Importing Subscriptions¶

If you have existing wine club members — whether from a spreadsheet, another platform, or a manual wine club — you can import them into the app so they don't have to sign up again individually.

The import creates active subscriptions with future billing dates, so customers are not charged during the import. They continue on their existing billing schedule and are charged automatically when their next billing date arrives.

Before You Import¶

Before starting an import, make sure:

• Your clubs are set up — The clubs and frequency/case size combinations you want to import members into must already exist. See Setting Up Your Wine Club.
• Products are prepared — The products and variants for each club must be available. See Preparing Your Products.
• Your plan has capacity — Your billing plan limits the number of active subscriptions. The import will not proceed if it would exceed your plan's limit. You can check your current usage on the Dashboard.

Preparing Your CSV File¶

The import uses a CSV (comma-separated values) file. You can create this in any spreadsheet application (Excel, Google Sheets, etc.) and export as CSV. Each CSV can contain up to 100 subscriptions.

We recommend importing one club type at a time — all Choose Your Own subscriptions in one CSV, and all Curated subscriptions in another.

Select your club type below to see the CSV format and download a template.

Pricing and discounts¶

Imported subscriptions are recorded with the same pricing details as new signups taken through your storefront. Each line stores both the retail price and the discounted price the customer pays, so the customer portal can show the discount and the strikethrough retail clearly.

• Choose Your Own — line_price is the price billed each cycle. If it sits below the variant's retail, the difference becomes the per-cycle discount on that line.
• Curated — the discount is applied automatically from the club's settings. You don't need to pre-calculate per-line prices.
• Total reconciliation — if total_price doesn't reconcile with the discounted line subtotal plus delivery, you'll see a warning in the test import results. The row still imports.

Multi-currency¶

If the row's currency_code differs from your store's primary currency, each variant in the row's club must have a retail price configured for the row's country in Shopify Markets. Rows that reference variants without a market-priced retail in the chosen currency will fail with a clear message in the test results.

Starting an Import¶

Importing runs in two steps: a test import checks your data first without creating anything, then a live import creates the subscriptions once you're happy with the results.

1. Go to Subscriptions in the app
2. Click Import at the top of the subscription list (or Import existing subscriptions from the empty state)
3. Upload your CSV file
4. The app runs the test import and shows the results

Validation¶

The app checks every row before creating anything — there are no partial imports. If a row has an error, you'll see a clear message explaining what to fix. Rows that are duplicates (same customer and club) are skipped automatically rather than treated as errors.

Test Results¶

After the test import runs, the app shows Test import results — no subscriptions have been created yet. Each row is labelled:

• Will import — Passed all checks, ready to go live
• Will skip — Duplicate row, will be skipped
• Won't import — Has an error; fix it in your CSV and start over

Each row also shows whether the customer is new to Shopify, an existing customer, or already a subscriber.

If everything looks correct, scroll down and click Start live import. If anything needs fixing, click Start over to upload a corrected CSV.

The app creates each subscription as Active with the billing date you specified. No charges are made during import — billing begins on each customer's next billing date once they've added a payment method (see Payment Methods below).

When the import finishes, the screen shows counts for Imported, Failed, and Skipped rows, with a row-by-row breakdown including products and billing frequency.

After Import¶

Payment Methods¶

Imported subscriptions are created without a payment method unless the customer already has one saved against their Shopify account, in which case the app attaches it automatically. Payment details cannot be transferred from another system, so any imported customer who does not already have a saved card in Shopify needs to add one before their first billing date.

Prompting customers after import¶

Once the import completes, open the Subscriptions list and review the Has Issues tab. Most entries here will be imported subscriptions that do not yet have a payment method on file. Select these subscriptions and use the Send add payment method email bulk action to prompt the customers to add one.

We recommend doing this soon after the import so customers have plenty of lead time to add a payment method before their first billing date.

How customers add a payment method¶

The "Add a payment method required" email — and the no-payment-method copy on the standard pre-billing reminders — all link the customer to their subscription page in the customer portal. From there, an Add payment method button takes them directly to the Shopify customer account profile screen to add one.

Customers can also add a payment method themselves from their Shopify customer account at any time:

1. Log in to their account on your store
2. Go to Profile > Payment methods
3. Click Add and enter their payment details

Once a customer adds a payment method, it is automatically linked to their imported subscription.

What Happens at Billing Time Without a Payment Method¶

If a customer's billing date arrives and they haven't added a payment method:

• The billing attempt will fail
• The customer receives an email notification about the failed payment
• The app's standard payment failure retry schedule applies
• After all retries fail, the subscription is placed on hold (Failed status)
• The customer can add a payment method and reactivate from the customer portal

Managing Imported Subscriptions¶

Imported subscriptions work exactly like any other subscription. You and your customers can:

• Pause, resume, or cancel
• Skip orders
• Change items (Choose Your Own clubs)
• Update delivery address
• Update payment method

See Managing Subscriptions for the full list of actions.

Limitations¶

• No automatic payment method transfer — Customers must add their card details themselves. There is no way to transfer payment information from another system into Shopify.
• One import at a time — You cannot run multiple imports simultaneously.
• No undo — Imported subscriptions must be cancelled individually if you need to reverse an import.
• Billing date must be at least 48 hours in the future — Each next_billing_date is interpreted as midday in your store's timezone and must be at least 48 hours away, so the customer's 2-day upcoming renewal reminder fires at least once before the first billing attempt.
• Billing date is capped at one interval ahead — Each next_billing_date must be within one billing interval of the import (1 month for monthly, 3 for quarterly, 6 for 6-monthly, 12 for annual).
• Pickup location is auto-selected — For pickup subscriptions, the app queries Shopify for available pickup locations based on the customer's address and product availability, then automatically selects the first available option. The selected location is shown in the import results. If no pickup location is available for the address, that row will fail during import. After import, you can change the pickup location from the admin or customers can change it from the customer portal.