Empty Shipping or Payment Method on Autoship Schedule

Default Values on Autoship Schedules

Autoship Schedules originate from a customer's online checkout.  In the checkout, any products with selected Autoship Frequencies will be added to an Autoship Schedule for each frequency.

Each Autoship Schedule created from the customer's checkout will, by default, include the Products, Shipping Method, Payment Method and Coupon.

When the Autoship Schedule processes (on its next ship date), WC Autoship will attempt to automatically process the order the same way it is processed in your store's cart.

When this automated order processing occurs, WC Autoship will attempt to apply the rules that apply to your WooCommerce cart including:

• Product Availability
• Payment Method
• Shipping Method
• Coupon Settings (if a coupon was used at checkout or added prior to the next ship date)

If any of the Product, Payment or Shipping fields is empty, the scheduled order will fail to process.  This failure will appear in the Autoship Log report (found in WP-Admin > Autoship > Log) and an email message will be sent to the customer to alert them that their scheduled Autoship order failed.

Why a Payment Method Field May Be Empty

There are usually 3 reasons why a payment is empty on an Autoship Schedule:

1. Tokenization is not properly enabled for your WooCommerce payment gateway integration
   1. You can read more about requirements for Payment Tokenization here.
2. Tokenization is enabled for your integration, but a plugin setting may be preventing payment methods from being saved.
   1. This is sometimes the case with integrations like Stripe by WooCommerce; the setting "Enable Payment via Saved Cards" must be enabled in order for payment methods to be tokenized and saved for future Autoship orders.
3. A customer's payment method has been changed or removed
   1. It's important to note that saved payment methods are a WooCommerce feature that the customer has access to within My Account > Payment Methods
   2. Customers have the ability to login to My Account and manage their Payment Methods at will, so there may be times in which a customer has removed a payment method that was being used on an Autoship Schedule

Why a Shipping Method Field May Be Empty

There are usually 3 reasons why a shipping method is empty on an Autoship Schedule:

1. A shipping rule that applied successfully at checkout no longer applies to the items in the Autoship Schedule
   1. Customers can checkout with products that are scheduled for Autoship and one-time purchases, so it may be that the shipping rule doesn't apply to only the items in the scheduled Autoship
2. A coupon applied successfully at Autoship offered a shipping method, but the coupon rules no longer apply to the scheduled Autoship order
   1. This may be the case if a coupon has usage limitations on it that will not apply to the scheduled Autoship order
   2. For example: a free shipping coupon is used at checkout, but has a single use restriction and will not apply when WC Autoship attempts to process the order again
      1. In this case, the free shipping method may no longer be available and cause the shipping method field to be empty (the customer or store admin will need to select a new shipping method on the Autoship Schedule)
3. A shipping method is no longer available
   1. Some stores configure their shipping methods after customers have used those methods for checkout and Autoship Schedules.
   2. If a shipping method is removed that was already selected for existing Autoship Schedules, then this will result in an empty shipping method field on the affected Autoship Schedules (the customer or store admin will need to select a new shipping method on the Autoship Schedule)