Glossary of Recharge terms

Get familiar with Recharge through the glossary of terms below. This glossary defines key terms you need to know as you build on the Recharge platform.

Addresses

The Addresses resource represents the destination a customer has chosen to ship their Recharge subscription or Onetime order. Subscriptions are tied to each customer address, and customers can have multiple addresses. There can be many subscriptions per address. To learn more see Addresses.

BigCommerce Integration

This version of checkout is hosted by BigCommerce. When customers checkout, they are redirected to a checkout page hosted by BigCommerce.

Bulk Update

Refers to the process of updating multiple subscriptions at once. This process involves updating subscriptions that match your search criteria and updating them new information, using the Recharge Bulk Updater tool.

Charge

A Charge represents the financial transaction linked to the purchase of an item (past or future). This includes transaction that were already processed or the representation of an upcoming transaction. Completed charges have an order associated with them. See Charges to learn more.

Checkout

The checkout is the final stage of the purchasing process on your storefront, where a customer confirms their selection, provides payment and shipping info, and completes the transaction.

Checkout API resource

The Checkout API contains all the information needed to add a customer, add their address, create a subscription and take payment from the customer. This resource is only available for Custom integrations.

Customer portal

A page where customers can log in and manage their subscription information. Recharge hosts this page in through an out-of-the-box integration, however, you can create your own customer portal using Recharge APIs.

Customers API

The Customers API resource contains information about a shopper. The Customer record contains a unique email address, as no two customers in a store can have the same address. The Customer record also contains the customer's unique Recharge ID, and the customer ID from your e-commerce platform. One Customer record can have many associated Address records. For more information, see Customers.

Discounts API

The Discounts API on Recharge refers to any discounts created in the Recharge Merchant Portal or via API. It does not refer to discounts from an external e-commerce platform.

Merchant portal

The Recharge admin dashboard where you can configure your subscription products, settings, and customer portal. You can also use the merchant portal to manage customers, orders, and subscriptions. The merchant portal is where you will set up a payment method, add a store currency, set up shipping and more. For details on specific settings, see Other Settings.

One-time products

A one-time product means a product a customer has selected to purchase only once, rather than on a recurring subscription cycle. In the Recharge Merchant Portal, you can choose whether or not to allow one-time purchases. To learn more about the Onetimes API resource, see this Article.

Order

The Order API contains information about a subscription, charge, customer, and billing address. Orders are created after a Charge is successfully processed.

Out-of-the-box

A feature on Recharge that works without special configuration or modification.

Purchase item

Purchase items represent a subscription purchase or a one-time purchase. Purchase items are always associated with an address.

Subscription Purchase Item
Subscription purchase items are recurring purchases. You can use the Subscriptions resource to add, remove or modify subscription purchase items.

Prepaid purchase items represent purchases where a single charge results in multiple orders. When a customer purchases a prepaid subscription, Recharge generates queued orders that represent the future remaining orders. You can identify a prepaid subscription purchase item by having a charge_interval_frequency that is greater than the order_interval_frequency.

One-time purchase item
A one-time purchase is when a customer purchases a non-recurring item. They can appear alongside subscription purchase items. However, there are no future charges for one-time items. Onetimes can be added to future queued charges or on their own using the Onetimes resource.

Recharge Checkout

A checkout page hosted by Recharge. Customers of our out-of-the-box Shopify integration that signed up before November 2020 are using this version of Recharge. For information about getting started using this version of checkout, see Getting Started with the Recharge Checkout.

Recharge Payment Methods

Recharge Payment Methods (RCPM) provide customers additional flexibility by allowing multiple addresses to be linked to the same payment method. With Recharge Payment Methods, you can store multiple payment vehicles (credit/debit cards, an eWallet, PayPal, etc) for a single customer. The customer then chooses to associate one of the saved Payment Methods to each of their Addresses. To learn more about Recharge Payments, see Payments

Shopify Checkout

The Shopify hosted checkout. When customers checkout, they are redirected to a checkout page hosted by Shopify. Customers using our out-of-the-box Shopify integration who signed up for Recharge after November 2020 are using this checkout, with some exceptions.

Subscription widget

The subscription widget is the element on a page that displays the Recharge subscription options for a given product. You can configure the options customers have for subscription frequency, whether they can purchase the item as a onetime product, and more in the Merchant Portal. For details see Modifying the subscription widget.