Proration and Coupons

[Andrew Sinclair]

Hi all,

Have looked through the documentation and searched the web but can't find any help/discussion on how coupons affect proration.

It appears that Stripe will effectively backdate the redemption of the coupon on a previous subscription purchase if the subscription quantity is increased.

For example:

• I buy two $100 subscriptions for a cost of $200 a month on the 1st of Jan.
  
• On the 15th of Jan I apply a 50% off forever coupon to my customer account.
  
• Next I decide to buy another subscription.
• I would expect the proration to be approx. $50 (for half a month) * 50% discount = $25 which I can pay now by creating an invoice to sweep up outstanding items. I would then expect my new monthly payment from 1st Feb to be $150 which is 3 x $100 with a 50% discount.
  

What I am observing is:

On the 15th Jan I buy another subscription; my invoice then looks like this:

• Unused time on 2 full price current subscriptions = 2 * $50 = $100
• Remaining time on 3 discount subscriptions = $25 x 3 = $75

Which means I end up with a credit of $25.

Maybe I am misunderstanding something but I wouldn't expect the coupon to affect my previous subscription purchase until the next scheduled payment.

Thanks,

Andy

[Remi J.]

Hey Andy,

Sorry about the delays in answering here. The situation you describe is expected behavior on our end though I agree it can be confusing. When you update the subscription quantity, we don't charge the customer for the quantity increase. Instead, we refund the amount owed for the old quantity and the remaining time and then we calculate the amount the customer owes you for the new quantity and the remaining team. Since the coupon was added after the original subscription charge, it only applies to the new amount itself and not to the credit we refund.

We don't offer a direct way to only discount the increase in quantity at the moment unfortunately. You'd need to calculate this yourself in that situation where you'd pass `prorate: false` when you update and then calculate how much extra to charge the customer for that increase in quantity instead.

I hope this helps!

Remi

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