Amey-Thakur Subscription billing
Subscription logic looks simple until the first mid-cycle upgrade, and then every edge case arrives at once: proration, trials that convert, plans that changed price, and cancellations that should still serve the paid period. The model has to hold all of it.
Method
- Separate the plan, the subscription, and the invoice. The plan is the offer, the subscription is this customer's instance of it, and the invoice is what was actually charged. Merging them makes history unreconstructable.
- Store the terms on the subscription. Price, currency, interval, and features as agreed at signup, so a later plan change does not silently reprice existing customers (see pricing-change-migration).
- Decide proration policy once and apply it everywhere. Upgrades usually prorate immediately, downgrades usually take effect at renewal. Ad hoc decisions per case produce disputes you cannot defend.
- Make cancellation mean end of paid period, not immediate cutoff. Cutting access already paid for is the most common source of chargebacks and complaints.
- Handle trials as a distinct state. Trial start, conversion, and expiry each trigger different behaviour, and a trial that silently becomes a charge without notice generates disputes.
- Drive access from a single entitlement check. One place answers what this customer may use, derived from subscription state, so features never disagree about whether someone paid.
- Generate the invoice before charging, not after. The line items are what justify the amount, and reconstructing them afterwards is guesswork (see invoicing-and-receipts).
Boundaries
- Billing implements the commercial agreement; changing what customers are charged is a business and legal decision.
- Revenue recognition follows accounting rules and is not the same as cash collected (see revenue-recognition-basics).
- Consumer subscription law in several markets governs notice, renewal, and cancellation, and it overrides product preference.