Recurring Orders feature overview

The Recurring Orders feature lets B2B buyers set up automated repeat purchases directly from the checkout. Once configured, the system places orders automatically at the chosen interval, sends notifications before each execution, and pauses for buyer review when prices change or products become unavailable.

Concepts

Setting up a recurring order

At checkout, an eligible buyer can enable the recurring order setup widget. The buyer selects a cadence (for example, weekly or monthly), a start date, and optionally a schedule name and an interval value for the every N weeks cadence.

When the order is placed, the system:

1. Saves a serialized snapshot of the quote—including products, quantities, prices, shipment method, and payment method.
2. Creates a recurring schedule record in spy_recurring_schedule with the first trigger date resolved from the start date and the cadence.
3. Registers the schedule with the RecurringOrder state machine in the draft state and immediately activates it.

The checkout order itself is placed as usual and is not counted as a recurring execution. The start date determines when the first recurring order is placed:

• If the buyer picks a future date, the first recurring order is placed on that date, and later orders repeat from it at the selected cadence.
• If the start date is today or is not set, the first recurring order is placed one cadence interval later.
• A start date in the past is rejected.

A recurring schedule is only available for quotes that meet all of the following conditions:

• The quote is not locked (not sent for approval).
• The quote does not originate from a Request for Quote (RFQ).
• The customer is not a guest.
• The payment method is invoice-based (invoice, purchaseOnAccount, or a configured equivalent).

Projects can add their own conditions, and features can contribute conditions of their own. With the Purchasing Control feature installed, a quote carrying a budget that requires approval is rejected—see Budgets that require approval cannot be selected.

Cadence types

Schedule lifecycle

The recurring schedule moves through states managed by the RecurringOrder state machine. The following diagram describes the full lifecycle:

Buyer actions

Buyers can perform the following manual actions from the recurring order detail page on the storefront:

Notifications

The system sends the following emails to the buyer. All three use CMS blocks for their HTML and text templates, so the content is editable in the Back Office under Content > Blocks.

The Schedule Grace Period defaults to 48 hours and is configured globally in the Back Office under Configuration > Recurring Orders > General > Schedule. Individual schedules can override it.

Review Required flow

Before placing each order, the system validates the stored quote snapshot against current product and pricing data. If issues are detected, the schedule moves to the review_required state and the buyer receives a review notification email.

The buyer reviews the flagged items on the Review Required page. The following table lists common issue types. The full set of checkout error types that map to each group is configurable through getReviewReasonGroupMap() in OrderExperienceManagementConfig.

Items flagged as unavailable, out of stock, or discontinued are non-purchasable and must be removed or substituted before the order can proceed. Projects can narrow this list through getNonPurchasableReviewReasonGroups() if items of a group should stay purchasable.

Available review actions

Adding products during review

The add-product search bar returns concrete products the buyer can add to the order being placed. For each added product, the buyer selects a shipping address and a shipment method:

• The shipping address choices are grouped by source: the addresses stored with the schedule itself, and the addresses of the buyer’s company business unit. Duplicate addresses are offered once.
• The shipment methods are resolved for the selected address and, in a marketplace setup, for the selected offer.

The following products are not offered in the picker, and are also rejected if they reach the server through a crafted request:

Projects can add their own restrictions. See Install the Recurring Orders feature for the extension points.

Review scope

Each change is applied with a scope:

Before the order is placed, a confirmation modal summarizes the accepted price changes, the removed items, the substituted products, and the original and new order totals.

The following guards apply while reviewing:

• The schedule can only be reviewed in its own currency and price mode. If the buyer has switched either one, the review page asks them to switch back.
• If prices change again between opening the review page and approving it, the buyer is asked to review the updated order before approving.
• If every item is removed, the order cannot be placed—a schedule cannot be executed without items. The buyer can clear this block by adding at least one product before confirming.

Marketplace and shipment support

Recurring schedule items keep their merchant reference and product offer reference, so schedules created in a marketplace setup are re-placed against the same offers. When the buyer adds a product on the Review Required page and the product is sold by several merchants, an offer selector is displayed.

Products added during review must be shippable with a delivery-like shipment type—by default delivery or on-site-service, in that preference order. When an offer or store exposes several supported types, the first one is used. The system resolves the available shipment methods for the added item and rejects products for which no shipment method, availability, or price can be resolved.

Execution history

Each recurring schedule maintains a full execution history. Every significant event is recorded:

Storefront pages

Back Office

Back Office users manage recurring order schedules under Sales > Recurring Order Schedules. The page is read-only—it is intended for oversight and support, not for editing schedules on the buyer’s behalf.

Recurring Order Schedules list

The list shows the following columns: Name, Company, Business Unit, Owner, Status, Frequency, Cycle Total, Next Trigger Date, and Last Execution. It is sorted by next trigger date in ascending order by default, and can be searched by name.

The following filters are available:

Total Committed Recurring Volume

Above the list, the Total Committed Recurring Volume widget shows the recurring order volume of the current month. The total combines two inputs, and the widget shows both the combined figure and the split between them:

Below the figures, a run-rate line summarizes the split—for example, how many orders have already been placed and how many active schedules are still due. When neither input returns anything, the widget reports that there is no recurring order activity for the month.

Totals are grouped by currency, so a multi-currency shop gets one figure per currency. The widget is global—it is not affected by the list filters.

By default, the period covers the whole current calendar month. Projects can narrow it to the remainder of the month instead; the bounds apply to both inputs at once, so the already-placed and still-planned figures always describe the same period.

The forecast is not recalculated on each page load. A scheduled job recalculates it and stores it as a snapshot in spy_recurring_schedule_forecast, and the Back Office reads the stored snapshot. Because of that, the displayed value reflects the last refresh rather than the current second.

Schedule detail view

Opening a schedule shows its configuration, the buyer and company it belongs to, the schedule items with their quantities and merchant names, and a link to the source sales order the schedule was created from. Items that belong to a configurable bundle also show the bundle name.

B2B visibility and permissions

By default, a buyer can only view their own recurring schedules. Company users with additional permissions can view schedules across their organization:

These permissions are registered as company role permissions and assigned in the Back Office under Customers > Company Roles.

Cost centers and budgets

With the Purchasing Control feature installed, a recurring order carries a cost center and a budget:

• The selected cost center and budget are displayed on the recurring order detail page, together with a budget usage summary: the total budget amount, the amount already used, the amount remaining, and a bar showing the used percentage.
• The buyer can change them when editing the schedule and when approving a review. In both forms, selecting a cost center and a budget is mandatory.
• Only active cost centers of the buyer’s company business unit are offered, and only in the currency of the recurring order. If the cost center assigned to a schedule is later deactivated, it is no longer displayed on the detail page and the buyer has to select an active one the next time they edit the schedule or approve a review.
• The selected budget must belong to the selected cost center. The form is rejected if it does not.

Budgets that require approval cannot be selected

A recurring order is placed unattended by the state machine, so it cannot wait for a human approval decision at placement time. For that reason, budgets whose enforcement rule requires approval when the budget is exceeded are not offered in the recurring order budget selector.

The same rule is enforced at checkout. If a quote that is being set up as a recurring order carries a budget with the require approval enforcement rule, checkout is blocked and the buyer is asked to select another budget. This check applies regardless of the quote grand total and of the remaining budget amount—the budget does not have to be exceeded for the block to take effect. A regular, non-recurring checkout is not affected.

Only budgets bound to the following enforcement rules can be selected:

If a cost center has only approval-bound budgets, no budget choices are rendered for it. Buyers who need to assign such a cost center to a recurring order must first have a budget with the block or warn enforcement rule set up for it.

Without the Purchasing Control feature, these fields are not rendered and recurring orders behave as described in the rest of this document.

Attention banner

When a buyer has schedules in the paused, review_required, or failed states, an attention banner is displayed on the storefront. The banner shows the count of schedules requiring attention and provides quick-access links to filter the recurring order list by each status.

Related documents

• Install the Recurring Orders feature