ActiveManage Docs
← Back to activemanage.co.uk

Subscription Engine

Enabling the Subscription Engine

The subscription engine is the platform component that handles recurring billing: charging cards on schedule, retrying failures, dispatching renewal notifications, and updating feature access on plan changes. Enable it once your packages are defined.

Subscription engine configuration showing on/off master toggle, prorations enabled, dunning policy dropdown, renewal reminder days (14, 3, 1) and 'Enable subscriptions for new tenants' setting

Pre-Flight Checklist

  1. Stripe (or PayPal/GoCardless) integration is connected and tested.
  2. Subscription packages are defined with prices and feature sets.
  3. Email templates for renewal reminders, failed-payment, and cancellation confirmation are reviewed.
  4. Webhook endpoint /api/stripe/webhook is receiving events successfully.
  5. Dunning flow is configured (see “Handling Failed Payments”).

Turning On

  1. Open Site Settings → eCommerce → Subscription Engine.
  2. Toggle the master switch on.
  3. Configure renewal reminders — typical pattern: 14 days, 3 days, 1 day before charge.
  4. Enable prorations on plan change (recommended).
  5. Set the “grace days” before service suspension on failed payment.
  6. Save.

Worked Examples

  • SaaS launch: Engine on, single 14-day reminder, 5-day grace, prorations enabled — vanilla setup.
  • Annual-only product: Reminder cadence 30/14/7/1 days — annual customers need more lead time.
  • Donation platform: Engine on, no renewal reminders (donations are silent), 1-day grace before pause.
  • Beta period: Engine off — all tenants are on “Beta” feature set free of charge until launch.

Maximum Subscriptions per Customer

By default a customer can have one active subscription. This article explains when and how to allow more than one — useful for add-ons, multi-product platforms, and B2B account hierarchies.

Setting page showing 'Maximum subscriptions per customer' numeric field set to 5, with sub-options for 'Allow same package twice' and 'Stack add-on packages with main plan' toggles

When You Want Multiple

  • Add-on packages: Main plan plus optional “Analytics add-on” and “API add-on” — each its own subscription.
  • Multi-product: A company that buys both your CRM and your invoicing product — two subscriptions, one customer.
  • Multi-seat: Tenant owner manages subscriptions for multiple team scopes.
  • Reseller arrangements: A partner buys multiple subscriptions to provision to their downstream customers.

Configuration

  1. Open Site Settings → eCommerce → Subscription Engine → Limits.
  2. Set Maximum subscriptions per customer — 1 (default) up to 100.
  3. Tick Allow same package twice if a customer can hold multiples of the identical SKU (e.g. two child accounts on the “Family Pro” plan).
  4. Tick Stack add-on packages with main plan to let add-ons coexist with a primary plan.

Feature Resolution

When a customer has multiple active subscriptions, their features are the union of all feature sets. Where a feature has a numeric value (e.g. API rate limit), the limits are summed if marked “summable”, else the maximum is used.

Worked Examples

  • Main + add-on: Pro plan (10k API calls/mo) + API add-on (50k extra/mo) = 60k calls/mo because the API limit is summable.
  • Two-product company: CRM Business package + Invoicing Business package. Each feature set is independent; features that overlap take the larger entitlement.
  • Reseller: Partner has 50 active subscriptions, each provisioned to a downstream client tenant.