Setting Up Recurring Subscriptions
Recurring billing turns one-off customers into predictable, repeating revenue. Setting it up well from the start saves a great deal of pain later, because billing logic is hard to retrofit.
This article covers the building blocks of a subscription system and the decisions you need to make up front.
The Core Concepts
- Plan: the price, interval and what the customer gets.
- Subscription: a customer's active link to a plan.
- Billing cycle: when each charge is taken.
- Invoice: the record generated for each cycle.
Decisions to Make Early
- Monthly, annual or both, and whether to offer a discount for paying annually.
- Whether to require a card for trials.
- How to handle upgrades, downgrades and cancellations mid-cycle.
- What happens to access when a payment fails.
Let the Provider Do the Heavy Lifting
Modern providers manage the billing schedule, retries and invoices for you. We integrate your product with their subscription engine rather than rebuilding that logic, which is both safer and faster.
If you need a hand with any of this, your Progressive Robot delivery team is ready to help. Raise a ticket from the Support area of your client portal or speak to your account manager and we will guide you through the next steps.