Subscription Box Fulfillment with SubscriptionFlow

Smooth checkout processes are invaluable for ecommerce businesses as they help in acquiring customers effectively. But that’s not where a business’s efforts should end. Especially if it sells subscription boxes. Managing subscription orders, packing and delivering them on time plays an equally important role in customer retention.

All these tasks are part of the fulfillment process. The smoother the fulfillment process, the more seamless the order deliveries. Manually handling this process can lead to messy workflows, and delayed deliveries.

To ensure efficacy in fulfillment operations, it is crucial for businesses to opt for a specialized software solution. In this article, let’s explore why good fulfillment matters for subscription boxes, and the best software that helps businesses achieve that.

Why is Subscription Box Fulfillment Important?

There are a number of reasons why subscription box businesses need to level up their fulfillment process with the help of expert software. Here are a few:

Boxes need to be shipped on a repeat basis

Subscription boxes need to be packed and delivered repeatedly. Therefore, their management is much more complex than the management of one-time box orders, or single-item subscriptions.

This holds even truer for merchants offering a range of subscription cycles, i.e. monthly, bi-monthly, every 2 months, every 3 months, and so on. Each subscriber’s cycle has to be tracked, and their orders have to be shipped accordingly.

This can make inventory management more complicated too. Merchants not only have to maintain optimal stock levels for each product, but also have to organize different products as a single unit, and track their availability together.

Expert fulfillment software assists with inventory management, as well as subscription cycle tracking to make repeat deliveries hassle-free.

Timely deliveries are important

Delivering subscription boxes on time is vital for enhancing brand image, and fostering customer relationships based on trust. Timely delivery is only possible when merchants have all their fulfillment tasks, such as inventory management, shipping labels, and carrier services, sorted out. The best way to ace these tasks is to onboard fulfillment software.

Customers expect shipping updates

It is natural for customers to request delivery updates. Fulfillment software allows you to send customers an estimated delivery date. It also supports order-tracking so companies can track the shipping status of their subscription boxes.

You have done your part.
Let SubscriptionFlow take it from here!

Let us help your business grow with our powerful
subscription management software.

eCommerce apps do not natively support subscription fulfillment

The largest reason why stores must be integrated with third-party software is that ecommerce applications don’t deal with subscription fulfillment on their own. Well-known platforms such as Shopify, Wix and WooCommerce are designed to deal with one-time purchases and their fulfillment.

They don’t have subscription workflow support. That’s why subscription box stores need a feature-rich all-in-one tool that not only deals with their orders and billing cycles, but also optimizes their shipping routines.

Why Subscription Box Fulfillment Can Be Challenging?

Without a dedicated platform, subscription box fulfillment can be difficult. Here are the reasons why:

Manual Subscription Cycle Tracking

Subscription cycles are linked with box deliveries. Subscription boxes have to delivered to the customers before their new billing cycle starts. This ensures that businesses earn their revenue timely, and customers benefit from predictable deliveries.

However, when billing cycle tracking is entirely manual, it can slow down fulfillment. If there are too many cycles to be monitored, overlaps and errors can occur.

Higher Chances of Missed Renewals

Missing a customer’s renewal is equivalent of missing their order shipping. Dealing with a high volume of orders manually can sometimes cause merchants to overlook some of them. If customers don’t receive the products they paid in advance for, it can damage their relationship with the business.

Difficulty in Scaling

If fulfillment processes are handled without advanced software, scaling operations can become a tough challenge. That is because without automation and an efficient billing system, onboarding new customers can become more of a burden than a blessing. This can stunt the growth of the ecommerce store.

How SubscriptionFlow Helps Overcome Fulfillment Challenges

SubscriptionFlow is an advanced subscription billing engine that is available as an app or extension with many popular ecommerce platforms. By integrating with ecommerce stores, it tailors their workflows to facilitate recurring billing and order management.

This is what subscription box businesses get with SubscriptionFlow as their billing solution:

Automated Billing Cycles

When merchants link their store with SubscriptionFlow, they can sync all their orders with the software. SubscriptionFlow creates a subscription for each order, and then automates its billing.

This means that customers are billed without manual intervention, speeding up order confirmations, and consequently, their fulfillment.

Automated Order Renewals

After a subscription is set up in SubscriptionFlow, it is renewed according to its predefined schedule. When a subscription cycle renews, the customer’s order automatically renews as well. This helps businesses keep all their orders aligned with their set schedules, and dispatch them timely.

Versatile Order Schedules

Businesses can offer a variety of billing schedules that suit their shipping timings. For example, weekly, monthly, every 2 months, quarterly, etc. Best part is, they don’t have to keep an eye on each cycle themselves. SubscriptionFlow does the tracking for them.

They can easily consolidate more than one orders and prepare them for shipping side by side if their billing cycles match.

Personalized Subscription Boxes

Subscription boxes don’t always have to be pre-curated. SubscriptionFlow enhances the functionality of your ecommerce store so that it can allow your customers to make their own boxes.

Personalized boxes allow for more flexibility, as customers can choose and pay for only those products that they actually want. Moreover, they can add or remove items from their box conveniently, as SubscriptionFlow automatically adjusts their charges.

Integration with ShipStation

Fulfillment doesn’t stop at effective billing and subscription management. That is why SubscriptionFlow integrates with ShipStation to provide merchants with an all-in-one fulfillment solution. Let’s find out the features ShipStation offers in the next section.

How ShipStation Helps?

ShipStation is an expert order fulfillment software. SubscriptionFlow enables ShipStation to cater to recurring subscription box orders. Integrated with SubscriptionFlow, this software:

Schedules Orders for Shipping Recurringly

Whenever SubscriptionFlow renews a subscription, it triggers order renewal in ShipStation. Due to this, the merchant does not need to manually create orders in ShipStation to continue with shipping. SubscriptionFlow automates this step, and ShipStation helps the merchant dispatch orders for delivery.

Generates Shipping Label Batches

ShipStation can create shipping labels individually, and in batches. Batch label creation is ideal when a lot of orders have to be dispatched. This saves the business’s time and resources.

Helps in Inventory Management

The platform offers advanced inventory management features to track the stock levels of each product within a subscription box. Paired with SubscriptionFlow, ShipStation makes inventory management more subscription-oriented. It allows merchants to confirm each item’s availability for upcoming subscription cycles.

Offers a Range of Carrier Services

With ShipStation, businesses have the flexibility to choose from a number of carrier services. For each order, the platform displays various available carriers along with their rates. Each carrier’s rate can differ based on where the order is headed, and the order’s dimensions such as size and weight. Businesses can select the service that falls within their budget and delivery deadline.

SubscriptionFlow and ShipStation Optimize Subscription Box Fulfillment Together

The SubscriptionFlow + ShipStation integration offers these advantages for ecommerce businesses:

Synchronized Workflows

Order is received in the ecommerce store, its subscription is created in SubscriptionFlow, and it is prepared for shipping in ShipStation. All these processes are well-integrated due to automated data syncing across the platforms.

This reduces manual input requirement to a great extent, and sets the stage for scalability. It also speeds up fulfillment, and makes sure your customers get their subscription boxes timely.

Smooth Checkout-to-Delivery Procedures

The process of fulfillment starts at checkout. Merchants can link SubscriptionFlow’s checkout with their stores, and redirect their customers there for payment. Upon completing checkout, each customer’s subscription is created in SubscriptionFlow.

SubscriptionFlow automatically bills and renews subscriptions and syncs renewed orders with ShipStation. Then, ShipStation further processes the orders and prepares them for delivery. So, merchants enjoy an end-to-end checkout-to-delivery process with expert automation.

Error-Free Data on Shipping Labels

ShipStation creates accurate shipping labels, and without manual data entry. That is because customer details are fed into ShipStation from SubscriptionFlow directly. Additionally, when customers change their personal data in their SubscriptionFlow-hosted portals, SubscriptionFlow saves these changes, and shares only the latest data with ShipStation.

Global Reach

This integration facilitates international operations. ShipStation’s services are available in a number of regions such as the US, Canada and Australia. So businesses can easily deliver subscription boxes in these regions and acquire a global subscriber base.

SubscriptionFlow, meanwhile, allows billing and invoicing in a large number of currencies. Businesses can also auto-adjust their customer’s currency based on their country, and enable it on the checkout page automatically.

Hence, merchants can boost customer satisfaction by tailoring their fulfillment processes for their international customers.

Ready to take your subscription box fulfillment to the next level? Leverage the SubscriptionFlow-ShipStation integration today!