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Reporting failures of the subscription model and how to fix it.

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There are some serious failings of the Subscription service that need to be addressed by the developers.  I attempted to contact the support chat team, but I was blown off with a "we'll bring that up to the developers".  ...I'm in I.T., and that means "go away" in polite speak.   Yes, this is a bit of a rant but I hope someone from the development team spends two seconds reading it and fixing it. 

Let's start with the lack of data transparency specific to subscriptions.  There is no way to obtain an export of any of the subscription data.  Not through the products export, not through the profiles export.  At least with the products export, you can look for the sku and the purchase date to know when the subscription was initiated, but there is no method to determine renewal nor cancellation of the subscription.  Well, that is not 100% true, you receive an email, but since the order number that was canceled is not included in the email notice, just the subscribers email address, you have no way to determining what order was canceled; especially since they might be subscribed multiple times to multiple items.

The User export is even worse.  "Subscriber Since" is blank for everybody, even if they are a subscriber.  The data is simply not available export, even though it is listed in the csv file; this was stated by the support agent.  Even if it were, the table is not constructed in a manner that lets you determine what they subscribed to, how many subscriptions they have, and most importantly, if they canceled (any of) those subscriptions.

I am expecting to have hundreds of subscribers through my website, and per their chat support representative, the only manner I have of determining any of that data is to walk through each persons profile on their website, look to see if they have any recurring charges deep into their profile, then go into there to determine the status of said subscription.   ...so I'll need to have me and/or my staff spend hours upon hours per day looking for updates to the subscriptions we will be selling through a web GUI, and then manually update external spreadsheets to keep track of what we own to whom.

I am sorry, but that is a completely unusable product.  How in the h*** are we expected to run a business in that manner?

 

So, for any dev's still reading this, here is how to fix this issue.  Write code to generate the following csv report specific to subscriptions:

  • Order ID, so we can cross-reference the purchase to the orders csv export.
  • Customer email
  • Customer first name
  • Customer last name
  • subscription product ordered - lineitem sku
  • subscription product ordered - product description
  • date/time this Order ID was initially ordered
  • date/time this Order ID was last renewed
  • date/time this Order ID was canceled
  • The usual shipping data always included in export reports

Each line in the export should use the Order Number as the primary key to let a single customer have multiple subscriptions listed and tracked separately.

Without this report, it is impossible to use the subscription model on SquareSpace because it is impossible to feasibly track all the customer & sales data through your web interface.

Provide this report and we can easily automate our entire subscription model in the store.  Fail to provide it and your subscription product is pretty much useless as it does not give us a means of determining who our customers are, what we owe them, and if they are no longer paying for our services.

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good luck with that. per forum rules, they don't monitor feature requests here. nor do they really listen to customers, especially when it comes to features that are so very needed to make their Commerce plans work as expected (or at least comparable to others like Shopify). years and years of requests have largely gone ignored if you pore through posts here. their subscription feature is pathetic because as you said, it's pretty unusable the way they have it now. it was one of the things i liked initially when i was moving my store, but i ended up using MoonClerk for my subscriptions after going through their help/support pages and i realized managing (or the lack of the ability to manage) subscriptions through Squarespace was going to be problematic down the line.

Edited by sruss76
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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I'm also cleaning some lists and noticing individuals who's info (names) are spelled incorrectly and who should be on a different list. As far as I can tell, the only way to do this is to delete the profile and add it again. VERY time consuming. Am I missing something here??? 

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  • 4 months later...

There are still a number of limitations with subscription products on Squarespace that I've documented and discussed with Squarespace more than once. It just feels unfinished.

On the contrary, MoonClerk is built for subscriptions and can be integrated into Squarespace pages.

About me: I've been a SQSP User for 18 yrs. I was invited to join the Circle when it launched in 2016. I have been a Circle Leader since 2017. I don't work for Squarespace. I value honesty, transparency, diversity and good design ♥.
Work: I founded and run SF.DIGITAL, building Squarespace Extensions to supercharge your commerce website. 
Content: Views and opinions are my own. Links in my posts may refer to SF.DIGITAL products or may be affiliate links.
Forum advice is free. You can thank me by clicking one of the feedback emojis below. Coffee is optional.

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  • 1 year later...
On 10/17/2021 at 11:26 AM, paul2009 said:

There are still a number of limitations with subscription products on Squarespace that I've documented and discussed with Squarespace more than once. It just feels unfinished.

On the contrary, MoonClerk is built for subscriptions and can be integrated into Squarespace pages.

Paul2009,

Moonclerk does not support sales tax software (which is required in my state).  I was able to find a Zap that will connect TaxJar and MoonClerk, but I don't have any idea how to incorporate it into the MoonClerk form. 

I wonder if you have any experience with that?

Thanks!

Rebecca

 

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34 minutes ago, Rebecca365 said:

I was able to find a Zap that will connect TaxJar and MoonClerk, but I don't have any idea how to incorporate it into the MoonClerk form. 

This is somewhat off-topic for the Squarespace forum 🙂 and isn't something I can provide advice on, but Zapier do suggest it is possible:

image.thumb.png.6b2375e9a1ab9454a03d7cfb4db62b1b.png

About me: I've been a SQSP User for 18 yrs. I was invited to join the Circle when it launched in 2016. I have been a Circle Leader since 2017. I don't work for Squarespace. I value honesty, transparency, diversity and good design ♥.
Work: I founded and run SF.DIGITAL, building Squarespace Extensions to supercharge your commerce website. 
Content: Views and opinions are my own. Links in my posts may refer to SF.DIGITAL products or may be affiliate links.
Forum advice is free. You can thank me by clicking one of the feedback emojis below. Coffee is optional.

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