CowLover24 | Stripe Developers | Page 1

devout sundialBOT Jan 11, 2023, 9:26 PM

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dawn relic Jan 11, 2023, 9:28 PM

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That makes sense though I don't know if our customer portal supports that functionality unfortunately. I will see if there is a way to configure that or whether there is another low code workaround that might help you there.

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This would definitely be possible if you built a custom page to update the subscriptions but I know that that is a lot more work than linking to the customer portal

stuck lichen Jan 11, 2023, 9:32 PM

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Yes, that would be great. Ideally, we could have it in the customer portal, but I understand the technicalities that come with it. Could you provide a code-based configuration like so? Or resources that I can check out to create this sort of functionality?

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Here is another scenario that is actually very similar. Curious if there is a workaround or if we're stuck in the same situation. So, say we had the same story as before with John. He created his customer with a subscription. But, Instead of it being in "trialing," it was already in "active" status. If we went to update the quantity in the portal by default it would charge him for the additional quantities. For example, his original subscription was $5 an item. At the beginning of the month, he paid $25 for 5 items. Now, in the middle of the month, he added two. Currently what would happen is it would charge him $10 initially. Then Next month we would pay $35. Is there a way to not charge initially and just charge the $35 next billing cycle? This is very similar to the previous scenario so expecting a similar answer just curious if this would be any different.

dawn relic Jan 11, 2023, 9:46 PM

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Good question. Checking in to that second scenario as well

stuck lichen Jan 11, 2023, 9:47 PM

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Awesome, thank you!

dawn relic Jan 11, 2023, 9:53 PM

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Unfortunately it looks like our customer portal can't quite be configured to do that. It has options to not do that extra $10 at all, to charge the $10 immediately, or to put in on the next invoice (so it would be $45 total) https://stripe.com/docs/api/customer_portal/configuration#portal_configuration_object-features-subscription_update-proration_behavior

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I think our doc on upgrading and downgrading subscriptions would be a great start. For your scenario with a trial, all you would have to do would be update the price or quantity in your subscription's items and it would be changed without ending the trial https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/upgrade-downgrade

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For previewing the changes, we have an endpoint to preview what the next invoice will look like given the changes that you want to apply https://stripe.com/docs/api/invoices/upcoming

Stripe API reference – Retrieve an upcoming invoice – curl

Complete reference documentation for the Stripe API. Includes code snippets and examples for our Python, Java, PHP, Node.js, Go, Ruby, and .NET libraries.

stuck lichen Jan 11, 2023, 10:23 PM

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Okay, so for the scenario regarding an active subscription. We were able to remove the immediate charge by unchecking the prorated subscription updates. So, that issue is resolved. Now focusing entirely on the trial scenario. Is there a way to work around the issue by pausing the subscription until a certain point or set invoices to be like pending? Something jank like that?

patent belfry Jan 11, 2023, 10:24 PM

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Hi there 👋 taking over

Can you elaborate on what the desired outcome is when using trials? Be as specific as possible

stuck lichen Jan 11, 2023, 10:24 PM

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Also sidenote, can I like put in a request for a feature like this? Is that a thing? Seems like this would be a scenario other users could have as well and seems to be a not-so difficult task. However, I do understand that development takes time.

stuck lichen Jan 11, 2023, 10:25 PM

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patent belfry Hi there 👋 taking over Can you elaborate on what the desired outcome is when u...

Checkout the original/first message I sent. I think that is very clear and specific.

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If that is not specific enough, I can try to go in more depth.

patent belfry Jan 11, 2023, 10:29 PM

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To try to summarize:
You are wanting the quantity to change during the trial and the customer to not be charged for the updated quantity until the end of the trial. Is that pretty much the full of it?

stuck lichen Jan 11, 2023, 10:30 PM

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Yes exactly that.

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Ideally this could be done within the customer portal. But this seems to not be possible there. Unless, I am missing something.

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To be a little more clear: I want the customer to be able to change the quantity. I am able to change the quantity in the stripe dashboard without charge, but I want the customer to also be able to do that without charge.

patent belfry Jan 11, 2023, 10:37 PM

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Gotcha, yeah unfortunately that doesn't seem possible with the customer portal. For context, the Customer Portal tries to abstract away some of the inherent complexity with Subscriptions, which is awesome, except for in cases like this where it does so at the cost of customizability. I'm happy to put in a feature request for you with the product team, but for the time being you'd have to build a custom Subscription implementation to accomplish this

stuck lichen Jan 11, 2023, 10:43 PM

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Thank you for the update. And yeah that would be great if you could put in a feature request for this sort of thing. I think other people could greatly benefit from it as well. Basically just a way to update subscription quantity with no invoice/automatic charge during "trialing" status. I think it could be another checkbox under the update quantities section or somethin. Do you have any suggestions on building the custom implementation?

patent belfry Jan 11, 2023, 10:46 PM

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Yeah, happy to put in the feature request for you.

As for creating a custom subscription integration, that's a fair amount of work, so I'd start by building a simple prototype and then build on that from there. Here's a quickstart guide to get you going: https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/build-subscriptions?ui=elements

stuck lichen Jan 11, 2023, 11:20 PM

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Great, thank you for doing that. I think our immediate solution is going to be delaying the payment collection until after the trial period. Basically handling the trial period on our own giving them unlimited access during the trial. Then locking access until they put in payment info. Not the most ideal solution, but I think this can keep us on track to get our solution deployed. And we will work to make a more customized integration down the line. Thanks for all the help. The customer service has been great, and we have really been enjoying using the platform. Time to get back to it! Thanks!

patent belfry Jan 11, 2023, 11:27 PM

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Sure thing! I hate giving these kinds of answers, because I want to be able to give easy solutions, but whenever you dig into Subscription customization, things can gain complexity exponentially.

Nonetheless, best of luck. Do drop back in if you find more questions on the horizon

stuck lichen Jan 11, 2023, 11:33 PM

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Sounds good! Thank you for your kind service.

#CowLover24