Pricing Plans: Setting Up a Grace Period
5 min read
Set a grace period to allow clients more time if the recurring payment for their plan fails. This is the time they have to resubmit payment before their subscription cancels automatically. While in a grace period, your client still has access to the all benefits in their subscription.
In this article, learn more about:
Important:
- Grace period is only available for recurring subscriptions paid online.
- Grace period will not apply on the first payment of the subscriptions, including the first payment following a free trial.
- Currently you can only set a grace period on desktop.
Adding a grace period to your pricing plans
Add a grace period to give your clients time to resubmit a failed payment without losing access to the benefits in their pricing plan.
Renewing benefits, such as a specific number of bookings services, that you include in a subscription are still available to your customers, even when they are in a grace period. You can temporarily suspend the subscription if you do not want to give customers access to subscription benefits during their grace period.
Notes:
- The maximum grace period you can set is 14 days and the grace period can never be longer than one full subscription cycle. This is intended to avoid an excessive debt.
- When you enable grace period, you send the automated failed payment and successful payment emails by default.
To add a grace period to your pricing plans:
- Go to Pricing Plans settings in your site's dashboard.
- Scroll down and enable the toggle next to Grace Period.
- Enter the grace period (between 1 - 14 days) you want to offer clients who miss their recurring payments.
- Click the toggle next to Send customers an automated email when a payment needs to be resubmitted:
- Enabled: Customers get an automated email about the grace period when their payment fails.
- Disabled: Customers don't get an email when their plan enters the grace period.
Note: Automated emails for failed payments are active by default.
- Click Save at the top of the page.
- (Optional) Scroll down and click the toggle next to Send customers an automated email when a payment is successfully collected:
- Enabled: Customers receive an automated email that their payment was successful and their grace period is over.
- Disabled: Customers don't receive an email about their successful payment and the end of their grace period.
Note: Automated emails for successful payments after entering a grace period are active by default.
Enabling recurring retries for grace periods
Recurring retries are another way to collect payment while recurring subscriptions are in a grace period. This increases the chances of you saving more subscribers whose payments failed.
When you enable recurring retries, the system automatically attempts to collect payment from the customer's existing payment method every 24 hours for the duration of their grace period. For example, if you add a grace period of 7 days, the system makes up to 7 attempts to collect payment.
Important:
- We are currently in the process of releasing this feature, but it's not available to everyone yet.
- In some cases, the system cannot make recurring payment attempts. This can happen for many reasons, including if the card attached to the customer's original payment method was reported lost or stolen, for example.
To enable recurring retries for grace periods:
- Go to Pricing Plans settings in your site's dashboard.
- Scroll down and enable the Retry a customer's payment method automatically during grace period toggle.
Tip:
A notification showing whether a subscription is in grace period and if the system is attempting recurring retries appears in the Subscriptions tab.
How customers resolve grace periods
When a customer's recurring payment fails, their grace period begins. Your customer receives an email asking them to submit payment (unless you disable the email automation above).
When the customer clicks the "Submit Payment" link in the email, they go to the "My Subscriptions" page in the Members Area.
In the My Subscriptions section, a failed payment notification appears next to the relevant plan. The customer can then click Submit Payment and choose an existing payment method, or enter new details, to complete the payment.
Receiving offline payments?
You can manually mark the subscription as paid in the Subscriptions tab in your site's dashboard. When you change the payment status, the subscription status changes from "Grace Period" to "Active."
FAQs
We are here to answer all your questions. Click a question below to learn more.
How can I tell which of my customers' subscriptions are in a grace period?
What happens if customers need more time?
Can I suspend access to services while a subscription is in a grace period?
Can I set different grace periods for different plans?