How Network Store subscriptions bill and renew

A subscription is a product that bills again on a schedule instead of once. They are listed under Subscriptions in the left-hand menu.

You do not create subscriptions directly in the normal case. Setting an interval on a product variant is what makes it a subscription; buying that variant creates one, alongside the order for the first payment.

What a subscription tracks

Field	Meaning
Status	Active, paused or cancelled.
Started	When it began. The billing cycle is counted from here.
Next billing	When the next charge will be attempted. The most useful column on the screen.
Amount	What the next renewal is expected to cost, at current seat numbers.
Customer and tribe	Who is being billed.

How a renewal happens

The next billing date arrives.
The subscription is re-priced against the seats in use at that moment, not the seats it started with.
A new order is created for the renewal.
The saved payment method is charged.
The next billing date moves forward one interval.

WHY RENEWAL AMOUNTS MOVE

Re-pricing at renewal is why a tribe that added seats mid-cycle sees a larger charge next time, and why removing seats reduces the bill from the next renewal rather than immediately.

Pausing and cancelling

Action	What happens
Pause	Renewals stop being attempted. Nothing is billed while paused. Resume and billing picks up again.
Cancel	The subscription stops for good and will not bill again. Its history stays for reporting.

CANCELLING DOES NOT REFUND THE CURRENT PERIOD

Cancelling stops future billing. The period already paid for is not refunded automatically — refund the relevant order if that is what you have agreed with the tribe.

When a renewal payment fails

Cards expire and get replaced constantly, so failed renewals are routine rather than exceptional. What happens next is set per store under Settings → Failed payments.

The charge is retried on the schedule you set — by default 3 days later, then 7 days after that.
The unpaid renewal sits in Accounts Receivable in the meantime.
If you set a suspend threshold, the subscription is suspended after that many failures. Left blank, it never suspends on its own.

The fix is almost always new card details. Send the tribe a card request from Accounts Receivable — it gives them a link to enter new details themselves, so nobody has to read a card number over the phone.

Changing what a subscription costs

Two things change the amount: seats being added or removed, and the variant price being edited. Both take effect at the next renewal.

EDITING A VARIANT PRICE RE-PRICES EVERY SUBSCRIPTION ON IT

It is a price rise for every tribe already subscribed, applied as each one renews. Tell them before you change it, not after they see the charge.

What to watch

Subscriptions renewing in the next few days, so a failure is not a surprise.
Anything that has failed more than once — that is a dead card, not a blip.
Paused subscriptions that nobody resumed. They bill nothing and are easy to forget.