#juni-proration
shut grove
buys a tier 1 (low cost) subscription and upgrades it to a tier 2 subscription (high cost) on the 15th day of a 30 day month, will they be charged some amount of money immediately or will they be charged on their next billing date?
hello! by default, at the next billing date. You can set proration_behavior: always_invoice to charge now
violet palm
So if they upgrade from a 4 dollar sub to a 7 dollar sub halfway through the month, with always_invoice would it immediately charge them (7 - 4) * 0.5 = $1.50 immediately?
shut grove
i think it will charge the new price
but give it a try in test mode
you don't need to wait 15 days, just a min or two wait and swap the price with always_invoice
proud atlas
So I came here to ask this exact question, but the behavior you're describing -- and which Stripe docs also describe -- doesn't seem to be working for me.
Specifically, I do the following:
- Create a new subscription (via dashboard)
- Update the subscription to set
proration_behaviortoalways_invoice(via the CLI). - Add a new product to the subscription (via dashboard)
But then the charge gets added to the upcoming invoice.
I'm doing all this in a test account, so I can give you the customer and subscription IDs if that would help.
vernal hedge
Hello! Catching up, give me a moment...
Can you give me the request ID showing the new Product being added to the Subscription?
proud atlas
Here's the request ID to add the proration behavior: req_QrOz51a9wTXca8.
And here's the request ID to add the product: req_Kep7qy0quQNLTD
Note that I made some other requests shortly thereafter that changed the behavior. So perhaps there's something async I'm missing?
In fact, I'll try again with a new customer to see what happens there.
vernal hedge
In the second request the Dashboard is explicitly setting proration_behavior: "create_prorations", which is overriding what you set with the CLI.
If you make the second request using the API or CLI and don't override proration_behavior it should work as expected.
proud atlas
Ohh, that's the issue. That's a shame. I'd like our sales team to be able to just add in a new product without having to deal with the CLI or API at all. Is there any way to not have the UI override the proration_behavior?
vernal hedge
Not that I'm aware of. Best bet is probably to build a UI for them to use instead of the Dashboard that behaves how you want.
proud atlas
Well, that's pretty non-trivial, so I think our better bet is to have the non-tech users use the dashboard, not pro-rate, and then manually issue the appropriate invoice.
Any chance you think Stripe would add the "always invoice" option to the UI? That seems like the behavior most teams would want by default for their SaaS product: If the customer upgrades, bill immediately.
vernal hedge
Possibly! I'm happy to flag that feedback internally for you if you'd like.
proud atlas
Yeah, that seems like a very low-cost addition -- basically another option or default setting -- that enables a huge swatch of functionality.
Considering that I'm the second commenter on this very question today alone, plus the 5,000 views on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44417047/immediately-charge-for-subscription-changes for the same question, this seems to keep coming up.
One other follow-up question actually: If my team manually creates an invoice until the next billing period, will that affect reporting somehow?
vernal hedge
What do you mean by "affect reporting"?
proud atlas
Well, our finance team will look at the various reports Stripe generates on MRR, retention, user revenue growth, etc. I didn't know if revenue registered under a subscription will somehow show up differently in the data than revenue registered automatically as part of Stripe Billing's proration.
vernal hedge
I recorded your feedback about the Dashboard internally. 🙂
That's not really a question I can answer, as this server is focused on developer questions. Support should be able to help you out with report questions though: https://support.stripe.com/contact