The lifecycle of a subscription

By: abrooks /

Beyond the simple act of sending transactions, everything you’ll want to do relative to subscriptions with Metricsco requires an understanding of the lifecycle of a subscription.

Transitions

Fortunately, Metricsco’s platform automatically transitions subscriptions through the lifecycle events – all you need to do is keep sending your transactions.

Subscription Status

Metricsco has an associated status for everything that happens with a subscription.
Here’s the subscription lifecycle status:

Created – When a subscription is initially paid for.

In-Trial – When a subscription is created with a trial period.

Converted – When the first recurring transaction occurs, after a trial or an initial purchase

Activated – When the first recurring transaction occurs, after a subscription Expired, Cancelled, Terminated, or Suspended.

In-Retry – When a declined transaction is processed through a Decline Recycling Strategy that determines it should be retried.

Cancelled – When a subscription is cancelled.

Expired – When a subscription expires.

Terminated – When a declined transaction is processed through a Decline Recycling Strategy that determines there should be no additional retries

Suspended – When a subscription is suspended.

Updating a Subscription

You can always update the subscription’s status or any other subscription related information.
Please see:

We also added a new API Method to update the status of a subscription:

Upgrading or downgrading subscriptions

Subscriptions can be changed by switching the plan to which a customer is subscribed. Normally this is a matter of either upgrading or downgrading the subscription, depending upon the price difference between the two plans.

Once the subscription is billed again, Metricsco automatically updates the new plan for the subscription.
Just send the new plan identifier with the transaction (Plan.ClientId).

Working with trials

Subscriptions can begin with a trial period. The trial may be free of charge or at cost.

Tip: Unlike plans that require immediate payment, you can subscribe a customer to a plan with a trial period without providing a payment method (Free trial). Simply send a default Card info for all of these subscriptions. customers convert and provide their payment information – send it with the following recurring transaction and Metricsco will update the subscription.

Once the trial period is up, Metricsco will convert the subscription (if you send a recurring transaction) or will expire the subscription (if no recurring transaction is received).

Canceling subscriptions

Metricsco automatically expires subscriptions following their expiration date, or cancels them when no additional recurring transactions arrive.
When a customer cancels a subscription or when you suspend a subscription – you can also update the subscription status to Cancelled or Suspended by calling the Subscriptions update method.