Manage subscriptions
Running subscriptions is four recurring jobs: watching the renewal window, handling changes, processing cancellations correctly, and chasing money. The last one is the only place in this whole area where you have to design a process for failure.
The renewal window
A renewal is not an event on the renewal date. It is a window that opens well before it.
| Days before term end | What should happen |
|---|---|
| Notice period + 30 | Internal review: is this account worth renewing on the same terms? |
| Notice period + 14 | Renewal notice to the customer, naming the date a cancellation must arrive |
| Notice period | The deadline. After this, the subscription renews |
| 0 | Renewal takes effect; the new term and the new price start |
The middle row is the one people skip, and it is the one that keeps you out of arguments. A customer who receives a notice fourteen days before their deadline cannot credibly say they did not know. A customer who finds out from the invoice can, and they are usually right.
If you are raising the price at renewal, it belongs in that same notice, with the old and the new amount side by side. A price increase discovered on an invoice costs more in goodwill than it earns.
Mid-term changes
Handle the three kinds differently. See Subscriptions for why.
- Upgrade: more seats, more devices, a higher plan. Effective immediately, billed pro rata for the remainder of the cycle. Do not make the customer wait for something they are paying more for.
- Downgrade: effective at the next renewal, not now. The term commitment is the thing they agreed to.
- Plan change: treat as a cancellation of one and a start of the other, and be explicit about which term applies afterwards. A "switch" that silently restarts a twelve-month commitment is the kind of thing that ends up in front of a lawyer.
Whatever you decide, write the effective date on the change. "We changed it in March" is not an answer when the invoice is queried in September.
Cancellations
Two cases, and they are not the same conversation.
Inside the notice period. The cancellation is valid, and the subscription runs to the end of the current term and then stops. Confirm in writing, with the end date, and tell the customer what happens to their data and access on that date.
Outside the notice period. The cancellation is late and the subscription renews. You now have a commercial decision, not an administrative one: enforce the term, or accept the cancellation as a goodwill gesture. Both are defensible. What is not defensible is enforcing it silently and letting the customer find out through dunning.
Record the reason on every cancellation. Six months of reasons is the cheapest product research you will ever do, and it is what turns a churn number into something you can act on. See Recurring revenue health.
When the invoice is not paid
In B2B this is rarely a declined card. It is an invoice that aged past its terms, which means dunning: a sequence of escalating steps with dates on it, not a switch.
A workable ladder for a subscription:
| Step | When | Action | Service state |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Terms + 3 days | Friendly reminder to the buyer contact | Running |
| 2 | Terms + 14 days | Formal reminder, copy to their accounting | Running |
| 3 | Terms + 30 days | Escalation to your Vertrieb; call the account | Running, flagged |
| 4 | Terms + 45 days | Suspension warning with a date | Running |
| 5 | Terms + 60 days | Suspend the service; keep the data | Suspended |
| 6 | Case by case | Terminate for cause; the debt survives | Ended |
Three things about that ladder are worth arguing over internally before you need it:
Suspension is not termination. A suspended subscription keeps billing unless your terms say otherwise, and the customer's data stays. Terminating for non-payment ends the contract and usually ends your chance of collecting.
Most non-payment is not a payment problem. It is a disputed invoice, a missing purchase-order number, or an invoice that went to the wrong address at the customer. Step 2 exists to find that out. Suspending a customer who was never sent a correct invoice is an expensive way to lose an account.
Do not suspend without the account owner knowing. A large customer suspended automatically on day 60 becomes a call to your Geschäftsführung on day 60.
Where you find the state today: an order whose payment_status reads failed,
or that is still open past its terms, is the signal. Payment terms per
customer are maintained where the rest of the customer record lives. See
Payment terms and, for accounts that
should not be trading at all,
Block a customer.
What to check, monthly
- Every subscription renewing in the next 90 days has had its renewal notice sent.
- No subscription is past its renewal date without having renewed or ended.
- The dunning list is worked to the step it is supposed to be at, not stuck at step 2 for four accounts.
- Cancellations recorded in the last month all have a reason on them.
Next
- Recurring revenue health — the numbers this feeds.
- Common problems — when a run or a charge does not happen.
Manage standing orders
Skip one run, pause indefinitely, change the basket, end it — and what to do on the morning a run did not produce an order.
Act on reorder suggestions
The three routes from a suggestion to an order — buyer self-service, a rep's call reason, and auto-conversion — and the rules that keep the third one out of trouble.