter the customer list by that tag any time to see who is on Friday.
Set a skip deadline and say it. Pick a cutoff, for example Wednesday at 9 p.m., and put it on your site in Online Store > Themes > Customize, in the announcement bar or a text block: "Skipping this week? Reply to your reminder by Wednesday 9 p.m."
Send a reminder. Each week, a day before the cutoff, send your regulars a short note: what they are getting, on which day, and how to skip. Shopify Email or your own mail works.
Build the week's orders. After the cutoff, go to Orders > Drafts and create a draft order for each regular who did not skip. Use Send invoice so they pay, or mark it paid if they pay at the counter.
Note the skips. Add a note on the customer page, such as "skipped Oct 23", so you can see the pattern later.

This works for a dozen regulars. Past that, the weekly drafts and the replies to read become a job of their own, and the customer still cannot skip without writing to you.

Customer wants to	Plain Shopify
Skip next week	Email you before your deadline; you leave them off this week's drafts.
Skip until after a holiday	Email you; you keep a note and remember it.
Pause for a while	Email you; you remove the tag and add it back later.
Change their day	Email you; you swap the tag.

4. Skipping in Still Works Standing Orders

Still Works Standing Orders is a subscription app built for shops that hand things over on a set day. Each standing order belongs to a pickup or delivery day you open, and each day has a cutoff. The cutoff is both the skip deadline and the moment the card is charged, so a skipped day is never charged.

What the customer can do. From their account on your store, each standing order has its own page with buttons for:

Skip next, which skips the coming day. After the cutoff the button is greyed out, because that day's list is set.
Skip until a date, for a holiday or a trip. Every day up to that date is skipped and not charged.
Pause and Resume. Nothing is charged while it is paused.
Changing to another of the days the plan offers, swapping an item for another one on the same plan, changing the quantity, or cancelling.

The reminder. A day before orders close, the app emails each customer what is coming, on which day, when orders close, and a link straight to that page to skip. A new customer also gets a welcome email with the same link, so nobody has to hunt for it.

Your side. A skip takes that customer off the day's list in Today without a message to you. If you need to skip for someone who phoned, open Customers in the app: each standing order has Skip this one, Skip until, and a Change menu to move their day or the quantity. If a plan is sold as a block paid up front, a skipped paid day carries to the end of the block instead of being lost.

Closed days. When the shop is shut, close the date on the Calendar tab under Set up. Standing orders on that day move to the next open day, and each customer is emailed once to say so.

If your regulars are already on Appstle, the Import and export tab under Set up brings them over from a CSV onto the cards they saved. After the import, cancel the matching Appstle subscriptions, or they will keep billing too and customers are charged twice.

The app is free for up to 10 active standing orders. Find it on the Shopify App Store.

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