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In Commerce Engine, a customer’s recurring purchase is managed through a subscription object. A subscription combines, at a minimum, one or more products (called subscription items), a billing plan, and the customer’s payment method used to pay for the subscription. Note: A payment method is not required for free trials or free subscriptions. The subscription belongs to an account and in the Portal is created from the account. The subscription is automatically responsible for sending billing notifications and initiating recurring billing throughout the subscription’s lifetime. Subscriptions initiate and submit transactions to payment processors. The resulting transactions, along with the related amounts, status, currencies, and other data are displayed in the transaction and account views to which they apply. Results can be referenced in reports, and in email notifications you send to your customers. Note: Subscriptions were previously called AutoBills. The Subscription List displays the Subscription ID, Customer Account Name, End Date, Subscription Status, and the Account’s Billing State. For guidance how to search for subscriptions, see Filtering Subscriptions. The Actions sidebar allows you to edit the subscription, make a payment to the subscription, or disable a subscription. Edit takes you to the edit page where you can make changes to the subscription. Disable will pop up a dialog to allow you to cancel a subscription. Note: As with any changes you make using the Commerce Engine Portal, ensure that your local system is integrated to Commerce Engine Portal changes by receiving Push notifications.

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Subscription Line Items

Commerce Engine supports multiple products on subscriptions. You can add or remove products from/to a subscription at any time. If you add or remove products in the middle of a billing cycle with the Prorate option selected, Commerce Engine determines the prorated amount to charge or refund based on the point in the billing cycle and the effective/billing dates of the subscription. Multiple items on the same subscription will bill at the same time, and will appear as one accumulated charge against the customer’s payment method. Products can be single items or product bundles, and can appear multiple times on a single subscription for any billing period. You can add products to a subscription for multiple billing cycles, or add them permanently, and assign start dates that do not correspond to any billing cycle. You can remove products just for the current billing cycle only, or remove them permanently. For items that can be sold in multiples, use the Quantity field to indicate how many of that individual item are being purchased. For recurring items (pre-paid), the individual item product price will be multiplied by the quantity value to determine the total recurring charge. For license-based items (rated, pre-paid products), the quantity value will be used with the appropriate rate plan tier structure to determine the charge. Parent topic:Billing Related information Subscription Lifecycle Working with Subscriptions