Update a subscription contract

Subscription contracts often require updates, such as when a customer needs to update their payment method or requests a change to their subscription.

This guide shows you how to manage and update your existing subscription contracts by creating and applying a discount code to a contract.

Requirements

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Your app can make authenticated requests to the GraphQL Admin API.
Your app has the read_own_subscription_contracts and write_own_subscription_contracts access scopes. Learn how to configure your access scopes using Shopify CLI.
You've created products and product variants in your development store.
You've created a subscription contract.

Step 1: Query the available contracts on the store

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To view the available contracts on a store, you can query subscriptionContracts. In the following example, the response body returns the first ten available contracts, including the status of the contract and information about the customer, billing policy, and delivery policy.

For a list of possible statuses, refer to SubscriptionContractSubscriptionStatus.

Step 2: Create a draft of an existing contract

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When a customer updates their payment method or makes a change to their subscription, you need to update the appropriate subscription contract.

To update a subscription contract, use the subscriptionContractUpdate mutation and supply the subscription contract ID. The call returns a draft with the existing state of the contract.

Step 3: Update the subscription draft

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After retrieving the draft ID, you can begin making edits to the contract draft. Edits to the contract draft can be made incrementally. Changes to the contract draft aren't made live until the draft is committed.

Create a subscription discount code

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Use the discountCodeBasicCreate mutation to create a basic discount code. To specify that the discount can be applied on subscriptions, set the appliesOnSubscription field to true:

Apply the discount code

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Use the subscriptionDraftDiscountCodeApply mutation to apply the discount code to the subscription draft:

Step 4: Commit the subscription draft

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When you commit the subscription draft, the changes that you've made become active on the subscription contract for which the draft was created. You can call the subscriptionDraft query to review the information on the subscription draft before committing it.

After you're satisfied with your updates, you can call the subscriptionDraftCommit mutation to commit your changes to the contract:

Next steps

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Learn how to manage and edit billing cycles, including updating the schedule and contract information for a billing cycle, skipping a billing cycle or changing the contract information for one period.