Subscription Order Types

By the Numbers sorts every order into one of three order types: One-Time, First Subscription or Renewal. It works this out from the Shopify orders it already imports, so there is no app to connect.

How It Works

An order’s type depends on whether any item in it was bought on a subscription plan (a Shopify selling plan), and on how the order was created:

One-Time: no item in the order is on a subscription plan.
First Subscription: at least 1 item is on a subscription plan, and the order came through a sales channel, such as your online store or point of sale. A draft order with a subscription item counts here too, because the customer paid its invoice.
Renewal: at least 1 item is on a subscription plan, and the order was created by an app with no sales channel. That is how a subscription app bills a renewal.

Carts With Both Kinds of Items

A cart can hold subscription items and one-time items together. Its sales are then split by item:

The subscription items count toward the order’s own type, First Subscription or Renewal.
The one-time items count toward One-Time, including a one-time item a customer added to a renewal.
Discounts, shipping, tax and refunds follow each part’s share of the item prices.
The order itself counts once, under its own type.

So the three types always add up to the report’s total sales. A One-Time row can show sales from a renewal’s add-on items while the order counts as a Renewal order.

Where You Can Use It

Total Sales, Average Order Value and Sales by Channel have an Order Type filter. Pick By Order Type to add columns for each type. On Total Sales and Average Order Value, the chart then shows each type on its own.
Purchase Frequency, Time Between Orders and Cohort Repurchase Rate have Exclude Renewals. It leaves renewal orders out completely, add-on items included, so the report counts only orders a customer chose to place. It’s off until you turn it on.
Average Sales per Customer has By First Order. It splits customers into a Subscriber group, whose first order ever had a subscription item, and a One-Time Customer group. A guest order counts as a One-Time Customer.

How Much of Your History It Covers

Orders imported before By the Numbers recorded subscription plans have no plan on their items, so they count as One-Time. That includes old renewals, until your order history is imported again.

Every report using these controls says how much they cover. It counts the orders an app created with no sales channel, and how many of them are recognized as renewals. When fewer than 95% are, the note becomes a warning.

The count covers the report’s date range. Cohort Repurchase Rate and By First Order look back further, so for them it covers your whole order history.

App-created orders that aren’t renewals, such as claim replacements, are never on a plan. A store with its full history imported again therefore reads just under 100%.

Limits

Subscription plans also sell pre-orders and try-before-you-buy. By the Numbers sees the plan’s name, not its kind, so those checkouts count as First Subscription.
The order type can’t tell a skipped month from a canceled subscription. It only sees the orders a subscription app creates.

What It Means for You

Renewals bill themselves, so they make repeat purchase rate, time between orders and lifetime value look better than your customers’ real buying. Turn on Exclude Renewals to see whether customers come back because they choose to.

Use By Order Type on Average Order Value when you change a subscription discount or bundle. A Renewal average that falls while the One-Time average holds points at the subscription offer, not the store.