Subscription management is a very powerful tool to power the business growth of modern business from start-ups to established enterprise companies across the world.

With Payabbhi’s Subscription management platform, you can automatically generate bills and collect payments from your subscribers at every billing cycle. All complexities of the subscription management will be taken care by Payabbhi, so that you can just focus on your core business offering and customer satisfaction.

Billing Models

Payabbhi offers three core billing models at present. However, the platform also supports the flexibility to offer any new billing model as per the evolving market demand.

The billing models are described below:

Fixed Recurring

In the fixed recurring model, bills or invoices of a fixed amount are generated on a recurring basis as per the billing cycle of the plan. The pricing of the plan is mentioned as part of the invoice. This is typically charged at the beginning of the billing cycle.

Some examples :

• Digital Content: Amazon Prime charges 129 INR /month.
• Beauty product company - Sugar Box charges 14,388 INR annually.

Business Benefits

• Predictable revenue/ cash flow.
• Lower cost-of-entry for customers.

Seat based Model

In seat-based model, you may charge your subscribers based on the number of seats or users.

There is a base plan of a fixed amount and you have to set the quantity of the product while creating subscription in Payabbhi. Bills or invoices will be generated considering the quantity and the base plan amount, on a recurring basis.

Some examples :

• ZOHO standard charges 720 INR /user/month.
• Freshwork charges 1199 INR/user/month.

Business Benefits

• Easier prediction of business growth and scalability.

Usage based Model

(coming soon….)

In usage-based model, you may charge your subscribers for only what they use. You may add the variable amount based on the usage of the product by adding the Add-Onsfor your subscription. Add-Ons can be added in any billing cycle of the subscription . So the billing amount is variable as per the usage of the Add-Ons.

Business Benefits

• Leverage Market demand and trends.

Workflow

Payabbhi supports the subscription management workflow right from the creation, management and collection of recurring payment in each billing cycle from the customer.

Here are the steps in short for creating subscriptions in Payabbhi:

1. Create a product. Refer to Product Creation for more details.

2. Associate a plan with the product. Refer to Pricing Plan Creation for more details. You may also refer to an exiting product with a pricing plan.

3. Create a customer who will be subscribing to the plan. Refer to Customer Creation for more details. You may also refer to an exiting customer.

4. Create a subscription of the plan for the customer. Refer to Subscription Creation for more details.

5. You may have to request the customer to authorise the automatic recurring payment facilitated by Payabbhi. Alternatively, your customers may also pay the recurring invoices manually by Payabbhi payment gateway.

Payment Collection

• Recurring invoices are generated automatically by Payabbhi for each billing cycle of the subscription.

• If the billing method of the subscription is recurring, then payment is automatically attempted by Payabbhi.

• If the billing method of the subscription is manual, then the invoice is shared with the customer via his email id. The Customer needs to pay the invoice by the due date mentioned in the invoice. Refer to Payment Collection for more details.

Lifecycle

Lifecycle of a subscription is described in the table below:

Status	Description
Active	The billing cycle of a subscription is applicable when a subscription is in active state. Customers need to pay at the beginning of each billing cycle.
In_Trial	If the subscription is offered as a trial to the customer, then it remains in this state after creation.
Past_Due	If an invoice for any billing cycle is not paid, the subscription is marked as past_due.
On_Hold	If the subscription is not paid in any billing cycle in spite of retry, it is marked as on_hold.
Cancelled	When a subscription is explicitly cancelled by the Merchant, it is marked as cancelled.
Completed	When a subscription reaches the end of the last billing cycle, it becomes completed.

In Trial

Your customers don’t need to pay anything for subscribing to a plan in the trial period. So, no invoice is generated when a subscription is in In_Trial state.

Customers are informed via email certain days prior to the trial end date,about the end of the trial period.

If you have configured webhook endpoints, you will receive a subscription.trial_will_end event when the trial period is going to end soon.

Active

The billing cycle of a subscription gets started when a subscription is in Active state. Recurring invoices are generated at each billing cycle of an Active subscription. The subscription remains in this state till the end of the last billing cycle.

If a subscription is in trial, then the subscription becomes Active only after the end of the trial period.

Past Due

If the billing_method= recurring, then the payment is automatically attempted by the platform. But, if the payment is unsuccessful in the first attempt, then the subscription is transitioned to Past Due state.

This state indicates that Payabbhi will retry the payment attempt as per the platform configuration.

If the payment attempt is successful after the retry, then the subscription moves to the Active state. But, in case all attempts have been unsuccessful, the subscription moves to the On_Hold state.

This state is not relevant if billing_method= manual. In this case, the subscription is directly transitioned into On_Hold state if the invoice is not paid by the due date mentioned in the invoice.

On-Hold

• A subscription with billing_method= recurring, becomes On_Hold, only when all the payment attempts have failed on Past Due state.

• A subscription with billing_method= manual, if the invoice is not paid by the due date mentioned in the invoice, it is transitioned into On_Hold state.

When a subscription moves to the On_Hold state, Payabhhi stops automatic payment attempt for the subscription.

You may wish to continue offering the subscription services to your customers as per your business policy.

An On_Hold subscription can become Active, only when the last invoice for the subscription is paid successfully by the customer.

When an On_Hold subscription reaches the last billing cycle, it is marked as Completed.

Hence, the due amount of the subscription should be collected out of the system from the customer.

Cancelled

You may cancel a subscription, in some situations as mentioned below :

• The customer has requested for the cancellation.
• You may want to discontinue the subscription as the subscription is in On_Hold state for quite a long time.
• The subscription was created by mistake.

This subscription is still maintained in Payabbhi platform and you may look up that at any point of time. This is the end state of any subscription.

Completed

A subscription is completed at the end of the billing cycle.

If you wish to renew the subscription with the customer, you need to create a new subscription with the same set of information for customer, product and plan.