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ChangelogFor most of you, synchronized subscriptions and proration would be new topics. Getting familiar with these topics will help you a lot if you wish to incorporate these features into your online store. The below article explains what is subscription synchronization and how you can enable it with the Subscription for WooCommerce plugin by WebToffee.
What is synchronized renewal of subscriptions?
By default, WooCommerce subscription renews periodically depending on the subscriber’s plan. Ie; If a customer signs up for a monthly subscription on 25th May the subscription gets renewed on the 25th of each of the upcoming months until the subscription expires.
If a store owner wishes to have the same renewal date for all or some of his subscription products he can do so easily by enabling Synchronization of subscription renewal against the respective products. For example, a store selling cosmetics on a monthly subscription might ship the products on the first of each month. Thus normally, if a customer signs up on 12th September the first renewal would be scheduled for 12th October. But, if a renewal synchronization has been enabled for the product lets say for the 1st of every month, the customer’s first renewal will happen on 1st October then 1st November and so on irrespective of the date of purchase.
This feature will help a great deal to manage and track subscriptions and their renewals in your WooCommerce store, especially if your store has to deal with a large number of subscriptions.
How to enable synchronization of subscription
For enabling synchronization follow the below steps,
- Go to WooCommerce > settings> WebToffee Subscriptions
- Enable Subscription synchronization checkbox
- Click save changes
Here is the screenshot of the page.
Enabling synchronization
Creating a synchronized subscription Product
For creating synchronized subscription product,
1. Go to: Products > Edit Product
2. In the Product Data meta box, select a day in the Synchronize Renewals field.
- For weekly renewals, you can choose any day of the week. Eg: Wednesday.
- Monthly renewals can be set from 1st to 27th of the month and since there are months having 28,30 and 31 days another option “last day of the month” is also given. Eg: 27th
- For yearly renewal, you can choose a specific day of the year. Eg: 15 January.
3. Click the Publish button to save the product.
Simple subscription synchronization
Variable subscription synchronization
Prorating first payment
After enabling synchronization you also have the option to prorate the first payment of the subscription.
When you enable the prorate option you will be able to charge the subscriber for the initial days up to first renewal. The prorated amount is calculated based on the per day price of subscribed product and the number of days from sign until the first renewal date.
For example, lets assume that the monthly subscription charge of a synchronized subscription which renews on 15th of every month is 30$. If a customer subscribes for this product on 6th June, he would be charged 9$(per day subscription costs 1$) at the time of signing up since there are 9 days up to the first renewal. If another customer signs up on 10th June he will only have to pay 5$ because there are only 5 days left until the renewal of the subscription.
Even though, you can choose to prorate any type of product, proration is most useful when virtual products are subscribed. Unlike other products, subscribers get access to virtual products as soon as they sign up for the subscription. Hence charging them for the days of use until the first renewal makes sense !
Coupons
Coupons work on synchronized subscriptions almost the same way it works on standard subscriptions. The only difference is that default WooCommerce coupons can only be applied if the subscription has been prorated.
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Comments (8)
dinesh
November 11, 2022
We need to free trial version plugin to check our site.
Mike
December 5, 2022
Hi Dinesh,
We are sorry to inform you that we don’t provide any trial or demo for premium plugins. We offer 30 days-100% refund guarantee for our plugin purchase. You may please go ahead and purchase the plugin. If you are not satisfied you can claim the money-back guarantee within the refund period.
Shannon Payne
October 27, 2021
Hi we’re looking at subscription plugin options and want to know if this is possible with yours.
We have quarterly subscription boxes that we want to synchronize the renewal to be the first of the month, so all subscribers will be billed on 1 Dec, 1 Feb, 1 May and 1 Aug.
We open the cart 1 week before for new people to sign up each quarter.
What we are looking for:
If someone were to sign up on 28 November they would be charged then but then the next payment to come out will be 1 Feb (not 1 Dec as they will have already paid for that quarter.
Is this possible?
Mike
December 6, 2021
Hello Shannon,
Thanks for reaching out. You can use the subscription synchronization option to synchronize the billing date.
Pravin Pagi
September 2, 2021
Hello,
How i can give feature for eg.
User select November month and subscription start on that month ?
Mike
September 28, 2021
Hello Pravin,
Thanks for reaching out. Yes, The subscription starts based on the order. However, you can synchronize the renewals to a fixed date by using the Subscription Synchronization feature.
Shivendra Singh
May 6, 2021
Is there an option of upgrade in subscription product
Mark
May 6, 2021
Hi Shivendra,
Sorry to let you down, but the plugin currently does not support upgrade/downgrade options for subscriptions.