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A subscription bills one of your clients on a repeating schedule: a monthly gym membership, a retainer, a package of treatments. You start it from a Plan in your catalogue, and DMLY tracks the billing period, the invoices and the payments against it.
This is not your DMLY bill. Subscriptions in Finance are money your clients pay you. What you pay for DMLY itself lives in Plans and billing and is completely separate. Cancelling here never touches your own account.

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Before you start

Create a Plan

Subscriptions are started from a Plan, which sets the price, the billing interval and any credits granted each period.

Connect a gateway

Needed for pay links and for auto-charge. Without one you can still track a subscription, but you cannot collect online. Auto-charge additionally needs a gateway that supports saved cards; Mercado Pago does not.

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Start a subscription

1

Open the tab

Go to Finance → Subscriptions and select New subscription.
2

Pick the client and the plan

Choose the client, then Select a plan. Use Price override if this client pays a different rate, and add Notes for your own reference.The New subscription window with a client chosen and the Plan dropdown highlighted, showing the plan price per month, Price override and Notes
3

Start it

Select Start subscription. Any credits the plan grants are added to the client’s balance now, and the first billing period begins today.
The price, billing interval and granted contents are copied onto the subscription when you start it. Editing the Plan later never changes a subscription that is already running, which is what you want, but it does mean a price rise has to be applied to existing clients deliberately.

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Auto-charge, or bill by hand

This is the decision that matters most, so make it consciously.
A subscription without auto-charge bills, but can’t collect on its own. When the billing date arrives, DMLY rolls the period forward, raises that period’s invoice and sends the client a pay link. Paying that invoice does not grant the plan’s credits for the new period (see the Note below). Unpaid invoices turn Overdue. Once three of its invoices are unpaid, the 02:00 run pauses the subscription instead of invoicing again. DMLY sends the client no message about it (a Subscription paused automation still runs), and saving a new card does not resume it. Resume it yourself, but only after at least one of those invoices is paid: while three are still unpaid, the next 02:00 run pauses it again. Set up auto-charge if you want the card charged without the client doing anything.
With auto-charge, on the billing date DMLY charges the client’s saved card, rolls the period, grants the period’s credits, sends and marks the invoice paid, and sends the client a receipt. To turn it on, open the subscription’s menu and select Set up auto-charge. DMLY sends the client a link to save their card once; you never see or handle the card details. You’ll see Auto-charge setup link sent; the Auto-charge badge appears on the subscription only after the client completes it. Turn off auto-charge ends it. A subscription's menu opened from the Subscriptions tab, with Set up auto-charge highlighted DMLY picks which connected gateway handles the card when the client opens the link; there is no picker. If that turns out to be Mercado Pago, you still see Auto-charge setup link sent, but the client lands on a page saying card updates aren’t available right now and asking them to message you. That can happen even when a gateway that does support saved cards is connected too. Without auto-charge, you don’t need to raise each period’s invoice. The 02:00 run does it on the billing date and sends the client a pay link (a free plan gets no invoice). Your job is to chase payment and issue the credits. These actions help:
  • Share subscription link: the WhatsApp-first way to chase it. It reuses the invoice that is already open, or issues one for the current period if none is, then sends the client a pay link over WhatsApp, SMS or Email. Needs a connected gateway.
  • Generate invoice: drafts a new invoice for the current period every time, even when one is already open. Don’t use it for a period the 02:00 run has billed, or the client is billed twice. It is only a draft; send it from Invoices to bill the client.
Credits are granted when you start the subscription, and on each auto-charged renewal. On a manually billed subscription they are not re-granted each period, even after the client pays the invoice. Grant them from the client’s profile if the plan is meant to include them.

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Change plan

Move an active client onto a different plan (an upgrade or a downgrade). It’s only offered on an Active subscription with a recurring plan; open its menu and select Change plan.
1

Pick the new plan

Choose a New plan. The dropdown lists every recurring plan in your catalogue, including the subscription’s own current plan; a one-time plan can’t be switched to.
2

Choose when it takes effect

At the next renewal applies the swap at the next billing boundary and changes nothing today. Immediately applies it right away.
3

Decide on proration

With Immediately selected, Charge the prorated difference now is on by default. On an upgrade it invoices the price difference for the days left in the current period.The Change plan window with a new plan chosen, Immediately selected and the Charge the prorated difference now option highlighted
4

Confirm

Select Change plan.
An immediate change swaps the name, price, credits and cadence straight away, but the current billing period’s dates (and the next billing date) don’t move. The new cadence only takes effect at the next roll, which sidesteps the mid-cycle date math a switch like weekly to monthly would otherwise need. Auto-charge, if it’s on, carries over untouched; the client’s saved card is not affected.
A change to a different billing cadence, or a plan in a different currency, is always scheduled for the next renewal, even if you selected Immediately. Monthly to annual (or any other interval change) can’t be prorated against the current period, since the two prices don’t share a time base. DMLY schedules the swap instead of applying it mid-cycle.
A downgrade never claws back credits the client already has. Credits already granted for the current cycle stay in the client’s balance; only future renewals grant the plan’s lower amount. An immediate upgrade grants the increase right away (expiring with the current period, the same as any cycle grant); a scheduled change doesn’t touch credits until it applies at the renewal. Proration works the same way: it only ever charges an upgrade’s difference, never on a downgrade, and never on a scheduled change.
Changing your mind before a scheduled change applies (while a plan change is pending):
  • Open Change plan and pick a different plan: it replaces the scheduled change with the new one.
  • Open Change plan and pick the subscription’s current plan again: this clears the scheduled change, with nothing else selected to replace it. It’s the only way to cancel a pending change without cancelling the whole subscription.
  • Cancel subscription also clears any pending change.
A scheduled change applies at the next billing date, alongside that renewal’s normal billing: auto-charge bills the new plan’s price; without auto-charge, the 02:00 run invoices the new plan’s price. If an auto-charged renewal’s payment fails, the plan swap does not apply either: the subscription stays on its current plan with the change still pending, ready to apply once a renewal succeeds.

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Renewal reminders and receipts

Three days before the next billing date, DMLY messages the client that the subscription is about to renew. Receipts and failure notices are sent the same way, WhatsApp first. These are on by default for every subscription. Turn them off for one client with Edit notifications: Renewal reminder, Payment receipt and Payment failed.
Edit notifications also has an Invoice sent toggle. Turning it off stops DMLY messaging the renewal invoice and pay link on this subscription’s automatic renewals, which can leave a manually billed client with no pay link at all. An invoice you send yourself still goes out.

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Pause and resume

Pause subscription stops billing and renewals immediately. Resume subscription starts them again.
When you resume a subscription you paused yourself, DMLY moves the period end and the next billing date forward by the number of whole days it was paused, so the client is not charged straight away for time they did not get. A subscription paused by failed or unpaid payments keeps its dates.Adjust end date only moves the billing date on a subscription that is already Active. On a paused one it moves the period end only. To move the billing date too, resume it first.

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Cancel

Cancel subscription asks you to confirm (Cancel the subscription for <name>? Billing will stop immediately.), then stops billing and clears the next billing date. A few things worth knowing before you use it:
  • Cancelling refunds nothing. It stops future billing only. Refund any payment already taken from Payments.
  • It cannot be undone from the list. Resume subscription only brings back a paused subscription. To restart a cancelled client, start a new subscription.
  • Credits already in the client’s balance stay there.
If you want to keep billing but stop it later, Adjust end date is usually the better tool.

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When a payment fails

Auto-charge failures are retried automatically:
1

First failure

The client is told the payment failed, with a link to put in a new card. DMLY schedules a retry two days later.
2

Second failure

Another two-day wait, then a final attempt.
3

Third failure

After three failed attempts the subscription is Paused and DMLY stops retrying. It will not charge again on its own.

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Let the client update their card

Every recurring subscription has its own card update link. It takes the client to your payment gateway to save a card, and it keeps working however long after it was sent. It reaches the client three ways:
  • The payment failed message DMLY sends after each failed attempt includes it.
  • An automation can send it: add {{subscription.update_card_link}} to a message, for example in a flow on Subscription payment failed.
  • Send card update link in the subscription’s menu messages it to the client. It works while auto-charge is on, so you don’t have to turn auto-charge off first.
When the client saves a card:
  • Paused after three failed attempts: the subscription resumes and the renewal that’s owed is charged straight away. Its dates don’t move, so the client doesn’t get the missed days free. If the new card fails too, the usual retries start again.
  • Paused by you: it stays paused until you resume it.
  • Nothing due yet: the new card is used at the next renewal.
Outside WhatsApp’s 24-hour window, DMLY’s own payment failed message goes out as an approved WhatsApp template, and that template has no room for the link. To reach those clients, send the link from an automation whose WhatsApp fallback template has a variable for it.
You do not have to guess why. Open the subscription with View and the drawer shows the reason the last attempt failed, in a red banner, in the gateway’s own words. DMLY records it on every failure and keeps the most recent one.A failure isn’t always the card. A charge also fails if the subscription has no active saved payment method, or if the gateway it was set up with has since been disconnected. Check Payments and gateways is still connected, then use Send card update link so the client can save a card again.

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Statuses

Expired appears in the interface but DMLY never sets it; no subscription reaches that status. Ignore it.

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Other actions

  • View subscription: the client, price, Next billing, Current period and whether auto-charge is on.
  • Edit credits: changes how many credits future renewals grant. It does not add to or remove from credits already in the client’s balance.
  • Delete subscription: removes it from the list. Cancel instead if you want a record of what the client was billed.

Invoices

Every subscription period bills through an invoice. Send, share and collect here.

Plans and credits

The catalogue side: price, interval and credits a subscription is copied from.