#neil-subscription-dashboard
edgy hare
Hello @last perch !
when creating a subscription for a customer on the stripe portal
Can I ask you to be a bit more specific about what you mean here? Usually the "portal" refers to our CustomerPortal product, which never creates a Subscription (it can only modify existing ones)
edgy hare
Do you have an example Subscription id I can look at?
edgy hare
neil-subscription-dashboard
last perch
sub_1NaLlAJEwy6QeeYASNkwI5Zs
that's a test subscription, I can also provide a prod subscription
edgy hare
Okay so you created the subscription with send_invoice as the collection_method which is when you send an email and they have X days to pay. Those are always active upfront so it's all totally expected
last perch
Here's a prod subscription ID sub_1Na27NJEwy6QeeYAuOdDRrJy
okay interesting, is there a way to make that not be active until they pay
while also maintaining a way to email the invoice to the customer
edgy hare
no that's impossible and wouldn't make sense
you can have a monthly Subscription and the end user can have 90 days to pay
so the Subscription would stay inactive for 3 full months? It wouldn't really make sense conceptually
last perch
We use subscription to control access to our service... We check that the subscription is active and then grant access to the customer once it is. If the subscription is active right away, then we're giving access to the user even before they pay, which is problematic for us. Is there an alternate implementation that you would suggest?
edgy hare
@last perch I'm sorry but it really feels like you're misunderstanding the concept of send_invoice. This is for businesses that give you 30/60/90 days to pay but deliver the service upfront. Extremely common for B2B for example
if you don't want that and want them to pay first you really should not be using this option at all
Imagine that you ask Stripe to pay for a service, as a company we have a dedicated finance team that handles those payments. Usually you give us access to your service now and then in 60 days we pay you for that first month via wire transfer for example
and same for the next invoice and the next one
If this isn't what your business offers then you should use the other type of collection_method which is called charge_automatically
last perch
yes, but what if the customer does not have a payment method on file yet? Then charge_automatically doesnt work
violet jettyBOT
edgy hare
@last perch then you shouldn't create a Subscription from the Dashboard at all in this case really
or do a trial period first
last perch
Well I'm working with non-technical people who prefer to create new subscriptions from the dashboard
how does a trial period help?
edgy hare
Mostly what you are trying to do is impossible. That's not an option we support or will support.
So you have 3 options
1/ Handle the fact that it's active upfront, look at the underlying Invoice and check when it's paid
2/ Do not use the Dashboard at all, build a UI to handle this logic and collect card details or payment method details from the end customer first, or send them to Checkout for example to start a Subscription
3/ Hack things by creating a Subscription with a trial so that it's not active upfront and then send an email to the end customer to come and provide payment method details upfront ahead of the first Invoice that happens at the end of the trial
I can't think of an alternative beyond this unfortunately
last perch
Okay thank you I appreaciate the help