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Cancelling

End a subscription now or at a future date, and undo a scheduled cancellation.

Cancelling ends a subscription. You can end it right away, or schedule it to end on a future date so the customer keeps their service until then. A scheduled cancellation can be undone; an immediate one cannot.

The two ways to cancel

Immediate. The subscription moves straight to cancelled. Before it does, any money owed is settled: if your organization bills unbilled charges on cancel, a final invoice goes out for accrued usage and pending charges up to that moment. A clean subscription with nothing owed makes no final invoice.

Scheduled. The subscription moves to the cancelling state and keeps running until the cancel date. When that date arrives, it becomes cancelled. If you do not pick a date, the default is the end of the current billing period, so the customer keeps what they already paid for.

Caution

An immediate cancellation is final. There is no uncancel once a subscription is cancelled; you would create a new subscription instead. Only a scheduled cancellation can be undone, and only while it is still cancelling.

A scheduled cancel date has to be in the future. A date in the past is rejected, because it would behave like an immediate cancel through the wrong door.

Undoing a scheduled cancellation

A subscription in the cancelling state can be brought back with an uncancel. It returns to active and the cancel date is cleared, as if the cancellation never happened. This only works while it is still cancelling. Once it reaches cancelled, it is final, and you would create a new subscription instead.

Worked example

A customer on a monthly plan asks to cancel on June 10, with their period ending June 30.

  • Scheduled (default): the subscription becomes cancelling now and stays live until June 30, then cancels. They keep the service they paid for.
  • Scheduled to a chosen date: you can set any future date instead of the period end.
  • Immediate: it cancels on June 10. Anything owed up to June 10 is settled first.
  • Changed their mind on June 20: while it is still cancelling, uncancel it and it goes back to active.

The final invoice is a setting

Whether an immediate cancellation settles unbilled charges with a final invoice is an organization setting, and it is on by default. With it on, cancelling immediately bills accrued usage and pending charges up to that moment; with it off, an immediate cancel raises no final invoice and anything unbilled is dropped.

You change this for your whole organization under Settings, on the billing behavior preferences (open settings if you are signed in).

Reasons and notes

A cancellation can carry a reason and a free-text note. These are recorded with the cancellation so you can see later why a customer left.

In the API

Cancel a subscription with the POST /v1/subscriptions/{id}/cancel endpoint, which takes whether the cancel is immediate or scheduled and an optional date, reason, and note. Undo a scheduled cancel with POST /v1/subscriptions/{id}/uncancel. See the API reference.

Edge cases

  • Immediate cancellation is final. There is no uncancel once a subscription is cancelled.
  • A clean cancel makes no invoice. The final settlement invoice only appears when something is actually owed and your organization has invoice-on-cancel turned on.