#Gregg-bill-before-start
forest dragon
harsh musk
@fresh lintel that's a strange way to use Billing overall and fairly uncommon/not something I would recommend
But yes, you mostly charge them upfront and then you put them on a Subscription with a 100% coupon or a trial or something
fresh lintel
@harsh musk Thanks for your response. I don't see another way to get paid for a subscription before it actually starts. It seems that would be a common use-case, no?
harsh musk
It is not a common use-case, I've almost never seen this done before. I don't really grasp why you need to do this?
fresh lintel
The subscriptions are relatively high price for a monthly server hosting. So we'd charge something in advance of actually supporting the server instead of going a month into the subscription unpaid.
harsh musk
So you plan to do this every month, not just the first invoice?
fresh lintel
Sorry let me clarify. The period would be 12 months. So we'd want to say invoice now with 30 day due date that coincides with the subscription start date (say Nov 4th). This would be the case instead of invoicing on Nov 4th and waiting until Dec 4th to be paid. That month "unpaid" is the problem I'm trying to avoid.
harsh musk
But won't you have the exact same issue in a year?
harsh musk
We don't have a feature to try and charge a month in advance. And the hack you have really won't work. How will you know to charge a month in advance next year?
What you likely want instead is a subscription that starts today and renews on October 4th each year, for a service that is offered Nov4-Nov4 each year
that way our subscriptions do the right thing, including dunning, retries, proration, etc. All you need is to remember that you have your own separate "service period" which is not the same as the subscription
fresh lintel
I was planning on using something to alert us 60 days in advance of the subscription period ending to be able to start the renewal process
harsh musk
yeah but at this point what is even the point of using Billing if you do everything yourself
fresh lintel
Reading, one sec
I see your point about separate service period
I guess that's the part I'm struggling with then
It sounds like you are suggesting we simply start the subscription when the customer renewal is up but have the invoice specify the actual service period which is stored in meta data on the customer or something along those lines
harsh musk
yep that's what I would do if I were you
fresh lintel
This makes sense for the customers that need to have an offset. Otherwise, we'd just rely on the subscription start/end dates.
harsh musk
yeah
overall there's a real feature request in your ask, to basically "charge upfront for an upcoming subscription" but it's not something we have planned for now
fresh lintel
@harsh musk Thank you! Where can I submit the feature request?