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Cancel subscriptions

Zuora

Cancel subscriptions

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Creating and amending subscriptions in the Zuora Billing UI is only relevant for existing Subscribe and Amend customers who have not transitioned to Orders or Orders Harmonization. Any new customers will not see this UI.

During the subscription term, a customer may decide to discontinue their subscription to your company's services. This customer might want to cancel their subscription effective immediately, on a specific date, or at the end of the current term. To stop billing a customer account, you can either create an amendment to remove the applicable products from the subscription, or you can cancel the subscription entirely.

Cancellation Effective Dates

When cancelling a subscription, it is important to choose the correct cancellation effective date to avoid any undesired credits being issued back to the customer or additional charges being billed to the customer beyond the cancellation date.

You can also set the cancellation effective date to be before a renewal term or before the last invoice date. For more information, see Amend or Cancel a Subscription Before the Renewal Term and Amend or Cancel a Subscription Before the Last Invoice Date.

The cancellation effective dates available are End of Current Term, Enter a Date (specify a date), and End of Last Invoice Period.

You cannot cancel a subscription if the subscription includes a discount charge and the cancellation effective date is before the start date of the discount charge's last segment.

End of Current Term

If you select End of Current Term, customer billing continues through the end of current term for the applicable subscription. For example, a subscription with a term start date of 1/1/2010 and an initial term of 60 months would have a term end date of 12/31/2014. Cancelling using the end of term in this example will result in the subscription continuing to bill through 12/31/2014. For the cancellation effective date End of Current Term, Zuora Billing automatically populates the cancellation date field with the date the current term ends.

Enter a Date

If you select Enter a Date and specify a date, customer billing will be discontinued on the cancellation date entered. Check the service period on the last invoice posted for the applicable customer account prior to setting the cancellation date. This is to avoid undesired credits back to the customer or additional charges billed to the customer beyond the cancellation date. For example, if you've billed through a certain period (for example, the service period on the invoice is from 1/1/2010-12/31/2010), and the subscription is cancelled midway through that service period on 6/1/2010 (using cancel effective date), Zuora Billing will issue a credit back to the customer on the next invoice for the period of 6/1/2010-12/31/2010.

End of Last Invoice Period

If you select End of Last Invoice Period, customer billing is discontinued as of the day after the last invoiced service period. For the cancel effective date End of Last Invoice Period, Zuora Billing automatically populates the cancellation date field with that date.

Cancelling a Subscription

You can cancel active subscriptions (subscriptions with the Active status).

Why cancel a subscription instead of deleting it? Cancelling a subscription preserves the historical data. Additionally, Zuora allows you to delete a subscription only if the subscription does not already have a posted invoice associated with it. Once an invoice is posted, it is considered locked and the related subscription is also locked and cannot be deleted.

You cannot delete a subscription if it has amendments, and if an invoicing has occurred. Even if the invoice was a draft and it was deleted, you cannot delete the subscription or amendments. 

To cancel a subscription that is currently active:

  1. Within an active subscription, click Cancel.
  2. Specify the Contract Effective Date.

The Contract Effective Date is the date the customer provided notice of cancellation. For example, a customer can notify you of cancellation today by setting the Contract Effective Date as today but have cancellation take effect at a future date by setting the Cancellation Date as the future date. In other words, the Contract Effective Date won't affect the cancellation effective date.

  1. Specify the Booking Date.

    The Booking Date field is set for the amendment contract and is only available when the new UI experience is enabled.

  2. Select the cancellation effective date from the list: End of Current Term, Enter a Date, or End of Last Invoice Period.
  3. Fill in the Cancellation Date. This date can be today's date or a future date, as long as it is after the last invoiced period. The Cancellation Date will be pre-populated by Zuora Billing if the cancellation effective date is either End of Current Term or End of Last Invoice Period. When a subscription is cancelled, Zuora Billing will create a cancellation amendment to track the cancellation.
  4. If you accidentally cancel a subscription using the wrong cancellation policy or wrong cancel effective date, you can delete the cancellation amendment created by Zuora Billing for the cancellation.

To manage and access features from the self-service interface, see Manage Features.

Subscription Cancellation with Future-dated Amendments on Subscription

You can cancel subscriptions when certain types of future-dated amendments exist on the subscription.

See Future-dated Amendments for more information about supported types of future-dated amendments.