#austin_best-practices
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verbal basalt
Hello
Give me a few, things are running busy so I'll respond as soon as I have some bandwidth
amber bone
No problem! Thanks for the help
verbal basalt
You can use trial periods to extend their subscription period with the specific months of service they earn using referrals
That might be the easiest option
The other option could be to give the customer credit balance that reduces the finalized invoice amount for X months
https://docs.stripe.com/billing/customer/balance
amber bone
That might be the easiest option
Would that be possible to extend trials for customers that are already in the middle of their subscription? For example, if the customer has an annual subscription (paying us annually) and refers 2 people in month four, is there a way for us to add a trial for them at this point in time? Or is the recommendation to wait till the end of their current term and give them the trial at their renewal?
verbal basalt
You can use a subscription schedule to "schedule" a trial once the current period ends: https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/subscription-schedules
amber bone
Gotcha. That makes sense. Customer credit balance also seems promising. Can balance transactions stack? I'm guessing so given the described use cases
verbal basalt
What do you mean by stack?
amber bone
Sorry, just making sure that we could apply multiple credits to the same invoice. Specifically, we'd like to be able to apply a -$10 credit 3 times and that result in a $30 deduction on the customer's bill
verbal basalt
So, the total credit balance will automatically apply to a subscription invoice. You can't pick and choose what amount you want to apply to an invoice.
createBalanceTransaction is for when you're billing the customer manually and changing their invoice amount due manually as well.
amber bone
Oh, that makes sense. Seems like subscription schedules to "schedule" another trial after the current period is the most proper way to achieve the behavior we need.
If going this route, would the scheduled trial reduce the total amount due on that invoice? In other words, at the end of the annual subscriber's current period, we'd like their next period to include an X month trial but have their billing period remain 12 months (just discounted by the X months that were under trial)
verbal basalt
No it won't affect the invoice amount really. It will just add the X month trial to their 12 month billing cycle
So let's say you have a sub that started January 1st, 2024
And It accrued 3 months referral credit in 2024
The subscription schedule will add a trial of 3 months moving the billing anchor to April 1st, 2025 for the next year
The next cycle would then be April 1st, 2025 to April 1st, 2026 (12 months)
amber bone
Hmm, makes sense. No way to add a trial to the end of a subscription is there? 😆 Pretty sure there isn't but figured I'd double check.
It's possible that behavior will be sufficient, will run that past the team. I'm growing less certain that customer credit balance will work - need to check a few details around when / how we use Checkout Sessions. I guess if neither of these are feasible, would our next best option be to apply coupons specific to the amount we'd like to discount once each subscription period?
Thanks again for all of your advice and help btw
verbal basalt
No way to add a trial to the end of a subscription is there?
You could technically schedule the trial after the renewal invoice has been charged too. Its upto you on when you want to configure the trial to extend the subscription.
Coupon could be an alternative but that will behave similar to customer credit balance (reducing the amount due on the invoice).
NP! Happy to help.
amber bone
You could technically schedule the trial after the renewal invoice has been charged too.
Oh interesting. That sounds promising. I'll do some more reading on subscription schedules and see if there's a timing that'll work.
Coupon could be an alternative but that will behave similar to customer credit balance (reducing the amount due on the invoice).
Cool, that's good to know. Hopefully subscription schedules + extended trials can cover what we need but will look into these as fallbacks if necessary.
Thanks again!
verbal basalt
NP! 🙂 Good luck