Understand charging on a specific day and cutoff days

Understand charging on a specific day

You can charge your customers on a specific day of the week or month.

Customers will always be charged immediately at the time of checkout.
Their subsequent orders will be on the day you have set.

For example, if a customer places an order on October 10th and you charge your recurring customers on the 15th, the second order will be on October 15th and the following orders will be on the 15th of every month.

Without charging on a specific day, if a customer places an order on October 10th, the second order will be on November 10th and the following orders will be on the 10th of every month.

Understand cutoff days

When charging your customers on a specific day, it is also recommended to set up cutoff days. They are needed in order not to bill a customer twice in a single billing period.

Cutoff days create an interval between the day a customer goes through checkout and when you bill your customer again for their recurring order.Checkout orders submitted before the cutoff day will have the next order processed on the upcoming order date. If customer makes a subscription order after the set cutoff day, their next order will skip the next upcoming order date.

The cutoff days settings work with the specific charge day settings only. A specific day of the week or month should be set.

Let’s say you set the number of cutoff days to 5. Then all orders that were made more than 5 days before the 15th of the month will get scheduled on the first 15th of month that comes after the initial order. But any order created in the period of 5 days before the 15th of the month will automatically skip the next 15th day and will be scheduled for the next month.

In our previous example, if you set the number of cutoff days to 5 and a customer places an order on October 10th and you charge your recurring customers on the 15th, the second order will be on November 15th. But if you set the number of cutoff days to 5 and a customer places an order on October 9th and you charge your recurring customers on the 15th, the second order will be on October 15.

Examples

Without cutoff days

Frequency - 1 week
Initial order day - Tuesday 2th

Number of cutoff days - 0

Specific charge day - Wednesday

Next charge day - Wednesday 3th

Open

With cutoff days

Frequency - 1 week
Initial order day - Tuesday 2th

Number of cutoff days - 1
Specific charge day - Wednesday

Next charge day - Wednesday 10th

Open

Set specific charge days and cutoff days in a subscription

In order to charge your customers on a specific day of the week or month, you must have an auto-charging pay-per-delivery subscription rule with a subscription frequency set in weeks or months.  

1. Go to the Subscription rules page

2. Click Create subscription rule

3. Select Auto-charging rule

4. Scroll down to Subscription frequency and set the frequency for how often the customer will be charged.

5. Scroll down to Charge customer on this day of month / week:
   - When the initial order was made, 1 - 31 (for months)
   - When the initial order was made, Monday - Sunday (for weeks).
   Select one of the specific days (1 - 31 for months of Monday - Sunday for weeks)

6. Set cutoff days

Update specific charge day for existing subscriptions

1. Go to Customer subscriptions > Subscription > Payment schedule

2. Click Edit

3. Change the charge date. This will also auto-update the upcoming charge date to reflect this change