Why switching a plan's subscription fee from advance to arrears requires a new plan

There is currently no way to change an existing plan's subscription fee from pay-in-advance to in-arrears in place. The advance/arrears setting controls when the base amount is billed, and changing it on a live plan requires terminating the existing subscriptions and creating a new plan with the desired setting. It is fine for the change to apply only to subscriptions created after that point, but the existing ones cannot simply be flipped.

Replacing the subscription fee with a fixed charge does not work around this

A natural workaround is to zero the subscription fee and add a fixed charge in its place to get arrears billing. This does not consolidate the way you might expect: the subscription fee and a fixed charge are separate components and render as two separate line items on the invoice, not one combined line. So substituting a fixed charge for the subscription fee does not collapse the base amount into a single line, and it is worth knowing that before using it as a substitute.

This article reflects guidance drawn from customer case resolutions. It is not officially supported documentation and may not apply to all situations.