Skip to main content

Suspend subscriptions

Zuora

Suspend subscriptions

Suspending a subscription allows you to pause an active subscription temporarily and bring it back to active status later. You may want to suspend your customer subscriptions due to customer payment issues or your customers want to pause their services for a certain period.

After you suspended a subscription, the status of the subscription changes to Suspended. All the charges within the subscription are also suspended. The suspended subscription is only included in the Contracted MRR calculation. Zuora does not charge the suspended subscription and does not generate invoices for the suspended subscription. For example:

  1. A customer subscribes to your product for one year starting on January 1.
  2. You suspend the subscription from April 1 to June 1 for two months.
  3. You generate an invoice for the subscription for the whole year.

In the invoice, no charges are generated for the suspension period from April 1 to June 1.

The partial period fees are prorated to align your charges to a certain bill cycle day. For example, a customer subscribes to your product for one year starts from Jan 1. The bill cycle day of the account is set as 10th of the monthOn March 1, the customer requests to suspend the subscription on May 15th and resume the subscription on June 13th. If you set the Prorate recurring charges for partial period? billing rule to Yes, a proration amount is calculated for partial billing periods: 05/10/2017 to 05/14/2017 and 06/13/2017 to 06/30/2017. For more information on how to calculate the proration amount, see Proration.

You can cancel a suspended subscription by deleting the Suspend Subscription amendment. If you generate an invoice, which covers the suspension period, you are not allowed to delete the Suspend Subscription amendment. In the above example, the invoice covers the suspension period (April 1 to June 1). So, you cannot delete the suspend amendment. If the invoice is not posted, you can cancel the invoice and then delete the amendment. If the invoice is posted, you cannot delete the amendment. The solutions are as follows:

  • You can resume the subscription, but the resume date must be after the suspension date.
  • You can create a new subscription, which interrupts billing and risks a negative invoice, potentially transferring to a credit balance or causing a refund. 

You can configure an email or callout to send the following notifications:

  • Key Date(s) | Subscription Suspend Date: When a subscription suspension takes effect. 
  • AmendmentProcessed | Suspend Subscription: When a Suspend Subscription amendment has been submitted and processed.

See Supported Event Types for more information.

Limitation

Currently, the limitations on suspending a subscription are as follows:

  • You cannot amend the subscription during the suspension period. You must resume the subscription before creating a subscription amendment. For example, to cancel a suspended subscription, you must resume the subscription first. You can resume and then cancel a subscription on the same day without being charged.
  • If a subscription has ever been suspended, you are not allowed to change the trigger condition of the charges in the subscription. You can change the trigger condition only if you delete all the Suspend Subscription amendments on the subscription.
  • When the subscription term ends during the suspension period, key dates notification for the charge end date are not supported.
  • You cannot suspend a subscription if the subscription contains prepayments.
  • For Zuora's Netsuite Connector, subscription suspension is currently not reported to NetSuite to pause revenue recognition for that period.

Suspend Date

Suspend date is the date when subscription suspension takes effect. If the subscription term ends during the suspension period, the subscription ends.

When you set the suspend date, pay attention to the following restrictions:

  • The suspend date cannot be earlier than the subscription start date.
  • The suspend date must be earlier than the subscription term end date.
  • The suspend date cannot be earlier than the most recent resume date.
  • The suspend date cannot be earlier than the date when usage or discount charges have been processed.

You can specify the suspend date with one of the following options:

Today

The subscription is suspended on today's date.

End Of Last Invoice Period

The subscription is suspended at the end of the last invoice period. The suspend date defaults to a date that is one day after the last invoiced period. For example, if the last invoice period is from April 24, 2019 to May 23, 2019, the suspend date is on May 24, 2019. You can choose this option to avoid any undesired credits being issued back to the customer. 

You may generate a negative invoice if the subscription suspends in the middle of a billing period that has been invoice. For example, you generate invoices from January 1 to December 31 and post them to customers. After posting the invoices, you need to suspend the subscription and set the suspend effective date to June 1. In such cases, you have to issue a credit back to your customers. Zuora reflects the changes in the new invoice. You do not need to unpost, cancel, and delete the first invoice. See Amend or Cancel a Subscription Before the Renewal Term and Amend or Cancel a Subscription Before the Last Invoice Date for more information.

The Number of Periods from Today

The subscription is suspended after the specified period based on today's date. Specify the length of the period and select one of the following period types: Day(s), Week(s), Month(s), and Year(s).

Specific Date

The subscription is suspended on a specific date.

Suspending a Subscription from the Zuora UI

You can suspend an active subscription from the Zuora UI. If you have enabled the Orders feature, see Suspend a Subscription for how to suspend a subscription in Orders.

To suspend an active subscription:

  1. Click on the subscription you want to change from the subscription list view page.
  2. Click more > Suspend. Suspend Subscription dialog is displayed.
  3. 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

  4. Select one of the following options to specify a suspend date:
    • Today
    • End of Last Invoice Period
    • The number of periods from today
    • Specific date
  5. Specify a date in the Amendment Contract Effective Date field. This is the date that your customer provided as the notice of suspension.
  6. (Optional) You can select the You can also optionally choose a date to resume automatically check box to set a subscription resume date.
    If you select this check box, select one of the following options to specify a resume date:
    • Today
    • The number of periods from the date suspended
    • The number of periods from today
    • Specific date

    See Resume a Subscription for more information.

  7. Click ok.

A Suspend Subscription amendment is automatically created. You can view it in the Subscriptions detail screen.

Suspending a Subscription from the Zuora APIs

You can suspend an active subscription from the Zuora REST API and SOAP API.

In the REST API, see Suspend Subscription. If you have enabled the Orders feature, see Create order.

In the SOAP API, see the Suspend a Subscription (Amendment) use case.