Manage subscriptions

Subscriptions are created when someone buys a product with a recurring payment plan.

All created subscriptions are listed on the Studiocart > Subscriptions page:

You can click the edit link to see more details about a subscription, customer information, the product that was purchased and other related charges.

Subscription Statuses

Subscriptions can be assigned one of four different statuses:

Active – After the initial payment for a subscription has been processed, it will be transitioned to the Active status. This status indicates the subscription will renew or expire at a given time in the future. Whenever a subscription is activated, Subscriptions will also calculate the next payment date for the subscription if it’s not already set.
Canceled – The Cancelled status is assigned to subscriptions that have been manually canceled.
Completed – If an end date is set on a subscription because the product it relates to has a defined subscription length, when that date is reached, the subscription will be assigned the Completed status.
Past Due – When an automatic payment on a subscription fails, the subscription state becomes Past Due.
Unpaid – After multiple failed attempts on a Past Due payment, a subscription will transition to a status of Unpaid. No more attempts to collect payment will be made on this subscription.

Related Orders

You can quickly find all of the charges for a subscription in its Related Orders section. In a subscription, related orders will be one of 2 types.

Initial Order

The initial order for a subscription records the creation of the subscription. Normally, this is a record of a subscription product being purchased via the Studiocart checkout process.

When a customer completes the checkout process to pay for a subscription product, an order is created to record that payment. A subscription is also created to manage the future payments agreed to when purchasing that product. That order becomes the subscription’s Initial Order.

Importantly, a subscription can only ever have one Initial Order. A subscription can only ever be created once, so it only needs one Initial Order to record that transaction.

Renewal Orders

A key part of a subscription are its recurring payments. Each recurring payment is recorded in a Renewal Order during the subscription renewal process.

Renewal Orders are normally created automatically on the subscription’s predefined billing schedule. They are used to record an automatic payment.

Importantly, a subscription can have multiple Renewal Orders associated with it, as multiple recurring payments may have been processed during its life-cycle. For example, a monthly subscription that has been active for 12 months will have 11 Renewal Orders.

Related Order Statuses

Paid – the order has been paid
Past Due – the time limit for payment was exceeded
Refunded – the payment was refunded to the customer
Uncollectible – it’s unlikely that this invoice will be paid, and it should be treated as bad debt in reports.

Canceling a Subscription

If you need to immediately cancel a subscription before it’s scheduled end date, you can click the Cancel Subscription button.