Subscription types define the billing period for the subscription-based memberships and set the next billing date.
The membership types (or membership products) are then assigned to a subscription type. So, monthly billing memberships, for example, should be assigned to a monthly subscription type, and yearly memberships, to a yearly one. The actual billing process is then executed manually by the user for each subscription type.
You can access the Subscription Types page either from the Role Center or via the Departments menu (LS Retail - LS Activity - Setup - Subscription Types).
The table below describes the main fields on the Subscription Types page.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Code | Unique ID of the subscription type. |
| Description | Description of the service, subscription, or billing period. |
| Period Calculation | The Business Central date formula that is applied to the Next Period From date to calculate the next period. For a monthly period this would be <CM>. See Business Central date formula information on the logic related to date formulas (for example here). After a subscription process has been executed, the system calculates the next period to be processed and assigns to the Next Period From and Next Period To settings. |
| Invoicing Posting Date | The day which should be assigned as invoicing date. The invoicing date would then be this day and the current month of the posting process. For example, the value 15 in this field would be set to the 15th of the processing month. |
| Processing Schedule | Set to either Manual or Monthly. If set to Monthly, the Invoicing Posting Date is always set by the current processing month, but if set to Manually, the last date in the current month would be used as the invoicing date. |
| Next Processing Date | Manually set a reference date for when the next invoicing process should be executed. Only for reference and as reminder. |
| Last Processing Date | This date is set automatically when the user executes the invoicing process for the subscription type. |
| Next Period From | The start of the next billing period. Note: Initially, this must be set by the user. After execution of the billing process, this value is automatically updated. |
| Next Period To | The end of the next billing period. Note: Initially, this must be set by the user. After execution of the billing process, this value is automatically updated. |
| Batch No. Series | Each billing period will be creating a batch of the membership charges to be invoiced. This is done by the manually executed billing process. Each batch will be indicated by a unique batch ID deriving from this number series. |
| Initial Invoice No. Days | When a new membership is issued, the current billing period is always invoiced as “initial invoice”. This initial invoice is based on how many days are left of the current billing period. The initial invoice is always calculated from the issued date until the start date of the next billing period. The system then uses this setting to decide on the portion of the full pricing, related to how many days are left of the last billing period. In monthly invoicing the number of days per month can vary, so here the user can set the fixed number of days to use as reference, which in a monthly billing normally be 30. If not set, the exact number of days will be calculated and used as reference. |