This article covers
How to create a subscription with a higher first payment and lower subsequent payments?
Summary
Option 1: Create a subscription with the expected first payment, then edit the subscription's price, and under the 'Apply changes' section of the change a subscription page, choose 'on next renewal' so that the subsequent price of the subscription is different.
Option 2: Create a subscription with a fixed price and add a charge (nonrecurring addon) for the first time alone.
Solution
Below are the various options to implement this -
Create a subscription with the higher price first and then use the “Edit subscription” option from the admin console UI to update it to lower price from next renewal.
And choose to apply changes on the next renewal.
You could also add a coupon using this option for the reduction in price that you are looking to offer and apply it from the next renewal similar to the above.
The second way is to create the subscription using a charge along with the plan charges. This will total up to a higher subscription price for the first billing cycle and the remaining successive billing cycles will only have the plan’s price to be charged.
Here is a small video illustrating the options -https://www.loom.com/share/54320e6967ea45e998b652a1999c1078
Now as mentioned in the video, the options can also be accomplished using APIs - You can use the "Update subscription for Items" API for overriding the plan price to a lesser price and apply the change to happen from the next renewal, pass the new plan price and end_of_term parameter as "true"
The same API can also be used to apply coupons to the subscription as explained in the last option.
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