#jwage
split hedge
glass compass
Is this "Extension" just a one-time payment? If so, you can introduce a year of trial which pushes the billing cycle anchor by a year
agile mortar
Well, I thought about doing it this way with a manual invoice/payment and using the trial functionality, but it throws a wrench in everything else related to prorating calculations and all that.
glass compass
Can you elaborate? Just to be on the same page.
An example would help too
agile mortar
Digging through my notes:
I might have found a way to replicate the TradingView behavior, I can set a trial end date when a customer extends their plan and I can disable proration, so it’ll bill them for another 12 months and I set the trial end date to +12 months from the end of the current billing period end
This “hack” doesn’t work, it breaks down if a user tries to upgrade their plan later, using the trial to extend the billing renewal date breaks the proration. I guess because they are technically in a trial, when a user goes to upgrade, it bills them for the full amount of the plan they are upgrading to instead of prorating it.
But generally, the solution isn't great because then the invoices make mention of trials and all this stuff that confuses the customer.
I've asked this question on support a few times and they've told me it wasn't supported but I just wanted to make sure we weren't missing something. They said they added it as a feature request.
Or maybe there is another more elegant work around.
glass compass
There's not unfortunately. There's only a couple ways to change the billing cycle anchor
1/ either change it to current time
2/ or add a trial for future time
Thinking about if you could incorporate subscription schedule anywhere but the only option I could think of is to rely on trials
You could create a negative invoice item
agile mortar
Got it. I use #1 right now, which is ok, I disallow someone from extending their yearly subscription until they've been with us for at least 1 month. And it sends billing_cycle_anchor = now resetting the clock and billing them a prorated amount with the coupon code applied. So they get some additional months at the discounted rate, but not another full 12 months.
glass compass
Jan 1, 2023 - Customer paid for a yearly sub
Feb 1, 2023 - Customer paid for discounted rate upgrade
You create a negative invoice item for the yearly sub price
Jan 1, 2024 - Renewal invoice amount gets zeroed out with negative invoice item
agile mortar
#2 caused issues when they try to upgrade to a higher plan later
glass compass
but yeah no elegant solution for prorations 😦
you'd manually need to calculate that
agile mortar
👍 I will leave it how it is for now until there is a better native solution available.
glass compass
Yup, sorry! couldn't offer a better alternative
agile mortar
no worries. thanks!