We want to make sure subscription/membership renewal is as straightforward as possible and that your customers never experience an interruption in service. Here’s a simple breakdown of how monthly renewal and expiration dates are calculated.
Note: If you have 'Renewals happen on a specific day in the month' enabled, the same basic rules would apply, but they would be linked to your specified day, e.g. 1st of the month.
The Standard Monthly Renewal Rule
Subscriptions/memberships are designed to renew on the same day of the month that they were originally purchased.
A subscription/membership bought on the 20th, will renew on the 20th of the following month.
This rule holds true for all purchase dates from the 1st through the 28th.
The "End of Month" Rule (Days 29, 30, and 31)
This is the only time the date might change, and it's simply to account for months that don't have enough days (like February, which only has 28 days most of the time).
If a subscription/membership is purchased on the 29th, 30th, or 31st, the renewal date will shift to the last day of the next month if that month doesn't have the original purchase date.
Example: If a subscription/membership is bought on January 31st, the next renewal will be on February 28th (or 29th in a leap year), since February never has 30 or 31 days. Once the system hits a longer month again (like March), it will try to go back to the 31st if possible.
Renewal and Expiration Examples
The table below shows how the date logic works across different starting dates and months.
Purchase Date (Start) | First Expiry/Renewal Date | Second Expiry/Renewal Date | Renewal Logic Explained |
January 15 | February 15 | March 15 | Follows the standard rule: always renews on the 15th. |
January 28 | February 28 | March 28 | Follows the standard rule: always renews on the 28th. |
January 29 | February 28 (February 29 on leap year) | March 29 | Renews on the last day of February, then jumps back to the 29th for March. |
January 30 | February 28 | March 30 | Renews on the last day of February, then jumps back to the 30th for March. |
January 31 | February 28 | March 31 | Renews on the last day of February, then jumps back to the 31st for March. |
How Renewal Works in the System
No Service Interruption
We use a soft renewal process to make sure subscriptions/memberships continue without a break.
Expiration Time: A subscriptions expiration is linked to the exact time on the day of purchase e.g 10:00AM.
Grace Period: We provide a grace period for that renewals day. E.g: If a subscription/membership is set to expire at 10:00 AM then it can actually continue to be used all day long until 11:59:59 PM on the day of expiration.
Renewal Payment Time: Renewal payments are run everyday from midnight (00:00 UTC) on the date of renewal.
A subscription expiring at 10:00am on the 10th will be usable all day on the 10th and renewed at midnight on the 11th.
Success: If the payment is successful, the subscription/membership is renewed immediately.
Failure: If payment fails, customers will still have access until the end of that day. However, they will lose access starting the next day, and their subscription/membership will go into a temporary "pending renewal" state.
Failed Payment Process:
The system attempts to process failed renewal payments on the expiration date.
If the initial payment attempt fails, the system will make four total attempts over a 7-day period:
Attempt 1: Day 1 (Expiration)
Attempt 2: Day 2 (+1 day)
Attempt 3: Day 4 (+2 days from previous)
Attempt 4: Day 7 (+3 days from previous)
If the final payment attempt on Day 7 fails, the membership will be automatically cancelled. Please note that updating a payment method or manually retrying a payment will trigger an immediate renewal attempt; if this manual attempt fails, it will not count toward the four scheduled system attempts.
Timing & Time Zone Alignment
To ensure memberships are processed fairly regardless of location, our system runs everyday processing renewals from 00:00 UTC on the day of renewal.
The system identifies memberships for renewal based on their expiration date, adjusted to the start of the day in the member's specific time zone. This ensures that a membership set to expire on January 23rd in New York is not processed prematurely while it is still January 22nd in another time zone.
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