Subscriptions

Subscriptions allow you to automatically charge customers on a recurring schedule for predictable recurring revenue.

Understanding Subscriptions

What You Will Learn

This section covers what subscriptions are and how they work, how Plans and Subscriptions relate, subscription lifecycle and statuses, payment retry logic and delinquency handling, and how to create, manage, suspend, reactivate, and cancel subscriptions.

What Is a Subscription

A subscription is an active billing agreement between you and a customer that automatically processes payments on a recurring schedule. Unlike one-time transactions or invoices, subscriptions continue charging until they are completed, cancelled, or suspended.

Subscriptions work like a gym membership or streaming service — customers sign up once, and payments are charged automatically at regular intervals.

Why Use Subscriptions

Subscriptions are ideal for businesses offering ongoing products or services, including memberships (gyms, associations), SaaS products, subscription boxes, retainers or maintenance services, and premium content access.

Subscriptions provide predictable recurring revenue, automated billing and retries, reduced manual work, and improved cash-flow forecasting. For customers, subscriptions provide automatic and convenient payments, no missed due dates, uninterrupted service, and easy subscription management.

Subscription Components

Customer: every subscription is linked to a customer profile containing the customer name and email address, the securely stored payment method, and billing and shipping addresses, if applicable.

Subscription Name: a descriptive identifier to help you manage subscriptions. By default, this field is auto-generated (for example, SUB-001). The name can be customized during creation and editing (for example, "Jane Doe – Premium Membership").

Plan: plans define how customers are billed. Each Plan includes the amount, currency, frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and so forth), duration (fixed number of billing cycles or ongoing), and an optional setup fee. Plans are reusable templates; one Plan can power many subscriptions.

Start Date: the start date determines when billing begins. Charges process at 2:00 a.m. local time.

Subscription ID: a system-generated and unique ID that is used for reporting and support. Subscription IDs cannot be edited.

How Subscriptions Work

Once active, the system automatically:

1. Processes the first payment on the start date.
2. Calculates the next billing date.
3. Charges the customer on each billing cycle.
4. Sends payment receipts by email.
5. Repeats until completed, cancelled, or suspended.

Plans Compared to Subscriptions

This table compares Plans and Subscriptions:

Subscription Status Lifecycle

Pending → Active → Delinquent → Suspended → Cancelled / Completed

These are the subscription statuses and their descriptions:

Delinquent Subscriptions and Retry Logic

When a payment fails, the system automatically retries based on billing frequency:

If retries succeed, the subscription returns to Active status. If all retries fail, the subscription is suspended. Contact customers early when payments fail to avoid churn.

Editing Rules

These are the fields you can edit based on subscription timing:

Core billing details are locked after the first payment. To change Plan or price, cancel and create a new subscription.

Timing Restrictions

Subscriptions cannot be suspended or cancelled within 10 minutes before or after payment processing. This prevents billing conflicts.

Create Subscriptions

You can create subscriptions for recurring billing.

Before you create the subscription, you need an active plan, a customer with a payment method, and the start date.

Result: The subscription is created. If the start date is today, the subscription is active immediately. If the start date is in the future, the subscription is pending.

View Subscription Details

Result: The subscription details panel appears with the customer information, plan and billing details, the subscription status and dates, and payment history for the last 12 months.

Suspend Subscriptions

Use suspension for temporary pauses in a subscription.

When you suspend a subscription, billing stops immediately. All subscription data is preserved, and you can reactivate the subscription.

Result: The subscription is suspended and billing stops immediately.

Reactivate Subscriptions

Reactivate a subscription that was suspended manually or because of a payment failure.

Result: The subscription returns to Active status and billing resumes on the original cycle. No backcharges apply.

Cancel Subscriptions

Cancellation stops billing permanently and cannot be undone. Create a new subscription to resume billing.

Use cancellation when the customer ends service, when switching plans, or when service is discontinued.

Result: The subscription is cancelled permanently. No automatic refunds are issued. Issue refunds through the Transactions panel if needed. Proration depends on your terms.