Synchronization and Proration of WooCommerce Subscription

In today’s digital age, subscription-based services have become increasingly popular across various industries. This article highlights the importance of synchronizing and prorating subscriptions and how to set it up with the help of the Subscription for WooCommerce plugin. Also, discuss what benefits it brings to both businesses and customers.

To enable synchronization:

• Navigate to WooCommerce > settings> WebToffee Subscriptions
• Enable Subscription synchronization under Other settings
• Now in the Product Data meta box on the Product edit page, set up the Subscription Synchronization field

To enable proration:

• Ensure that you enable Subscription Synchronization
• Navigate to the product edit page
• Under the Product Data meta box on the Product edit page, enable “Enable prorate first payment”

By default, WooCommerce implements automatic periodic renewals based on the subscriber’s chosen plan. For instance, if a customer enrolls in a monthly subscription on May 25th, the subscription will automatically renew on the 25th of each subsequent month until its expiration date.

To facilitate uniform renewal dates for certain or all subscription products, store owners can effortlessly enable the Synchronization of subscription renewals with the respective products.

A store selling cosmetics on a monthly subscription model considers the first day of every month as the scheduled shipment day. If a customer signs up on September 12th, under normal circumstances the store would schedule the first renewal for October 12th. However, by enabling renewal synchronization for the product, such as setting it for the 1st of every month, the customer’s initial payment will occur on October 1st, followed by November 1st, and so forth, regardless of the purchase date.

This valuable feature greatly aids in the management and tracking of subscriptions and their renewals within the WooCommerce store, particularly if the business deals with a substantial volume of subscriptions.

To enable synchronization for subscription:

• Navigate to WooCommerce > settings> WebToffee Subscriptions
• Enable Subscription synchronization under Other settings
• Click on Save changes

To create a synchronized subscription product:

• Navigate to Products > All Products
• Select the subscription to enable synchronization
• In the Product Data meta box, set up the Subscription Synchronization field
  • For weekly renewals, choose any day of the week
  • For monthly renewals, choose from the 1st to the 27th day of the month. Additionally, to accommodate months with varying lengths of 28, 30, and 31 days, there is an alternative option available: the last day of the month
  • For yearly renewal, choose any day of any month (Ex: 15 January)
• Click on Publish to publish the coupon

In the given example, the subscription renews on the 1st of every 3 months.

When synchronization is activated, in the event of a user purchasing a product between two renewal dates, their first payment will take place on the upcoming renewal date. From that point forward, the user will only enjoy the benefits of the subscription. Proration proves to be a powerful feature in this scenario, as it allows subscribers to be charged for the initial days of their subscription, extending until the first renewal period. To determine the prorated amount, the system considers two factors: the per-day price of the subscribed product and the number of days from sign-up until the first renewal date.

Consider a synchronized subscription that renews on the 15th of every month, with a monthly charge of $30. Suppose a customer subscribes to this product on June 6th. In this case, the customer would be charged $9 at the time of signing up since there are 9 days remaining until the first renewal. The daily subscription cost amounts to $1. Alternatively, if another customer signs up on June 10th, they will only need to pay $5, as there are merely 5 days left until the subscription renewal.