This articles covers the basics of subscription renewals and delves into some of the most common issues and frequently asked questions.

Subscriptions renew according to the renewal settings that are configured for the subscription. It's important to understand these settings, as they will dictate how the subscription is renewed. You can learn more about these settings in our article about Renewal Settings with Subscriptions.

When working with renewals, there are a couple of aspects to bear in mind:

It's worth noting that customers will be able to book events that occur after the renewal date. This means that a customer will be able to book an event after a renewal date in the future before we know whether the renewal payment will be successful or not.

Regular auto-renewing subscriptions allow your customers to book past their renewal date. If this isn't ideal for your business, there's a workaround:

You can create an auto-renewing subscription that links to a class package, where the linked package is the only benefit the subscription includes.

In other words, the subscription:

So, for example, if you have linked this special subscription to a 10 class pack, then every renewal cycle customers will be able to use the credits from that pack on classes but only on classes that are scheduled within the current renewal cycle.

After the first renewal hits, the linked pack's credits will reset back to 10.

Note that in the event that a customer doesn't use all of the packs credits for the current renewal cycle, the remaining credits will not roll over to the next month.

First, create your pack

To get started, first create a 10 class pack (from subscriptions/packs, click packs, new pack, fill in the prompts). If one already exists you do not need to create another. Just make sure this pack includes access to all classes that the customer will need to be able to register for.

​Then create your subscription

Click Subscriptions & Packs > Subscriptions > Create

Give it a name that describes what the customer will receive. A description that covers that the customer can't book past the renewal date may also help set customer expectations.

Choose your renewal cycle / cadence.

Under Auto-renewal settings, toggle on 'This subscription auto-renews'.

Under 'What this subscription can be used for' uncheck the 'select all' box so that no class templates are included.

Then submit.

From the Subscription Details page, double check that no classes are included (one-off or templates). Then click Subscriptions/packs > Assign memberships.

Select your 10 pack > click 'Assign selected.'

When finished, you're subscription should look like this. Remember: only the pack should include classes / class templates. The subscription should not.

Click Customers > Customer List > search for said customer and click their name.

The customer's subscription renewal date can be found on their profile under Overview.

Click Customers > Customer List > search for said customer and click their name.

Click the dropdown menu to the right of the subscription > click Edit.

From here you can:

When you're done, scroll down to save your changes.

When a renewal fails, we will attempt to charge the customer again according to the schedule set in your general settings under "Membership renewals" (see screenshot below).

Also, depending on your settings, we will cancel or maintain the customer's future bookings if a renewal fails. This is an important consideration, as it will impact how you manage subscriptions that have failed to renew. If you choose to maintain the customer's future bookings, they will still be able to attend events that they have already booked, even if their subscription has failed to renew. However, they may not be able to book future events until the payment issue is resolved.

When working with subscriptions that activate on first use, as per the membership settings, it's worth considering that we will attempt to renew a membership only after a membership has become active according to the membership renewal settings. This means that, if a subscription remains inactive, meaning the first class hasn't been booked yet, we will not attempt to charge a renewal.

Membership renewals work slightly different when it comes to Direct Debits payments such as ACH, BACS, and BECS. Because these payment methods are asynchronous, meaning that we don't know whether the payment was successful or not immediately as it is for cards, we will keep the membership active after the renewal date without knowing whether the payment was successful or not. This means that renewals that were fulfilled using a direct debit payment may fail days after the expected renewal date.

In this video, we'll create a subscription that:

To start, click Memberships > Subscriptions/Packs > Subscriptions

Name it > price it (for the monthly charge) > in Duration Settings choose 'absolute interval' for renewing subscriptions > choose one month. Note: 'specific interval' is for fixed start and end dates. Ex. January 1 - March 31.

Toggle on this auto renewal setting.

At bottom of the page choose what this subscription can be used toward.

Click Create, then choose whether to make it public by clicking Subscriptions/Packs > then turning on the 'Featured at Checkout' toggle.

The Auto-renewal settings section of a subscription creation page contains 7 sub-sections. Below we'll briefly cover what each one means.

When creating a subscription, you'll find a toggle to make it an auto-renewing subscription: one that automatically charges the price you've set on the same day every billing cycle that the customer initially purchased the subscription.

So, for example, if you chose a Duration Setting of 'Absolute Interval: one month' and a customer then bought the subscription on the 13th, they'd be automatically charged that same price every month on the 13th going forward).

The goal of the free trial feature is to allow customers to try the benefits and decide if they want to go ahead with paying for the renewing subscription or cancel before it begins charging them.

With a free trial, the customer will have free access for a default of 1 week. You can update this time period to be longer or shorter, and you can even update the price of this "free" trial to be a reduced price of the subscription.

The maximum number of renewals is a cap on those billing cycles mentioned above. If you set this at, say, 10 months, the customer will see 10 renewal charges, and then the subscription will cease to renew and the benefits will cease to be usable.

If you prefer that everyone on this subscription is charged on the 15th or some other day, toggle this feature on and pick your favorite date.

This one is similar to the free trial. It differs in that it allows you to use the renewal cycles instead. In other words, you can have a $100/month subscription that begins the first 2 months at 60/month to make it more enticing for customers.

This feature works well with 'limited use' subscriptions: those that give a limited number of credits per billing cycle, like 10 class credits a month.

Inevitably, you'll have a customer (or two) that tend to burn through those 10 credits before the month is over, and can then no longer book classes.

Enter 'Allow over-booking', which allows those customers that have run out of credits to register for classes and "put it on their [subscription] tab" until the next billing cycle re-adds those next 10 credits. Their subscription charge at the end of the month will then be the normal monthly charge plus the drop-in prices of any additional classes they registered for after running out of credits.

When a customer's subscription is frozen, and then subsequently unfrozen, the default setting is to move the new renewal date to the day it unfroze. Unless you toggle on 'preserve payment schedule after unfreeze.' This keeps the original renewal schedule after the subscription is unfrozen.

Using an introductory rate for a subscription (ex. first two months are half off) encourages customers to purchase subscriptions.

To set this up, create a new subscription or edit an existing subscription (Memberships > Subscriptions & Packs) > scroll to Auto-renewal settings and toggle on 'This subscription auto-renews'.

Then toggle on 'Change price after certain number of renewals'

Lastly, set the number of renewals until the price changes > then set the new price customers will pay when after those renewals.

To see a customers subscription renewals and payments, click Customers > Customer List > search for the customer and click their name.

To see subscription renewal dates and activity, click Activity > Subscriptions. Use the drop down arrow just to the left of the dates to see a full breakdown.

To see a list of payments made for all purchases, click Payments (use the arrows to move right through the list of topics).

When a payment fails for a membership renewal, Momence schedules retries on specific dates to attempt processing the payment again. It also notifies the customer immediately when a payment fails, prompting them to update their card.

This is done to give customers multiple chances to rectify any payment issues before the membership is affected.

The frequency of these retries can be adjusted from Settings > General Setup by scrolling to Membership Renewals. You can also choose whether a customer gets to keep their bookings when a renewal fails.

The customer will lose access to their subscription and won't be able to continue booking. If they are in a subscription contract, a negative balance will start accruing throughout the duration of the contract.

This is to prevent customers from trying to cancel early by letting their card fail. After all, they signed a contract, and they're on the hook for those payments.

You can manually rerun a charge from a customer's profile by navigating to Activity > Renewals.

Click Customers > Customer List > search for the customer and click their name > from their profile click the dropdown menu to the right of the subscription > Freeze.

Choose when to freeze. You can have it start now or schedule it. You can even schedule when it will un-freeze.

Yes, the renewal date will change based on when the subscription is thawed. Unless you have enabled the 'preserve payment schedule' setting within the subscription.' See below for how this works.

This is a setting that lives within Renewal Settings of Subscriptions. It deals with the question of : 'What happens when we unfreeze a subscription?'

If toggled on, it preserves their payment schedule and the customer is charged the full price of the subscription on the same day they were normally charged before freezing.

If toggled off, it auto-calculates the prorated amount they owe based on the freeze period.

If you hover over the question mark you'll find a more in-depth explanation.

Momence allows you to freeze customer's subscriptions immediately for an indefinite period or schedule the freeze. You can even schedule when you would like the 'un-freeze' to occur if you have that information on hand from the customer.

Note: freezing will cancel the all the customer's future bookings made with this subscription. All future bookings will be lost.

When a customer needs to freeze their membership, you can do this by clicking: Customers > Customer List > from Overview locate the subscription and click the dropdown menu to the right > click Freeze

In the pop-up that displays, you'll find options to freeze now, or schedule the freeze for another day. The second row will allow you to schedule that unfreeze date if you know it.

This is a setting that lives within Renewal Settings of Subscriptions. You would have seen this when setting up the subscription initially.

It deals with the question of : 'What happens when we unfreeze a subscription?'

Here's how it works:

If toggled on, it preserves their payment schedule and the customer is charged the full price of the subscription on the same day they were normally charged before freezing.

If toggled off, it auto-calculates the prorated amount they owe based on the freeze period.

If you hover over the question mark you'll find a more in-depth explanation.

To edit the renewal price of a subscription's entire list of subscribers at once, click Memberships > Subscriptions and Packs, click on the subscription.

Scroll down to the sign up list > click the dropdown menu to the right.

Next, choose how you'll edit the renewal prices. Here's how each option works.

Specific allows you to change all prices to a specific amount (ex. put 70 here and everyone's price will update to 70 every renewal).

Absolute allows you to increase or decrease the amount of everyones price by the number you put here (ie. $5 would look at everyones price and increase it by 5.

(-5 would decrease it by 5).

This is a helpful option if you have some customers that pay less. You'll effectively be raising everyones price by $5 here but those customers will still be paying less after this change is made. You can always fine tune those customer's prices from their profile.

Relative works the same way but gives you a percentage option (ie. increase or decrease by 5%). Enter a negative number to decrease.

​Bulk freeze allows you to quickly freeze all customer's renewals on this subscription's list.
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Note: To unfreeze each membership you'll need to do this on a per customer basis. (ie from their profile). There is no bulk unfreeze option at this time.

The most common reason for this is that someone's already paying for the subscription.

You'll see at the end of the text below that it says 'This setting cannot be changed once there is at least one active sign-up.'

One path is to duplicate the subscription and keep everything the same except for that renewal setting -- flip that on. Then, you can transfer the individuals from the old subscription to the new one.

Click Memberships > Subscriptions and Packs > Navigate to the subscription, click its dropdown menu and duplicate it.

Scroll to Auto-renewal settings and flip this toggle on.

After saving the new subscription, navigate to the old one > Click on it and scroll to its customer list at the bottom > Click on the first customer.

To the right of customer's subscription you'll find a dropdown menu > Click it and select Transfer.

Select the new membership you just created > the choose your preference for timing of transfer and charging options.

Repeat this process into all customers have been transferred to the new one.