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How does skipping/pausing work?

Did you know that your subscribers are able to skip a payment on their subscription, or even pause their subscription? Allowing this will make it super easy for you to retain your customer's subscriptions and to reduce churn since your subscribers won't need to cancel their subscription entirely.

Skipping vs Pausing

The main difference is that skipping requires for a customer to have the renewal date explicitly set. However, pausing is basically indefinite skipping, meaning that a subscription is paused without any specific renewal date.

How to activate skipping/pausing?

If you want your customers to be able to skip a payment (and pause their subscription) please note that you can always enable/disable skipping option in your store from here by simply toggling the appropriate switch. 

Furthermore, you can set minimum number of payments before customer is eligible for skipping/pausing.

Setting a value of 0 would mean that your customers will be able to skip since inception of their subscription. 
Input here presents the number of payment periods a customer is skipping. This might not be months if your product setup has a shipping period which is greater or less than a month (week or a year, for example). If your customer is charged once a year, setting the value of 2 would mean that customer would be able to skip a payment after he is through 2 payments, which would be equal to 2 years of his/her subscription. 

How to allow customers to pause a subscription without specific renewal date?

Now it's possible for customers to pause without setting any specific date and even resume at any time when they decide to keep receiving their box. To activate this functionality, go to Advanced settings and then enable the toggle - Allow customers to pause subscription without specific renewal date.

How to allow customers to choose a resume date?

In order to for a customer to be able to choose desired date when they want to resume their subscription, go to Advanced settings, and then enable the toggle - Allow customers to choose the resume date.

How to allow customers to prolong skipping?

With the latest update, now it's possible for your customers to extend skipping even further, after initial skipping. To allow them this functionality, go to Advanced settings and enable the toggle - Allow customer to prolong subscription skipping.

How can you pause/resume a customer's subscription in the Admin?

If you want to pause the subscription on behalf of the customer, you can as well do that from inside the customer profile on your admin. This can be done from inside the customer profile by selecting the option from screenshot Pause subscription.

On the other hand, if a subscription is paused/skipped, and if you want to reactivate it, you can do it in the same fashion like pausing it, the only difference is that Resume subscription will be displayed.

How customers skip/pause a payment in the Customer Portal?

Customers can manage their subscription and skip a payment from their customer login area. Please see the following video to see what they need to do in order to pause their subscription.

When opting to skip a payment, your customers will be presented with the calendar widget from where they will be able to choose for how long they want to skip a payment.

If the toggle Allow customers to pause subscription without specific renewal date is enabled, it'll allow the users to choose whether they want to Pause the subscription, by checking the square, or Skip a payment, by choosing a date in the Calendar widget. If this square is ticked, they can resume at any point they wish.

In the screenshot below check how the toggle is portrayed in the Customer portal.

If the toggle Allow customer to prolong subscription skipping is enabled, the customer will be able to prolong his/her skipping even further. Here's an example on how this toggle works in practice.

How customers resume subscriptions in the Customer Portal?

Customers can resume their subscriptions themselves inside the Customer Portal. What they need to do is (a) Login to their customer portal (b) click on Manage besides a subscription product and (c) opt to Resume their previously paused subscription as in the image below.

After that, depending on whether the toggle Allow customers to choose the resume date in Advanced settings is enabled or disabled, the customers will be presented with two different use cases of that function.

When the toggle is enabled, the customer will be presented with a calendar widget where she/he can pick a date for resumption.

If the toggle is disabled, the customer will be presented with a pop-up with a specific and fixed next renewal date, instead of a calendar widget.

Note that on Adhoc subscriptions, renewal and charge will happen immediately upon unpausing. In Anchored subscriptions, renewal and charge will happen on the following billing date upon unpausing.

Also, if the toggle "Update preferences when resuming/reactivating subscription on customer area" is enabled from Advanced settings, the customer will be prompted with any survey attached to the subscription product in order for them to update their selections before reactivation takes place.

FAQs

For how many cycles can a customer skip their payments?

Customers are able to skip from 2 to 6 payment periods when choosing to skip. This means that, if the customer is subscribed to the monthly product, he/she will be able to choose between 2 and 6 months of skipping. 

A customer reported that he cannot skip/pause his subscription, what's the reason?

If customer has outstanding invoice (is in Past due status), he/she won't be able to skip a payment until the invoice is resolved. You can see here for more info on how you can manually handle customer's invoices. Please be aware of the repercussions of forgiving vs. voiding the invoice. If the invoice is void (and not forgiven), customer will still be in Past due status and won't be able to skip/pause the next payment. 

Meaning of different labels for the customers is explained in more detail here. 

How do I know if a customer is skipping or pausing his next payment?

When customer is skipping, Skipping label will be added to his/her customer profile within Customers section in the Admin. The same applies when a customer pauses a subscription, a Pausing label will be shown beneath the product name.

Is pausing and skipping available for subscriptions with commitment period applied?

No, a subscription with a commitment period cannot be paused or skipped. It's only possible to skip or pause after the commitment period has expired.

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