THE ESSENTIALS

Subscriptions are created when contacts subscribe to services from your business’s Product Catalogue. During the ordering process, contacts select the service to subscribe to and the desired price terms that include its pricing, billing, renewal and contract conditions. Services are grouped together into Subscriptions, based on their billing cycles.

Subscriptions are billed automatically by CRM.COM’s Billing engine that manages key processes such as proration, billing cycle alignment, invoicing, and automated payments when an account exceeds its credit limit.

Throughout their lifecycle, subscriptions and their associated services transition through various states. Some state changes occur automatically, driven by your business’s Subscription and Billing model, while others are triggered by the contacts themselves - such as upgrades, downgrades, or cancellations.

There are three main ways to embed CRM.COM Subscriptions into your business model and technology ecosystem. At first, use CRM.COM’s Apps for a ready-made solution that allows your contacts to subscribe and self-manage their subscriptions and billing. Alternatively, you can use CRM.COM’s self-service Web APIs to develop your own front-end. Finally, use CRM.COM’s back-office Web APIs for server-to-server integrations, for example if your business model is based in externally managed subscriptions (in-app subscriptions).

Before digging into Subscriptions, let’s understand some key terms used throughout CRM.COM.

Subscriber

A subscriber is a contact or an organisation that subscribed to one or more of your services. A subscriber’s state indicates whether they are paying contacts of your business or not:

• Active - The contact is a paying subscriber, with at least one Effective or Paused service.

• Inactive - The contact is still a paying subscriber, but all of their services are in Not Effective or Draft states.

• Churned - All of the subscriber’s services have been Cancelled or Regretted, and the contact is no longer considered a paying subscriber.

Subscriptions

Subscriptions group together services based on their billing cycle, billing model (pre- or post-bill) and currency. It includes the billing terms and optionally, a preferred payment method to be used for automated payments. It also includes a state:

• Active - There’s at least one service in Effective or Paused state and contact is paying for them.

• Inactive - None of the subscription’s services are active, they are all in either Not Effective or Draft states.

• Churned - All the subscription’s services have been discontinued, i.e. in Cancelled or Regretted states, so the contact is no longer paying for them.

Subscription Services

A Subscription Service can be either a Termed or One-time service from your product catalogue. Each subscription service has a state:

• Draft- The service has been ordered but not yet activated.

• Effective - The service is in use by the Contact, it’s either being billed normally and paid for, or it’s in a trial period.

• Not Effective - The service has been deactivated due to outstanding balance or exceeding the credit limit. It cannot be resumed until the Contact settles the balance.

• Paused - The service has been temporarily discontinued for a period of time at the contact’s request and will not incur charges during the pause period.

• Cancelled - The service has been permanently terminated, either at the contact’s request or due to prolonged deactivation. The contact is no longer billed for the service and must re-subscribe if they wish to use it again.

• Regretted - The Contact has regretted ordering the service, typically a few days later. Regretted services are fully refundable.

Subscription Terms

Subscription Terms define the agreement between the contact and the service provider. These terms include:

• Agreement Date – The date on which the subscription agreement is established.

• Billing Cycle – How frequently the subscription is billed (e.g., weekly, monthly, quarterly).

• Billing Day – The specific day the billing cycle starts:

  • For weekly subscriptions, this is a day of the week (e.g., Monday, Friday).

  • For monthly or longer cycles, this is a calendar day from the 1st to the 31st.

• Payment Method – The contact's preferred method for paying off recurring service fees. If not specified, the primary method is used for automated payments. The contact’s CRM.COM Wallet is considered as the primary method if payment.

Termed Period

A termed period is the agreed duration during which a service remains active and billable. The termed period can cover one or more billing cycles. At the end, the service either auto-renews - the service remains active and is billed for another cycle - or expires, that means that it gets deactivated and billing stops. Expired services can be renewed for another termed period upon the subscriber’s request.

Contract Period

A contract period is the defined timeframe during which the contact agrees to comply with specific business rules - such as restrictions on cancellations or changes to their services. In return, your business guarantees the continued delivery of the service and protection from any price increases during this period.

Trial Period

The trial period is a limited period during which a contact can try out a service, free of charge, with no billing or contractual obligations. It starts when the contact subscribes and is defined in the service’s pricing terms.

Usage Services

Contacts have to subscribe to Termed or One-time services to be able to consume usage like Data or Voice. Termed and One-time service’s price terms include its usage allowance that, in its turn, designates which usage services can be consumed and optionally, limits on how much usage may be consumed according to the service’s price.

No Billing Services

Services marked as "No Billing" are configured without a price. Contacts can subscribe to such services, but they are never invoiced for them. These services are grouped under a separate “No Billing” subscription, that has no billing terms. They can be canceled at any time and may still be enabled on devices if needed.

Devices

Devices are used to provision services to subscribers, such as set-top boxes or routers. Contacts may use their own devices or choose to buy or rent them from your business. Services are then enabled on these devices and CRM.COM’s Provisioning layer activates them for the subscriber.

Billing

Billing is the automated process of charging subscriptions for a defined period, either on a pre-bill or post-bill basis. It takes into account all subscriptions and their services, as well as any scheduled changes (e.g., upgrades or cancellations). It includes Invoicing and automated Payments, ensuring that contacts are charged according to their service usage and pricing terms and your business’s Subscription and Billing model.

Refer to the Billing manual for more information on subscription billing.

Viewing Subscriptions

CRM.COM offers two ways to view subscriptions:

Subscriptions Summary

To access the full list, go to Subscriptions > Subscriptions. Click on any Subscription to view its billing terms and associated services and devices.

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Contact Subscriptions

Navigate to Contacts > My Contacts > select a contact and view their list of Subscriptions in the Subscriptions tab.

Subscriptions are grouped by their billing cycle, billing model and currency. The subscription’s key billing and payment details are displayed including the billing date, latest and the next period to be billed and expected payment date.

“No Billing” and “One-time” subscriptions are also shown here. In both cases, there’s a single subscription, with no billing terms that groups together all of the services.

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Subscribing to a Service

Contacts subscribe to services through the ordering flow in a front-end. When ordering contacts select the service(s) to subscribe and its pricing terms. On completing the Order, services are grouped together into subscriptions based on the price terms' billing cycle.

Adding services to contacts can also be performed in the back-end, typically in B2B flows, when services are added by a used on-behalf of the contact.

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Subscribe to service with 2 price terms

Subscription services can be offered individually or as part of a fixed or flexible bundle. In flexible bundles, contacts can view and select which services to include in the bundle, any bundle restrictions, and whether selecting a service adds extra charges to their recurring billing.

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Flexible bundle and its available components

At checkout, the order quotation includes an separate section outlining the details of the contact’s first invoice for the ordered services; its amount, billed period, when the contact will be billed and when a payment will be due.

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Managing Subscriptions

Contacts manage their subscriptions through the front end, while back-end users can also make changes via the back-end. Contacts may request changes that affect either the subscription’s billing terms (e.g., billing day) or individual services, such as upgrades, cancellations, or pauses. These changes are recorded as subscription actions, governed by your business’s Subscription and Billing models. Actions may be applied immediately or scheduled based on your business rules.

Managing the Subscription

Billing Address

This is the physical address of the contact used for billing purposes. It also indicates the physical location where devices are located. The billing address is one from the contact’s addresses.

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Change payment method

Set or change the payment method for the subscription. If none is explicitly defined, the Contact’s primary payment method is used for automatic payments. By default, the CRM.COM Wallet is the primary method.

Change billing day

The billing day can be changes only when Anniversary Billing is enabled. Once a specific billing day is set, it will not be automatically reset, as it reflects the contact’s chosen billing preference.

Grace Period

A Grace period prevents deactivation and allow contacts to settle their due payments. The duration must fall within the minimum and maximum limits defined in you business rules for Grace Periods.

Bill upcoming billing cycles

Bill the Contact’s subscription in advance, for a number of selected billing cycles or up to a specific date.

View Bill

View the next three upcoming subscription invoices with basic information such as the period to be billed, total amount, applied promotions and taxes and the services to be billed.

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You can also preview bills for services that are still in trial. The bill preview shows the expected billing date and the amount to be charged. However, services in trial cannot be billed in advance.

View Usage

View the contact consumed usage for the selected subscription.

View Actions

View a log of all of the subscription’s actions, including those that have been executed already, scheduled for future execution, cancelled prior to their scheduled date, or rejected actions due to insufficient funds. Scheduled actions are the only ones which can be modified by either cancelling their execution or rescheduling them.

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Subscription actions

Add Services

New services can be added directly to an existing subscription, but this option is available only in the back-end for troubleshooting or B2B processes. Contacts must place orders in the front-end to subscribe to services.

As with the standard ordering process, the service is selected first, followed by the appropriate price terms. Optionally, the action might be scheduled to be performed on a future date.

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Add Device

A single device can be associated with multiple services across various subscriptions of the same contact. Dependency rules can be used to define which devices are required for each service.

To add a device to a subscription, simply search for it using its serial number. Devices eligible to be added to a subscription include:

• Devices owned by the Contact and

• Devices of your warehouse.

Managing Services

Deactivate

Deactivate an Effective service. This action is available only through the back-end. Typically, contacts cannot request a deactivation from the front-end. Services are de-activated automatically when there’s an outstanding debt or when the service expires.

Activate

Activate a service that is currently Not Effective or Draft. Service activation is controlled by your business rules, meaning that even when activation is requested, it will only proceed if the service is not expired, the credit limit is not exceeded, and there is no outstanding debt. Automated payments are triggered to keep the credit limit within acceptable limits and allow billing to continue smoothly.

Change

Changing a service may include one or more changes of:

• The service, where another termed service is selected to switch to. Tier Path configuration, if any, defines the permitted changes between services.

• The price terms (e.g. changing from monthly to quarterly price terms).

• The quantity of the service (e.g. delivered to multiple locations).

• For flexible bundles, add or remove component services.

Billing will be adjusted accordingly based on the service changes made.

A change to a service will ultimately result in increasing or decreasing the subscription' recurring charges. When there’s an increase, this changes is automatically classified as an upgrade, whereas a price decrease results in a downgrade.

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Termed Period Change

Service term changes may include the following actions:

• Opt-in/out of auto-renewal - Change the service from auto-renewed to one that expires, or vice-versa.

• Extend termed period - Postpone the next auto-renewal or expiration date by a specified number of days.

Renew Service

This action applies to expired services and renews them for one more termed period.

Redeem Pass

Contacts redeem their Promotion Passes to unlock a discount promotion for their service(s). Redeeming the pass applies the promotion and its discount is applied on the next billing cycle.

Pause

A service is temporarily paused (deactivated) for a defined number of days. Once the pause period ends, the service is automatically reactivated. Services are -by default - credited for their paused period.

Resume

Resume a paused service before its intended re-activation date.

Manage Devices

Use this action to enable or disable a service on a device. To disable the service, select a device from the list of those on which it’s currently enabled. To enable the service, choose any device that the contact owns or rents.

View Locations

View the locations (i.e. contact’s address(es)) where the service is being used.

Manage Allowance

This option allows users to modify a service’s usage allowance. Usage allowance is determined by the service’s price terms but if required, you may enable your users to modify the available allowance per specific services. For instance, the service price covers refueling for up to 100L of diesel, but for large fleets, allowance may be increased to 1000L.

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View Allowance

View the service’s allocated allowance for their usage service(s) and/or non-traceable physical goods.

View Remaining Allowance

View the allocated usage a contact can consume, as well as the remaining usage per transaction, day and billing cycle.

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Regret

Terminate a service by initiating a regret action, in accordance with the configured Regret Period settings. If the request is successful, the contact will receive a full credit based on the original payment date.

Extend Trial Period

This option is only available while the service is in trial. The trial period can be extended in one of the following ways:

• Until a specific date.

• By a specified number of days.

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Cancel

Cancelling a service may incur cancellation fees, depending on your business rules. Once a service is cancelled, it cannot be reactivated - the contact must re-subscribe to use it again. If no other active services remain within the subscription, the subscription status will automatically change to Churned.

Managing Subscription Devices

Use this set of actions to manage the devices for a subscription (if available). Such actions cannot be scheduled.

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Return

Use this action to return rented devices back to your warehouse. If the device was sold to the subscriber, it is simply removed from the subscription but remains listed as a device owned by the contact.

Replace

Swap a rented device with another available one from your warehouse. This action does not apply to sold devices.

Planned Changes

Actions can be executed immediately or scheduled for a future date. When scheduling, the back-user must specify either an exact date or the number of days until the change takes effect.

When Change or Cancellation business rules are in place, CRM.COM suggests the allowed date to perform them and enforces their scheduling. For example, a cancellation can only be performed at the next billing cycle. CRM.COM proposes the allowed scheduled date and schedules the cancellation, preventing thus its immediate execution.

Future Subscriptions & Services

Subscriptions and services set to start on a future date are referred to as Future Subscriptions or Future Services.

Future subscriptions have a future billing cycle that begins on the date the first service is scheduled to be added and that scheduled date also becomes their official billing day.

Time Travel

The Time Travel tool is available in Test Data mode and allows users to simulate how core subscription and billing processes would behave at specific points in time. Users move forward in time to validate outcomes such as service billing, applied promotions, and scheduled changes, ensuring accurate and reliable results.

Subscription Settings

To configure Subscription settings, select Settings > Subscriptions & Billing > Subscriptions.

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Subscriptions & Billing

This screen allows businesses to streamline the setup of their Subscription and Billing model by bringing all related settings together in a single, centralised location. To access or update a setting, simply choose the appropriate tab - Subscription Management, Billing, Invoicing, Payments, or Automations - and expand the relevant section.

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In this user manual, we’ll focus specifically on the settings found under the Subscription Management tab that pertain directly to subscriptions.

Trial Management

The Trial Management feature lets businesses decide how trial services are offered to contacts. There are two options:

1. Once per contact: A contact can subscribe to only one trial service. If they order additional trial services, the trial will not be offered again, even if included in the service’s price terms.

2. Once per subscribed service: A Contact may subscribe to different trial services, but the trial period is offered only once per service. If a contact re-subscribes to the same service, the trial will not be offered again.

Enable Trial period extension to allow back-end users to manually extend the trial by a number of days. Trial period can be extended only once and only by back-end users.

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Cancellations

Establish business rules to control service cancellations more effectively. Cancellations may be allowed to be performed immediately or enforced to be scheduled depending on whether the service falls within or outside its contract period.

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Change Service

Define rules for handling service upgrades and downgrades. While subscribers can request a change of service at any time, all changes will be automatically scheduled to take effect on a specific date.

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Re-activations & De-activations

Set up the business rules for automatic service re-activations and de-activations.

• Set the outstanding amount threshold to keep a service active - Set to 0 by default, this threshold determines whether services are allowed to remain or become effective and it is used for automated deactivations and re-activations process.

• Optionally, exclude services from automatic deactivations based on the subscriber’s account classification.

• Determine whether automatic deactivations take place once a day or hour. Set to daily by default. In hourly deactivations, the service gets deactivated X hours after its activations, ensuring thus the service remains active only for the allowed number of hours.

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Pause Periods

Determine how many times or for how many days contacts are allowed to pause their services, as well as restrictions per paused period.

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Regret Period

Allow your subscribers to regret subscribing to a service and determine how many days after its ordering the service may be regretted. Note that after this date, subscribers cannot regret the service, so services will have to be cancelled.

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Grace Period

Allow your subscribers additional time to pay off their outstanding balance and prevent deactivation. If at the end of grace period there’s still a balance, then services are deactivated. Note that grace periods are always billable.

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Service Restrictions

Set a limit on the number of services a contact can subscribe to based on their account classification. This limit applies to the total number of non-churned services across all of the contact’s subscriptions.

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Reasons for Actions

Give contacts the option to specify a reason when modifying their services, and collect this information for analysis and insights.

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Products

Aside from the Subscriptions & Billing settings, Product related settings will also need to be configured as part of subscriptions. Refer to the Product Catalogue manual to find out more.

Navigate to Settings > Commerce > Products for subscription-related Product configuration. The settings listed below are clearly subscription related only.

Tier Paths

Use Tier Paths to determine the allowed changes (upgrades or downgrades) between the services. A service can be changed to any other service within the path and the change is classified as an upgrade or downgrade based on their prices.

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Dependency Rules

Dependency Rules define restrictions between products that contacts order or subscribe to. There are two kinds of dependencies; a product requires another product or two products cannot co-exist.

Find our more in the Product Catalogue manual.

Reference Material

You may also find it helpful to refer to the following manuals for further reading about Subscriptions.

Contacts

Contacts

Billing

Billing

Product Catalogue

Product Catalogue

Orders

Orders

Accounts

Financials

Promotions

Promotions

Automations

Automations

Time Travel

Time Travel

Reports

Reports

Insights

Insights

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