Subscriptions

If you’re selling recurring services using Stripe you can cancel, pause, and manage client subscriptions directly from Wayfront by going to Subscriptions → click on the subscription ID → Actions button.

Upgrading and downgrading

Since a subscription can have multiple items in it, the admin’s upgrade page gives you more options for selecting which item to replace, and whether to prorate the charge.

Changing the payment date

Say you include 5 articles per month in your package and a client runs through them all in 3 weeks. You could either…

• Upgrade their subscription so next month they get more articles

• Issue an invoice for any extra articles they need

• Or trigger their next subscription payment now, resetting their limits and shifting the subscription payment date to today’s date. From Wayfront order details click the subscription → Actions menu on the top right → Charge Now.

To shift the payment to a different date you’ll need to find the subscription in your Stripe account and add a trial to it to offset the billing date. Wayfront will still log the payment on the date it comes in.

Synchronizing renewal date

For some businesses it can make sense to charge customers on a specific day of the month for the balance they’ve accrued since their last payment. 

Let’s say you signed up for a website hosting account on the 20th of the month, and they bill you on the 1st. Typically, you’d get an initial charge for part of the fee, since you can only use your hosting account for 10 more days before normally scheduled billing kicks in.

We’ve found that most productized services cannot be split that way – either it’s impossible to deliver a whole month’s worth of service in ten days, or it isn’t practical to deliver a part of a service for the remaining days in the month.

For that reason, this use case is not supported in Wayfront at the present time.

Self-service

You can give your clients the freedom to upgrade, or cancel on their own. Of course, this depends on the services you sell and the commitments you require from your clients, that’s why this feature isn’t enabled by default.

To show the cancelation/upgrade links, go to Settings → Payments and check the option.

Pausing a subscription

To pause a Stripe subscription, you can navigate to the subscription on your workspace → Click the Actions button on the top right → Pause.

To pause a PayPal subscription, you’ll need to find the subscription in your PayPal account and click Suspend. Unlike canceled subscriptions, suspended subscriptions can be re-activated.

Cancelations

Client self-service

If enabled, clients will be able to cancel their Stripe subscriptions on their own. Additionally, you can choose to display a cancelation form and collect feedback about why they’re canceling by enabling the checkbox in Settings → Payments:

On the back end, this is just a regular contact form. After it’s filled, it’ll redirect to subscription cancelation.

Admin side

Admins can choose to cancel a Stripe subscription right away, or at the end of the billing period.

For other payment processors like PayPal, you’ll need to sign in to the processor to cancel a subscription. Wayfront will update the subscription status automatically.

Cancel now vs. cancel at period end

When canceling a Stripe subscription from the admin panel, you have two options:

• Cancel now — The subscription is terminated immediately and moves to Canceled status.

• Cancel at period end — The subscription moves to Pending Cancellation. The client can still use their service until the current billing period ends, at which point it automatically cancels.

A subscription in Pending Cancellation can be reactivated before the period ends (see below).

Subscription statuses

Subscriptions move through these statuses:

• Active — Subscription is running normally and billing on schedule.

• Past Due — A payment has failed. Stripe will retry automatically. The subscription returns to Active if a retry succeeds.

• Paused — Billing is suspended. No charges are made until the subscription is resumed. Stripe subscriptions only.

• Pending Cancellation — Scheduled to cancel at the end of the current billing period. Can still be reactivated.

• Canceled — Subscription has ended. This is a terminal state.

Failed payments and past due subscriptions

When a recurring payment fails, the subscription moves to Past Due status. Stripe automatically retries the payment based on your Stripe retry settings. Both you and the client receive a notification about the failure.

If the retry succeeds, the subscription returns to Active and a new order is created for that billing period. If retries are exhausted, the subscription may be canceled by Stripe depending on your Stripe configuration.

Reactivating a subscription

If a subscription is in Pending Cancellation (scheduled to cancel at period end), you can reactivate it before the period ends. This removes the scheduled cancelation and returns the subscription to Active status.

To reactivate, go to the subscription detail page and click the Actions button → Reactivate.

Recurring billing cycle

Each time a subscription renews successfully, the system automatically:

1. Records the payment on the subscription

2. Creates a new order for the current billing period

3. Creates or updates the corresponding invoice

4. Sends payment confirmation notifications

This means you get a new order to work on each billing cycle without any manual intervention.