Cancellations

A canceled subscription is no longer billed by Advanced Billing. There are many ways a subscription can be canceled using the Advanced Billing application:

1. Cancel from the list of subscribers
2. Cancel from the subscriber’s summary page
3. After a period of time (defined by your dunning plan) passes with no payment for an overdue balance
4. A subscriber can request to cancel their account via the Billing Portal.

Cancel from the list of Subscribers

You can request cancellation of a subscription yourself by clicking “Actions” option at the right side of the subscriber’s entry.

Select "Cancel" from the condensed menu

Cancel using the Subscriber’s Summary

You can request cancellation of a subscription yourself by clicking “Initiate Cancellation” from the Actions menu.

Select "Cancel" from the main subscription menu

Initiate Cancellation

After clicking “Initiate Cancellation”, you will have the opportunity to enter a message about the cancellation and review the action before either pressing the “Cancel Immediately” button, or the “Cancel at End of Period” button.

Cancellation options

When you cancel a subscription:

• You have the option of canceling immediately or at the end of the period, selecting either option means the customer’s credit card will no longer be charged.
• When canceling at the end of the period, the subscription will cease to renew automatically at the “Period Ends At” date and the subscription state will change.
• No refunds or prorations are made
• An email is only sent to your customer if you enable cancellation emails.

Clear Pending Cancellation

You can clear an existing pending cancellation on a subscription by navigating to the subscription summary. Focus on the line item Pending Cancellation. An option exists to “cancel pending cancellation”. This will remove the cancellation that is scheduled for the future; the subscription will return to the Active state.

Remove a pending cancellation from a subscription

Delayed Cancellation and Components

In the event that you have selected to cancel a subscription at the end of their billing period, the subscriber is still responsible for payment of components used during the life of their subscription. Let’s look over the following subscription examples to get a feel of how this works:

Scenario 1: Quantity-based Components

• A subscriber purchases a product and is on the automatic payment method
• The subscriber has a valid credit card on file
• During the month, they have allocations applied to their subscription of quantity-based components
• The allocation methods of “Prorate + Accrue” or “Prorate & Process” are used to record components
• The subscription is set to “Cancel at the end of Billing Period” which causes the status to be “Active (Pending Cancellation)”

Scenario 2: Metered-based Components

• A subscriber purchases a product and is on the automatic payment method
• The subscriber has a valid credit card on file
• During the month, usage is recorded of metered-based components
• The subscription is set to “Cancel at the end of Billing Period” which causes the status to be “Active (Pending Cancellation)”
• On the date of the cancellation of the subscription, a charge and a payment transaction will be created to collect funds resulting from recorded components

Delayed Cancellation and Current Balance Due

If your subscriber has a current balance due, and you have elected to “cancel at the end of billing period”, your subscriber will be charged for the balance due of that subscription before the status changes to cancel. Let’s delve into an example to illustrate this feature:

• A subscriber purchases a product and is on the automatic payment method
• The subscriber has a valid credit card on file
• A balance adjustment is made to indicate an amount due outside of the normal subscription/product billing while the subscription is active.
• The subscription is set to “Cancel at the end of Billing Period”, which causes the status to be “Active (Pending Cancellation)”
• The balance due on the subscription is unpaid
• On the date of the cancellation of the subscription, a charge and a payment transaction will be created to collect funds resulting from the balance due on the subscription

Automatic Cancellation due to Dunning

After a failed payment, subscriptions transition to the past due state within Advanced Billing. At this point, Advanced Billing begins attempting to re-run the payment on a smart schedule. Eventually, we cease retrying to re-run the payment, and some of the dunning strategies will automatically move the subscription to a canceled state. See the dunning documentation for how to control this automatic cancellation.

Churn Reason Codes

Churn Reason Codes allow you to define a set of reasons for tracking why a subscription was canceled. These codes can be displayed in the application, Billing Portal, or added as an additional parameter via the API when canceling a subscription.

The codes can be created, edited, sorted, and deleted in your site settings/configuration panel. Sorting the codes will adjust the order in which they’re displayed in the application.

For detailed information on configuring these codes, refer to the Churn Reason Codes article.

The codes will appear when initiating a cancellation on a subscription from the subscription summary. They’ll also be displayed on the cancellation screen of the Billing Portal if that setting is enabled within your Billing Portal settings.

Available churn reason codes for this example

Example of subscription about to be canceled

Once a subscription has been canceled and a churn reason code has been supplied, the code will be visible in the subscription’s summary status in the application:

Reason for cancellation displayed in subscription