Run WooCommerce recurring billing from first invoice to final refund

What is the difference between manual and automatic renewals?

A manual renewal creates a pending invoice with a payment link and waits for the customer to pay it — through any of the 500+ WooCommerce-compatible gateways, including offline methods like bank transfer. It is free, works with the gateways you already have, and suits invoicing-driven businesses.

An automatic renewal collects without the customer present: with Pro, Stripe charges saved cards off-session with SCA handling, PayPal collects through billing agreements, and Paddle bills as merchant of record. Automatic collection is the retention default; manual remains the right fit for B2B invoicing, bank-transfer markets, and unsupported gateways.

• Manual (Free): renewal invoice + payment link on any WooCommerce gateway
• Automatic (Pro): Stripe, PayPal billing agreements, or Paddle
• Both run on the same free schedule, invoices, and renewal emails

What happens when a subscription payment fails?

A failed payment starts a 2-phase grace period, not a cancellation: first a warning phase where the customer is notified, then a final grace phase before the subscription moves to hold or cancellation under your policy. Access stays recoverable throughout, so one expired card doesn't end a good customer relationship.

Pro adds automation to the recovery window. Auto-retry re-attempts the charge on a schedule, sends customer notices, and tracks recovery; if retries and grace are exhausted, auto-downgrade moves the customer to a fallback plan instead of cancelling — and access rules follow the downgraded plan.

Can I sync all renewals to the same billing date?

Yes — Flexible Renewal Sync (Pro) aligns eligible new subscriptions to shared billing-cycle boundaries: the next day, the store week, the first of the month, or January 1, depending on the billing period. Renewals stop scattering across the calendar, which makes batch billing and revenue days predictable.

Product-level cycle segments decide the first charge for early, middle, and late signups: full amount, prorated amount, or the full amount covering the next cycle. Synced checkout works with manual and offline gateways plus Stripe — unsupported automatic gateways are hidden while a synced item is in the cart — and existing subscriptions are never modified.

Can customers skip or pause a renewal instead of cancelling?

Yes — both options ship free. Skip next renewal moves the schedule forward one cycle: the customer (or staff, as a support action) skips one payment, the subscription stays active, and the skip reason can be recorded on the record.

Pause — vacation mode — covers longer breaks: the subscription is temporarily suspended and resumes when the customer is back, with account and history intact. Both act as retention valves; a subscriber who needs a month off keeps subscribing instead of cancelling.

How do prorated subscription refunds work?

A prorated refund returns the value of unused subscription time: ArraySubs shows a preview of the exact prorated amount on the subscription record, and staff process it from there — free, alongside standard full and partial WooCommerce order refunds.

Refund policy settings set the defaults: how cancellations are refunded, whether the gateway refund fires automatically, and the minimum refund amounts worth processing. Pro adds one more route — refund to store credit instead of cash — which resolves the ticket while keeping the value in your store.