How subscriptions work

A subscription bills a customer automatically on a repeating schedule. You do not chase payments or send reminders. Once a customer subscribes, Paysio charges their saved payment method every cycle and records each renewal as its own transaction. This guide explains how a subscription starts, the states it moves through, and how you manage it.

Starting a subscription

A subscription is created when a customer buys a recurring product. You make a product recurring by setting its pricing type to Recurring and choosing a billing period. See Creating products.

When the customer checks out:

Their first payment is taken right away, just like any purchase.
Their payment method is saved (vaulted) so it can be charged again automatically.
A subscription is created, with the next charge scheduled one billing period later.

From then on, Paysio handles every renewal. Subscriptions appear on the Subscriptions page, and each one has a detail page with its receipt, billing dates, actions, and a full activity timeline.

Statuses

A subscription is always in one of these states, shown as a badge on the list and detail page:

Active: billing normally on schedule.
Cancelling: set to cancel at the end of the current period. It stays active until then, then stops. This shows when you have scheduled a cancellation but the period has not ended yet.
Paused: temporarily not billing. No charges happen until it is resumed.
Cancelled: ended. No more charges. It can be reactivated to start fresh.
Past due: the most recent renewal charge failed. This happens automatically when a payment is declined or hits a network error.

You can filter the Subscriptions list by any of these statuses.

The billing cycle

Each subscription tracks three dates on its detail page:

Started: when the subscription began.
Current period: the start and end of the cycle the customer is currently paying for.
Next billing: the date of the next automatic charge. It reads "Paused" when paused, and is blank once cancelled.

On the next billing date, Paysio charges the saved payment method for the cycle amount. A successful charge creates a new transaction and order, then rolls the period forward by one billing period and sets the next billing date. If the charge fails, the subscription is marked Past due.

Managing a subscription

The subscription detail page has an Actions panel on the right. Which actions appear depends on the current status.

Pause subscription (when active): stops billing until you resume. The billing period is extended by however long it was paused, so the customer does not lose paid time.
Resume subscription (when paused, or when cancelling): starts billing again on schedule.
Cancel subscription (when active): schedules the cancellation for the end of the current period. The customer keeps access until then and is not charged again. This is why the status becomes "cancelling" rather than immediately "cancelled". You can undo it with Resume before the period ends.
Reactivate subscription (when cancelled): starts a new billing period from today and resumes charging on the next billing date.

Each action asks for confirmation before it takes effect, and every change is recorded in the activity timeline.

Free days

The Add free days action extends the current period by a number of days you choose (1 to 365). This pushes the next billing date back by that many days, giving the customer extra time before their next charge. It is useful as a goodwill gesture or an informal trial extension.

Free days delay the next charge, not the first one. The first payment is always taken at checkout when the customer subscribes. Any free days you have granted are shown on the receipt as "Free days added".

Taxes and discounts on renewals

Renewals are not always the same amount as the first payment. Two things affect each cycle:

Tax: the tax for the recurring item is saved with the subscription and applied to every renewal, shown as its own line on the receipt.
Discounts: how a discount carries forward depends on its duration (set when you create the code, see Discount codes):
- Forever: applied to every renewal.
- Repeating: applied for the set number of cycles, then it stops. Each renewal counts down the remaining cycles, and once they run out the discount is removed and future charges are full price.
- Once: applied to the first payment only. Every renewal is at full price.

The subscription receipt always shows the Next charge amount with tax and any still-active discount already factored in, so you can see exactly what the customer will pay next.