Platform
Overview of the Supercycle platform and how it works with Shopify
Supercycle and Shopify
We’ve built Supercycle natively within Shopify, so that you can offer rental and resale alongside your retail experience.
This gives merchants the full power of Shopify, benefiting from the as well as the 3rd party apps and integrations that Shopify has to offer.
| Shopify | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Online Store | Easily add to a theme via app blocks. | |
| POS | In progress. | |
| Checkout | Yes, including support for Shopify Payments. | |
| Returns | In progress. | |
| Customer Accounts | In progress. | |
| Flow | On the roadmap. | |
| Markets | On the roadmap. | |
| B2B | On the roadmap. |
Platform overview
Methods
Methods are the various ways you can charge for the same item multiple times. Supercycle currently supports four methods:
- Calendar - charge for a set number of days
- Subscription - charge on a recurring basis, until returned
- Membership - charge for an allowance of items on a recurring basis, allowing items to be swapped in and out
- Resale - selling not-new items, often uniquely identified by serial numbers
Inventory
Once a product is imported into Supercycle, inventory management for that product is disabled in Shopify and fully managed by Supercycle instead. This allows us to track individual items and manage their availability accurately, essential for models like rental, where multiple orders can be placed against a single item across different time slots.
Items (with serials)
Items represent individual units in your inventory. Each item can be assigned a unique serial number, enabling detailed tracking of its condition, status, and usage history over time.
This serial number can also be physically attached to the item using an RFID tag, barcode, or QR code, making it easy to identify and manage across different systems or touchpoints.
Availability
Ally, our allocation algorithm, manages product availability by automatically assigning new reservations to the most optimal item. This ensures maximum future availability and flexibility for upcoming customers.
Orders
Supercycle uses native Shopify orders, meaning whatever a customer checks out with becomes their order. This can include a mix of rental products with different rental methods, alongside retail items.
For any product in the order that is managed by Supercycle, a reservation is automatically created. An order with multiple items will create multiple reservations.
Reservations
Reservations are assigned an item and tracks the fulfillment and receival of that item.
Returns
Returns are managed independently of Shopify’s return system. Shopify enforces a 1:1 relationship between orders and returns, which doesn’t align with how rental works, especially when customers rent multiple items with overlapping return dates, such as in membership rentals.
When a customer initiates a return through the customer portal, Supercycle creates a return that isn’t tied to a specific Shopify order. This allows for more flexible and accurate return handling.