17 posts tagged with "Subscriptions"

MINOR Subscriber Pause and Resume

If the pricing option allows it, subscribers can now pause and resume their own subscriptions.

What's New?

• Self-service pause and resume - The can_pause and can_resume pricing option fields now control subscriber pause and resume. A merchandizer can always pause or resume a subscription
• Who paused a subscription - The new paused_by field records who paused the subscription: subscriber, merchandizer, or dunning. Only merchandizer, store, or organization-scoped callers can see this field
• Dunning pauses stay with the merchandizer - A subscriber cannot resume a subscription that dunning paused or suspended. Subscriptions cannot tell who paused a subscription before this release, so a subscriber cannot resume those either. A merchandizer must resume these subscriptions

For details see:

• Managing Subscriptions
• Create a subscription state

MINOR Proration Refunds for Negative Prorations

A plan or pricing option change that results in a negative proration can now issue a refund instead of being rejected. A proration is negative when the credit for the unused time on the old plan is more than the cost of the new plan.

What's New?

• Configurable per proration policy - To allow proration refunds, turn on Allow automatic refunds for negative prorations in Commerce Manager, or set allow_negative_proration_refund to true through the API. The default is false, so existing proration policies continue to reject negative prorations
• Automatic gateway refund - If a proration policy allows refunds, Subscriptions refunds the negative amount through the payment gateway. The refund is against the payment for the previous invoice
• Refund details on the subscription - The new last_refund_id and last_refund_amount fields show the most recent proration refund for a subscription
• Preview the refund - The proration preview now returns would_refund and refund_amount. It also returns the new rejection reasons refund_not_possible and refund_disallowed_by_policy. The preview no longer returns the negative_amount rejection reason

For details see:

• Negative Prorations and Refunds
• Creating Proration Policies
• Update a proration policy
• Preview a subscription proration

MINOR Proration Preview Endpoint

You can now preview the cost impact of a subscription plan or pricing option change before submitting it, so subscribers can see what they'll be charged or refunded ahead of time.

What's New?

• Proration preview endpoint - Compute the proration amounts a prospective plan or pricing option change would produce, without persisting anything or affecting billing
• Clear rejection reasons - A response with would_prorate: false isn't an error - it tells you why the change wouldn't result in a proration (for example, no_change or negative_amount)

For details see:

• Preview a subscription proration

MINOR Cancel Pending Subscriptions Before Go-Live

Subscriptions that haven't yet reached their go_live_after date can now be canceled directly, without needing to wait for the subscription to become active.

What's New?

• Immediate cancellation for pending subscriptions - Canceling a pending subscription (one with no invoices yet) is always immediate, since there's no billing period in progress to defer to
• Self-service for subscribers - Subscribers can cancel their own pending subscription without needing to set the cancel_immediately flag

For details see:

• Create a subscription state

MINOR Improved Subscription and Invoice Management

We've made it easier to review subscriptions and invoices in Commerce Manager, with quicker access to details, clearer invoice context, and a smoother browsing experience.

What's New?

• Stripe payment ID in invoices - The invoices table now displays the associated Stripe payment ID, so you can quickly reconcile payments
• Subscription details in a sheet - Subscription details now open in a side sheet instead of a separate page, showing a focused version of the Subscriber view scoped to a single subscription and its invoices
• Richer subscription sheet - The sheet now includes subscriber details, a link to the subscriber, and that subscription's invoices in one place
• Clearer invoice context - In the Subscriber panel, each invoice now shows which subscription it belongs to via a subscription link/column and on the "last invoice" card
• Pagination fix - Fixed a bug where invoice pagination would reset when closing the sheet

For details see:

• Viewing Invoices
• Managing Active Subscriptions

MAJOR Improvements to Subscription Offerings.

We’ve made some changes to the way subscription offerings are represented to more closely align with customer requirements and to increase the flexibility of offerings.

What's Changed?

• Subscription products are now called plans
• What was previously called a plan is now a pricing option
• Before these changes if more than one product existed in an offering they were treated as a bundle. Now a subscriber must pick a single plan from the subscription offering, increasing flexibility and reducing the number of subscription offerings that need to be maintained.
• Pricing options are assigned to plans so that each plan may have its own pricing options or a subset of pricing options.

For details see: Subscription Offerings

MAJOR Subscriptions now supports external payment methods. External payment methods are payment methods not offered by Elastic Path Subscriptions (such as Elastic Path Payments powered by Stripe or Authorize.net), but they can still be integrated with Subscriptions, giving you more flexibility and choice when selecting payment methods. For more information, see External Payments.

MINOR In Subscriptions, you can now import your subscription offerings, as well as products, plans, and subscribers. For more information, see Subscription Imports.

MINOR In Subscriptions, you can now filter your offerings by proration policy ID. This is useful if you want to understand the offerings affected when updating or deleting a proration policy. For more information, see List Offerings.

MINOR For a subscription with a pending state, you can now configure a go_live_after date. This is useful as it ensures both the subscription provider and subscriber are clear about when a subscription officially begins. For more information, see Creating a pending subscription.

MINOR Subscriptions use client credentials to enable changes to subscriptions, providing you with the flexibility to change your subscribers subscriptions at any time. For more information, see Proration Policies.

MINOR In Subscriptions, we can now have a subscription status of Pending. This is useful as it allows subscriptions to be imported without the risk of the original platform and the Elastic Path Subscriptions platform processing payments for the same billing period. For more information, see Subscription Imports.

MAJOR Proration and Dunning are now available for subscriptions.

• Proration is the adjustment of charges or credits on a subscribers account based on the amount of time a service is used. Proration ensures that subscribers are only charged for the actual time they use the service, whether they upgrade, downgrade, start, or cancel their subscription partway through a billing cycle. This means fair billing for your subscribers and provides you with the flexibility to change your subscribers subscriptions at any time. For more information, see Proration Policies.
• Dunning rules describe the process for collecting outstanding payments for recurring subscriptions and what action is taken after the defined number of payment attempts have failed to successfully take payment. For example, if a customer's payment fails, Subscriptions automatically retries the payment up to X times over Y days, reducing churn and increasing revenue recovery. For more information, see Dunning Rules.

MINOR In Subscriptions, a new card_id attribute is available. You can use the card_id and customer_id attributes to program your front-end implementation to allow your preferred payment service provider to update a subscription with new card details, enabling you to easily manage your subscription charges. For more information, see Card Declines.

MAJOR Subscriptions now supports collecting payments using Authorize.Net. For more information, see Using Authorize.Net.

MINOR You can now track your Subscriptions billing, payment and tax operations using reports, allowing you to manage your finances more effectively. For more information, see Billing, Tax & Payment Reports.

MAJOR In Subscriptions, events are now observable. Events are actions that occur in Subscriptions such as a subscriber changing their address or a subscription changing from active to inactive. This enables you to integrate Subscriptions with external systems like enterprise resource planning, fulfilment and other systems. For more information, see Subscriptions API Documentation.

MINOR When adding subscriptions to a cart, you can now add tax items, allowing you to separate tax from the price of a subscription. For more information, see Add Subscription to a Cart.

MAJOR Elastic Path Subscriptions is now available. Elastic Path Subscriptions allows you to offer your customers subscriptions and recurring billing for your products and services. Elastic Path Subscriptions gives you the flexibility to pause, update, or reactivate your subscription offerings, change billing cycles, and apply discounts. You can create subscriptions using the Elastic Path Subscriptions API or Commerce Manager. For more information see Subscriptions.