Managing Subscriptions

You can manage your subscribers subscriptions. You can pause, cancel and resume subscriptions. For example, a customer might pause a meal delivery service during a vacation, or want to resume a gym membership without having to start over with a new gym membership. Having a simple, straightforward process for pausing, canceling and resuming subscriptions leads to customer trust and satisfaction, which in turn improves customer retention and recovery.

Below is an example of what happens when pausing or canceling and resuming a subscription, using deferred cancellation, the default behavior described in Cancellation Types.

1. The subscriber pauses or cancels the subscription.
   • The subscription status is Active.
   • The subscription state is either paused or canceled, depending on the action you chose.
2. When the next billing run is due, the billing run checks the subscription state. If the subscription state is paused or canceled then no invoice is created and the subscription status is updated to inactive. The plan remains active until the next billing run, which is determined by your subscription cycle. For example, if your subscription cycle is 6 months and you pause the subscription after 3 months, the plan remains active until the next billing run, which will occur in 3 months.
3. Subsequent billing runs skip that subscription completely as the subscription status is inactive.
4. If the subscriber resumes the subscription, when the next billing run is due, the billing run checks the subscription state. As the subscription state is no longer paused or canceled, then the billing run creates an invoice.
5. The payment run processes the invoice. Once the payment succeeds then the payment run updates the status of the subscription to active.

Subscriber Pause and Resume

A merchandizer can pause or resume any subscription. A subscriber can pause or resume their own subscription only when the plan allows it. You control this with the Allow customers to pause and resume their subscription if they are using this plan rule. See Creating Plans.

Subscriptions records who paused a subscription in the paused_by field. The value is subscriber, merchandizer, or dunning. Subscriptions clears this field when the subscription resumes.

A subscriber cannot resume a subscription in these cases:

• Dunning paused the subscription after failed payments.
• The subscription was suspended.
• The subscription was paused before Subscriptions started to record paused_by. Subscriptions cannot tell who paused these subscriptions, so it treats them like subscriptions that dunning paused.

In these cases, a merchandizer must resume the subscription.

Cancellation Types

When you select Cancel on an active or paused subscription, Commerce Manager asks you to choose how the subscription should end:

• Cancel at period end: The default, deferred behavior described in the example above. The subscription stays active until the next billing run, then moves to inactive.
• Cancel immediately: The subscription moves to inactive right away, instead of waiting for the next billing run.

If a subscription is already set to cancel at period end and you want to end it sooner, select Cancel again and choose Cancel immediately to complete the cancellation now.

If a subscription is still pending, before it has gone live, canceling it is always immediate, since there is nothing yet to bill or refund.

note

Canceling a subscription does not process a refund. If your policy requires a refund, refund the relevant payment from Invoicing first. See Refunding a Payment.

You can either go to Subscriptions to pause, cancel or resume a subscription or to Subscribers, if you know the subscriber whose subscription you want to pause, cancel or resume.

1. Log in to Commerce Manager.

2. Select either:

   • Subscriptions > Subscribers. A list of all subscribers is displayed.
   • Subscriptions > Subscriptions. A list of all subscriptions is displayed.

3. Either:

   • Select the subscribers whose subscriptions you want to pause, cancel and/or resume. A list of the subscribers subscriptions are displayed.
   • Select the subscriptions you want to pause, cancel and/or resume. A list of the subscriptions are displayed.

4. Select the subscription you want to pause, cancel and/or resume.

5. Select:

   • Pause to temporarily halt a subscription.
   • Cancel to permanently terminate a subscription. See Cancellation Types for the available options.
   • Resume to resume a paused or cancelled subscription.