Store Billing for Subscriptions

With Store Billing, your store owns the renewal schedule instead of the payment gateway. FluentCart creates each renewal invoice itself, then either emails the customer a Pay Now link or charges their saved card for them.

That makes recurring products work with any gateway you have enabled, including offline methods like bank transfer and cash on delivery, and it lets you change a subscriber's price, dates, or status whenever you need to.

Ways to Bill a Subscription

Every subscription answers one question: who owns the billing schedule? The answer is set at checkout and decides everything that follows.

• Gateway Billing: The gateway owns the schedule. It creates its own recurring subscription and charges the customer each cycle. FluentCart mirrors whatever the gateway reports.
• Store Billing: Your store owns the schedule. FluentCart creates a renewal invoice and the customer pays it through a Pay Now link.
• Store Billing with Auto-Charge: The same store-owned schedule, except FluentCart charges the customer's saved payment method instead of asking them to pay.

	Gateway Billing	Store Billing	Store Billing + Auto-Charge
Who collects the money	The gateway	The customer, from card or an emailed link	Your store, from the saved card
Renewal email with Pay Now	No	Yes	Will inform you about the payment
If a payment fails	The gateway's retry logic	Reminders, grace period, expiry	Automatic retries, then reminders and expiry
You can change the amount	No	Yes	Yes

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Store Billing and Auto-Charge run on the same engine. Auto-charge only adds a saved payment method and an automatic payment attempt, so everything below about renewals, reminders, grace periods, and expiry applies to both.

Turning On Store Billing

Go to FluentCart Pro → Settings → Store Settings → Subscriptions. The Renewal Billing panel shows the mode your store is on, when renewal invoices get created, and a Change button.

1. Click Change and pick a mode:

   • Gateway Billing (Recommended): Stripe, PayPal, and other subscription-ready gateways charge customers automatically each cycle.
   • Store Billing: Your store creates a renewal invoice before each due date, and customers pay through a link in the email.

2. Selecting Store Billing reveals Auto-charge saved payment methods. Leave it off if you want customers to pay each invoice themselves. Turn it on to charge their saved payment method automatically on every due date, which Stripe and PayPal support. Expand When are renewal orders created? to see the schedule.

3. Click Apply. The change saves right away, with no separate save step, and the badge updates to Store Billing.

   With auto-charge on, the badge reads Store Billing · Auto-Charge instead.

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Only new subscriptions are affected. Existing subscriptions keep the billing method they started with, so you can switch modes without disrupting current subscribers.

Your mode and the gateway the customer checks out with together decide how renewals actually get paid:

Renewal Billing mode	Gateway at checkout	How the renewal gets paid
Gateway Billing	Stripe, PayPal, Paddle, Mollie, Square, and other subscription-ready gateways	The gateway charges the customer
Store Billing, auto-charge off	Any enabled gateway, offline methods included	The customer pays each invoice
Store Billing, auto-charge on	Stripe or PayPal	Your store charges the saved payment method
Store Billing, auto-charge on	Any other gateway	The customer pays each invoice

Keeping Staging Sites from Billing Customers

Cloning a live store to a staging or development site used to be risky. The copy inherited every subscription, kept its own hourly schedule running, and happily invoiced, charged, and emailed the same customers your production site was already billing. Staging Protection closes that gap.

The setting sits on the same Subscriptions tab, just below Renewal Billing:

• Don't bill live subscriptions from this site while it is in test mode: On by default. While the site's Store Mode is Test, this site will not create renewal invoices, charge saved payment methods, reconcile pending charges with the gateway, or send renewal and subscription reminder emails for live subscriptions.

That single condition, live subscription plus a site in test mode, is what a staging copy always looks like, so a clone stops billing the moment you flip it to Test and nothing else has to change. Test-mode subscriptions on a test-mode site keep working normally, so you can still rehearse the full renewal flow.

Nothing is lost while the protection holds. Held renewals are re-checked daily and resume on their own once the site is back in Live mode.

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Leave this on for every copy of your store. Turn it off only when a site is deliberately running in test mode while still needing to bill real subscriptions, which is an unusual setup and worth a second look before you commit to it.

How a Renewal Works

FluentCart checks store-billed subscriptions every hour, so renewals run on their own. You never have to trigger one.

1. The invoice is created before the due date, giving the customer time to pay. How early depends on the billing interval.
2. The customer receives a renewal email with a Pay Now link tied to that invoice.
3. They pay with any enabled gateway, not only the one they signed up with.
4. The next billing date moves forward and the subscription stays active.

FluentCart never creates a second renewal while an open one is still waiting to be paid.

Billing interval	Invoice created	Grace period after the due date
Daily	On the due date	1 day
Weekly	3 days early	3 days
Monthly	7 days early	7 days
Quarterly, half-yearly, yearly	15 days early	15 days

Renewal Reminders

Reminder emails are off by default. Turn them on to nudge customers around the due date: one reminder on the due date, then overdue reminders 1, 3, and 7 days after it.

You manage them from FluentCart Pro → Settings → Email Configuration. See Configuring Email Notifications for the full list of subscription emails.

Those overdue days are yours to change, and the wording escalates with them. The earliest day sends a gentle first reminder, the last day sends a final notice, and any day you put in between sends a follow-up. Set the schedule under Reminders, then edit the three emails in Email Notification Settings.

Past Due and Expiry

An unpaid renewal escalates in two stages instead of cancelling straight away:

• Past Due: The due date passes and the invoice is still unpaid. The customer keeps access, and reminders keep prompting them.
• Expired: The grace period for that interval runs out and the invoice is still unpaid. The subscription stops.

Because these are separate stages, customers always get the full grace window before they lose access. See Understanding Statuses for what each state means.

A Late Payment Revives the Subscription

An expired subscription is not a dead end. If the customer pays the outstanding renewal afterward, FluentCart reactivates the subscription and puts it back on schedule. You do not need to recreate anything.

The next billing date is worked out sensibly too. Pay on or before the due date and the original schedule is kept, so billing dates never drift earlier. Pay late and the next cycle is measured from the payment date.

When Auto-Charge Is On

Auto-charge keeps the whole invoicing flow and simply tries to pay each renewal for the customer first. At checkout, with the customer's consent, FluentCart saves their payment method so it can be reused later. After that, on every renewal:

• The invoice is created on the same schedule as plain Store Billing, but no Pay Now email goes out. There is no point asking someone to pay what is about to be charged.
• On the due date, FluentCart charges the saved payment method.
• If it succeeds, the renewal is settled and the subscription continues.
• If it is declined, FluentCart retries automatically within the grace period, sends a charge-failed notification, and falls back to the usual reminders and expiry if every attempt fails.

The charge-failed email defaults to the first failure only, so silent retries do not fill the customer's inbox.

You can follow the same story from the admin. The subscription's detail page shows Automatic charge processing while the provider confirms an attempt, and Automatic charge failed when one is declined, naming the attempt number, the reason, and when the next retry runs. A healthy subscription shows no banner at all.

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FluentCart never stores your customers' card details. With the customer's consent, it saves a secure token from the payment gateway, such as Stripe or PayPal, and the gateway is what actually holds the card data. When a renewal is due, FluentCart simply sends that token back to the gateway to charge it. Customers change their card through Update Payment Method in their customer dashboard.

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Auto-charge needs Stripe or PayPal. If a subscription moves to a gateway that cannot save and charge a payment method, for example when a customer pays a failed renewal with a different gateway, FluentCart quietly drops it back to plain Store Billing and resumes the Pay Now email. Manual invoicing is always the floor, and a subscription never switches to gateway billing on its own.

Managing Subscriptions from the Admin

Store billing gives you far more control than gateway billing, because your store owns the schedule. Everything happens on the subscription's detail page. For a general tour of that page, see Managing Subscriptions.

Opening a Subscription

Go to FluentCart Pro → Subscriptions and click the one you want.

You can also open it from the order it came from. Under FluentCart Pro → Orders, open the order and click the product link in the Subscription Plan card on the right.

Reading the Details Panel

A badge beside Subscription Details tells you how the subscription is billed:

• Manual: Store billing. The customer pays each renewal themselves.
• System: Store billing with auto-charge. Your store charges the saved payment method.
• Automatic: Gateway billing. The gateway handles everything.

The fields worth knowing:

• Billing Cycle: The recurring terms, such as $103.50 per year until cancel.
• Active Payment Gateway: The gateway currently tied to the subscription.
• Initial Purchase ID: The order that started it.
• Auto-cancellation: The payment count after which it stops on its own, or --- when it renews indefinitely.
• Next renewal: The amount due and the date it falls due.
• Vendor Customer ID: The customer's ID at the gateway, shown when the gateway stores one. Handy when you need to look them up in Stripe or PayPal.

Related Orders below lists the original order and every renewal since, with its payment status and order type. All the actions in this section live in the three-dot menu at the top-right, and the menu changes with the subscription's status.

Editing a Subscription

Pick Edit Subscription to change the recurring terms. You can do this on store-billed subscriptions because your store, not the gateway, is the source of truth. Changes apply to all future renewals, not to invoices already generated.

• Next Renewal Amount: What the customer pays from the next renewal onward. Use it to apply a price change or a negotiated rate.
• Billing Times: How many payments the subscription runs for. 0 means unlimited; 1 or more stops it after that many payments.
• Billing Interval: How often it renews. Changing it also changes how early invoices are created and how long the grace period lasts.
• Status: Choose Active, Paused, Trialing, Past Due, Expired, or Completed.
• Next Billing Date: The exact date and time the next renewal falls due. Push it out to give someone extra time, or pull it in to bill sooner.

Click Save Changes to apply.

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Setting the status by hand overrides FluentCart's own lifecycle handling for that subscription. Use it to correct a state you know is wrong, not as a replacement for the normal renewal flow.

Creating a Renewal Early

Create Renewal Now generates the next invoice immediately instead of waiting for the scheduled window. It is handy when a customer asks to pay early or you need to reissue an invoice. FluentCart asks you to confirm first.

Click Create Renewal. The invoice appears at the top of Related Orders as Pending / Renewal, and the renewal email goes out.

Charging a Renewal on an Auto-Charge Subscription

An auto-charge subscription uses the same page with a few differences: the badge reads System, a Vendor Customer ID appears, and the menu offers Charge Next Renewal Now in place of Create Renewal Now.

That action does both halves of a renewal at once: it creates the invoice and immediately attempts to charge the saved payment method. FluentCart confirms first and notes that one attempt runs right away, with a decline falling back to the automatic retries.

Click Create & Charge. On success the renewal shows as Paid / Renewal in Related Orders, and Next renewal moves forward a full billing cycle.

If the attempt is declined, nothing is lost. The invoice stays open and the normal retry schedule takes over.

Other Actions in the Menu

• Pause Subscription: Halt billing temporarily. The menu then offers Resume Subscription.
• Cancel Subscription: Stop the subscription and its schedule.
• Reactivate Subscription: Bring a cancelled, paused, or expired subscription back. It replaces the pause and cancel actions once a subscription is no longer running.
• Skip Next Period: Move the next billing date forward one cycle without charging, giving the customer a free period.
• Send Renewal Reminder: Email a reminder about the open renewal by hand. On a subscription still in its trial it reads Send Trial End Reminder.
• Charge Now: On an auto-charge subscription with an invoice already open, run one more attempt straight away. The confirmation names the card it will use.

What Your Customers See

When a renewal is created, the customer gets an email with the renewal summary, the amount, the due date, and a Pay Now button. It also tells them they can pay early rather than wait for the due date.

They can also handle it from their customer dashboard under Subscription Plans, which shows the billing terms, the next charge date, the payment method on file, and every related transaction with a downloadable receipt. Update Payment Method and View Order sit right below the plan details.

Paying early on an auto-charge subscription cancels the queued charge, so a renewal is never billed twice.

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A store-billed subscription cannot be switched to the gateway's own billing. Both would then bill the same periods and double-charge the customer. Customers update the card on file instead.