Subscriptions represent an ongoing payment relationship with your customer. Flowglad provides a robust subscription model with carefully considered defaults to handle common billing scenarios effectively.

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What is a Subscription?

A Subscription in Flowglad tracks the details of a recurring charge for a customer, including what products or services they’re paying for, how often, and their current status. Key concepts:
  • One Active Subscription per Customer (Default): By default, a customer can only have one active subscription at a time (active, trialing, past_due, cancellation_scheduled, unpaid). This encourages simpler billing management. If you need customers to have multiple simultaneous subscriptions, you can enable the allow_multiple_subscriptions_per_customer setting at the organization level in your Flowglad settings or by contacting support.
  • Billing Cycle Anchor Date: The billingCycleAnchorDate (set from the startDate on creation) determines the day of the month billing occurs. If this date doesn’t exist in a given month (e.g., the 31st in February), billing occurs on the last day of that month.
  • Billing Periods: Defined by the startDate, interval (e.g., Month, Year), and intervalCount. Flowglad automatically calculates the currentBillingPeriodStart and currentBillingPeriodEnd for each cycle.

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Subscription Structure

Each Subscription record has one or more SubscriptionItem records.
  • Subscription Record: Holds the core details like the customer (customerId), overall status, billing cycle information (interval, intervalCount, billingCycleAnchorDate), trial period (trialEnd), and potentially default/backup payment methods. It also has a primary priceId which often corresponds to the initial item purchased. But note: the SubscriptionItems define the actual billing components.
  • SubscriptionItem Record: Represents a specific product or service line item within the subscription. Each item has its own priceId, quantity, and unitPrice. This allows for subscriptions with multiple components, potentially added or changed over time. The sum of active subscription items determines the amount billed each period (for non-usage-based items).

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Creating a Subscription

There are two primary ways to create a subscription:

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1. Via Checkout Session

Customers can initiate subscriptions themselves by completing a Flowglad Checkout Session for a product with a subscription or usage type price.
  • How: This can be done through hosted product/price purchase pages or programmatically using the useBilling() hook’s createCheckoutSession method.
  • Use Case: Standard customer sign-ups and purchases where the customer interacts directly with a checkout flow initiated from within the product
  • Payment Method: Checkout Sessions typically require collecting payment details (unless a trial is offered).
Learn more about setting up checkouts in the Checkout Sessions documentation.

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2. Via API

You can programmatically create subscriptions using Flowglad’s backend APIs (e.g., interacting with the createSubscriptionWorkflow).
  • How: Requires providing customerId, priceId, startDate, interval, and intervalCount.
  • Use Case: Ideal for scenarios where you create subscriptions automatically based on actions within your application, such as user sign-up, plan changes initiated within your UI, or migrations.
  • Payment Method: Creating subscriptions via the API does not require a defaultPaymentMethodId or backupPaymentMethodId. This is useful for starting customers on free trials without asking for card details upfront. The subscription status will initially be Incomplete if autoStart is false and there’s no trial or payment method. It becomes Trialing if a trialEnd date is provided, or Active if autoStart is true and a default payment method exists for the customer or is provided.

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Subscription Lifecycle & Billing

Subscriptions transition through various statuses and billing cycles over their lifetime.

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Statuses

A subscription can be in one of several states (SubscriptionStatus):
  • Trialing: Active during a free trial period. Considered a “current” subscription.
  • Active: The standard state for a paying, up-to-date subscription. Considered “current”.
  • PastDue: Payment failed, but Flowglad may retry. Considered “current”.
  • Unpaid: Payment failed after retries; requires manual intervention or updated payment method. Considered “current”.
  • Incomplete: Created but needs setup (e.g., payment method added) before becoming active. Not “current”.
  • IncompleteExpired: A related Checkout Session expired before completion. Not “current”.
  • CancellationScheduled: Will be canceled at a future date (usually the end of the current billing period). Considered “current” until the cancellation date.
  • Canceled: The subscription has ended and is no longer active. Not “current”.
You can check if a subscription is in any of the “current” states (Active, PastDue, Trialing, CancellationScheduled, Unpaid) using helper functions or by checking the status directly.

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Billing Periods & Transitions

At the end of each currentBillingPeriodEnd, a transition occurs:
  1. A new billing period is calculated based on the anchor date, interval, and interval count.
  2. For upcoming charges, a BillingRun is generated.

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Charging Behavior

  • runBillingAtPeriodStart: This boolean field on the Subscription determines when the charge for a billing period is attempted.
    • Default for subscription Price Type: true. Charges are typically attempted at the start of the billing period (e.g., paying for the upcoming month).
    • Default for usage Price Type: false. Charges are attempted at the end of the billing period after usage for that period has been recorded.
  • Overrides: This default behavior can be overridden when creating or updating the subscription if needed.

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Canceling a Subscription

Flowglad offers flexibility in how subscriptions can be canceled.

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Cancellation Options

  • Immediately: The subscription is canceled right away. Proration logic may apply depending on your settings (though explicit proration controls are still evolving).
  • At End of Current Billing Period: The subscription remains active until the currentBillingPeriodEnd, at which point it transitions to Canceled. The status becomes CancellationScheduled until then.
  • At a Future Date (Coming Soon): Functionality to cancel on a specific arbitrary date in the future is planned.

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Methods for Cancellation

  1. Flowglad Dashboard: Manually cancel subscriptions directly within the Flowglad UI.
  2. API: Programmatically cancel subscriptions using backend API calls (e.g., interacting with cancelSubscriptionImmediately or scheduleSubscriptionCancellation).
  3. Customer Self-Service: Allow customers to manage their own subscriptions.
    • Hosted Billing Portal: A no-code option accessible via a unique URL per customer.
    • Embedded Billing Page: A React component (@flowglad/react or @flowglad/nextjs) to embed cancellation and other billing management features directly into your application.
    • Headless Implementation: Use the useBilling() hook’s cancelSubscription function (ensure it’s used within a <FlowgladProvider> context) to build a completely custom cancellation UI.
Learn more about enabling customer self-service options in the Customer Billing UI documentation.