Scheduled Subscriptions

[hannahwoodward]

When creating subscriptions via the Stripe dashboard, you can schedule them to start at a later date. Would it be possible to implement something similar via Commerce / the Commerce Stripe gateway?

[benrnorman]

I have found a half a solution that might be useful to some people, though it has a catch.

You could create a module and hook into the "EVENT_BEFORE_SUBSCRIBE" event to add the "billing_cycle_anchor" param. In the example below, I want all my subscribers to be billed at the same time on Mondays.

Event::on(
    StripeGateway::class,
    StripeGateway::EVENT_BEFORE_SUBSCRIBE,
    function(SubscriptionRequestEvent $e) {
        // Set the scheduled billing period for the following Monday
        $nextMonday = strtotime('next Monday');
        $e->parameters['billing_cycle_anchor'] = $nextMonday;
        // $e->parameters['proration_behavior'] = 'none';
    }
);

The Catch: at the moment, this will bill the user a prorated amount up until the scheduled billing anchor of next Monday. E.G. if it's a $7 subscription and they sign-up on Sunday, they will be immediately billed $1 (the prorated amount), and then the $7 the next day when the billing cycle begins.

You can set the "proration_behaviour" to "none", which prevents this behaviour in Stripe. However, then commerce-stripe throws errrors whenever you try to reference the subscription, as it expects a subscription to always have a latest invoice. For example, PaymentIntents.php expects it in getBillingIssueDescription: $intentData = $subscriptionData['latest_invoice']['payment_intent'];