Stripe: how to apply trial at end of billing period

0
votes

As part of a referral scheme, I'd like to add trial periods to existing Stripe subscriptions.

From the Stripe docs, I understand you can apply a trial mid-subscription, but it alters the billing cycle. I'd quite like to keep the billing cycle the same, only because users pay monthly or annually for the service, and I'd like to avoid pro-rated amounts and changing their regular payment dates. As such, I'd like to add the trial period to the end of their current billing period.

My question is, if I set a trial to start at the billing period end (the exact timestamp), will that work as I'm expecting? Would I need to set it a little in advance to avoid the usual invoice being created, or is Stripe smart enough to see that a trial is due to start?

I did consider coupons instead to apply the free period (2 months), but I'm not sure that would be effective for both monthly and annual plans.

Any advice appreciated.

1
stripe-payments

1 Answers

1
votes

It sounds like Subscription Schedules may be the solution. You can use Subscription Schedules to schedule changes to a Subscription in advance, including trial periods:

You can add trial periods by setting trial end on a phase. If you want the entire phase to be a trial, set the value of trial_end to the same time as the end_date of the phase. You can also set trial_end to a time before the end_date if you want to make only part of the phase a trial. When scheduling updates, you must specify the new trial_end on each phase.

Regarding this question:

My question is, if I set a trial to start at the billing period end (the exact timestamp), will that work as I'm expecting? Would I need to set it a little in advance to avoid the usual invoice being created, or is Stripe smart enough to see that a trial is due to start?

Outside of Subscription Schedules you can't specify when a trial starts, only when it ends. You could schedule the API call to start the trial on your end, but I recommend Subscription Schedules over doing it that way unless you have a specific use case that warrants it.

The other thing I wanted to call out is that you can define both a trial and an update to the billing cycle anchor. This will allow you to keep the billing period the same, but will likely result in pro-rated amounts (which you said you wanted to avoid).