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Create subscription with partial period

Zuora

Create subscription with partial period

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Overview

The Prepaid with Drawdown feature supports creating subscriptions that contain a partial period, which refers to a prepayment subscription whose term consists of a partial billing period followed by one or more whole billing periods. 

For example, a 14-month subscription that includes a prepayment charge with an annual billing period and an annual validity period is a subscription with a partial period. The first two months represent the partial period, and the remaining 12 months represent a whole period. Once the subscription is created, it will have two validity periods and two billing periods. You can bill the two billing periods separately or together.

Prerequisite

Activate the “Term End Day” option in the Customize Billing Day setting. 

Steps

Suppose you want to create a 14-month subscription from 2022-11-01 to 2023-12-31. The first two months, from 2022-11-01 to 2022-12-31, will be the first validity period. The remaining 12 months from 2023-01-01 to 2023-12-31 will be the second validity period.   

  1. Create a prepayment charge. Configure the charge like usual with the following specifics:

  • Validity period: Annual
  • Billing period: Annual
  • Billing day: Term End Day
  • Billing period alignment: Align to Term End

Note the following when you configure the above fields.

  • You must set "Billing day" to Term End Day and "Billing period alignment" to Align to Term End.
  • SetBillingCycleType to TermEndDay and set BillingPeriodAlignment to AlignToTermEnd if you use the REST API or SOAP API to create the charge.

Note that Term End Day is also available for non-prepaid recurring charges. The Term End Day option must be coupled with the Align to Term End option of the Billing Period Alignment field.

2. Create a prepayment subscription. Configure the subscription like usual with the following specifics:

  • Type: Termed
  • Term start date: 11/1/2022
  • Initial term: 14
  • Period type: Month
  • Add the prepayment charge created in Step 1 into this subscription.

Once created, on the Prepayment Balance tab of this subscription, two validity periods will be available: 11/01/2022 -12/31/2022 and 01/01/2023 -12/31-2023.

Notes and limitations

  • Partial period subscriptions only work with the Prepaid with Drawdown feature and are subject to the limitations already imposed on the use cases of Prepaid with Drawdown.     

  • When creating prepayment charges for partial period subscriptions:

    • Only prepayment charges of recurring type can set their Billing day to Term End Day and Billing period alignment to Align to Term End.  
    • When Billing day is set to Term End Day, Billing period alignment must be set to Align to Term End. The two settings must be used in pairs. 

    You can also add prepayment charges to existing partial period subscriptions at any time. For more information, see Add prepayment product to subscription.

  • When creating partial period subscriptions, only the Monthly based term type is supported.