#vipera74
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Hello! We'll be with you shortly. Below are links to other discussions we've had with you in the past week in case you want to review that information. If your question is related to one of these previous discussions, please provide a comprehensive summary of the current state and what you need help with now. We help many users simultaneously, so a summary allows us to resolve your issue as soon as possible.
- viper-disableprorations-customerportal, 18 minutes ago, 27 messages
- viper-invoice-events, 46 minutes ago, 21 messages
- vipera74, 1 day ago, 14 messages
- vipera74, 1 day ago, 7 messages
- vipera74, 2 days ago, 6 messages
- vipera74, 2 days ago, 6 messages
and 1 more
unreal fractal
After disabling prorations with this setting, the plan upgrading takes place on the next billing cycle, instead of right away
lost mango
I don't think this is possible with the portal. If you keep the proration setting on, you have the option of invoicing the customer immediately or having the price changes take effect at the end of the billing period. If you turn off the proration setting, customers can update their subscriptions via the portal but it looks like the pricing changes won't take place until the next billing period.
unreal fractal
Oh... that's quite unfortunate. Let me ask you something else then: is there a Stripe option that allows to price users a fixed price monthly / yearly, but that works with credits, and adjusts proration based on those credits rather than using a proportion based on the billing period?
lost mango
Not exactly, no. "prorations" always refers to adjustments that are made in order to correctly charge a customer but these are always calculated based on time (e.g. billing cycle anchor changes, upgrades/downgrades to a price mid cycle, cancellation during a billing cycle)
unreal fractal
Hmm... the only solution would be, on plan change, to delete the old subscription and create a new one, right?
Which can't be achieved through the billing portal though
lost mango
Can you share more details about how you want to model your pricing structure?
unreal fractal
Sure!
There are 3 plans, each with both monthly and yearly subscription. The yearly subscription comes with a 30% discount.
Each of the three plans gives the user a certain amount of credits to spend. To simplify things, let's say that these are 1000, 2500 and 5000.
Once the user uses all of his credits, he can:
- Wait for the next renewal: credits are renewed on
invoice.paid. Used credits are zeroed at renewal. - Upgrade their plan: the available credits are increased, but the used credits remain until the next billing cycle (ideally, if prorations could be configured as such).
- Buy "bonus" credits, which are one time payments and can be excluded from our discussion since they are handled separately.
Now, however, prorations come into play: when the user switches plans, they may have used all of their previous plan credits. A correct proration would be to charge them only for the additional credits purchased, since they may just consume them all on the first day.
However, since prorations cannot be configured as such, I will have to charge the customer the full price for the new plan, and zero out their used credits, in order to keep it fair with the user and avoid revenue loss.
However, since this product is an MVP, we are trying to use the Stripe Hosted pages as much as possible to avoid unneeded implementations.
By using a customised implementation, I think I could implement some kind of proration as needed: I would have to cancel the previous subscription and create a new one with a dynamic price created ad-hoc for the current percentage of credits used
Let me know if something's not clear :D, if you are familiar with Midjourney, the pricing model is quite similar (or used to be, if it was now changed)
lost mango
Sorry for the delay! Give me a few more minutes please
lost mango
Ty for the details
The Stripe-hosted portal doesn't support allowing customers to update usage-based billing subscriptions. The only option that these customers will have to manage their subscriptions in the portal is to cancel.
Do you want to charge customers for credits up front or track their usage and charge them in arrears?
unreal fractal
Up front, and give them a set amount of credits. That's the reason of all this mess 😄
Maybe I should be using volume or graduated pricing instead, with the credits as the unit, and hard-setting the selectable amounts?
I am trying to look at the problem from a different perspective..
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visual helm
Hi @unreal fractal I'm taking over this thread, let me know if you have any follow-up questions
unreal fractal
Hi! Yes, the conversation was kinda cut-off
From my long message onwards should be enough to catch up 😉
visual helm
This is a long thread, can you tell me what's the latest problem that you are trying to solve?
unreal fractal
That's the one! I am trying to understand if it's possible to customize the proration behaviour. I possibly need to change the subscription type to volume or graduated.
In summary: proration behaviour in Stripe doesn't seem to be customisable - I need to prorate based on credit usage from my customers, and not based on the time passed since the last billing cycle.
My pricing model gives a certain number of credits to each user, based on the selected tier, and the user may use them all up in one day, and then upgrade plan.
Unfortunately, disabling proration also disables the possibility to start the upgraded plan right away.
We're trying to use Stripe Hosted pages as much as possible. Using a custom implementation, I think I would have to manually cancel the old subscription and create a new one for upgrades and downgrades.
visual helm
No there are no options to customize proration behaviour. And Stripe prorations are created only for licensed (per-seat) subscriptions because they’re billed at the start of each billing period, so no prorations are applicable to posted paid subscription (i.ee., usage based billing)
unreal fractal
Thank you. To customize the proration behaviour, then, I must cancel the previous sub and create a new one, is that right?
visual helm
As I said, there's no way to customize Stripe proration behaviour.