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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.
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 never charges anyone. When the billing date arrives, DMLY rolls the period forward and stops there: no invoice is created, no payment is taken, and the plan’s credits are not granted for the new period. Nothing tells you it happened. If you want to be paid automatically, set up auto-charge. Otherwise you must bill each period yourself.
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. DMLY picks which connected gateway handles the setup; there is no picker. If that turns out to be Mercado Pago, setup fails with Mercado Pago does not support saved-card auto-charge yet., which can happen even when a gateway that does support it is connected too. Without auto-charge, bill each period yourself with one of:
  • Share subscription link: the WhatsApp-first option. It issues the invoice for the current period if one isn’t already open, then sends the client a pay link over WhatsApp, SMS or Email. Needs a connected gateway.
  • Generate invoice: drafts an invoice for the current period. It is only a draft; send it from Invoices to actually 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.
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, you still bill it yourself as described above. 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 shows an Invoice sent toggle, but it currently has no effect: sending an invoice ignores it and messages the client either way.

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Pause and resume

Pause subscription stops billing and renewals immediately. Resume subscription starts them again.
Pausing does not move the billing date; it just stops DMLY acting on it. If you resume after the billing date has already passed, the nightly run at 02:00 treats the subscription as due and renews or charges it.Adjust end date only moves the billing date on a subscription that is already Active. On a paused one it moves the period end and leaves the billing date in the past, so the charge still lands. To avoid it, Resume subscription first, then Adjust end date to a future date, before the next 02:00 run.

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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. 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.
To recover, select Turn off auto-charge first. A subscription paused this way still counts as having auto-charge on, so Set up auto-charge stays hidden until you do. Then Set up auto-charge to send the client a link for a working card, and Resume subscription, noting the pause warning above about a past-due billing date.
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 select Turn off auto-charge and run Set up auto-charge 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.