Managing subscriptions

Overview#

The Overview section provides complete details of the subscription.

The first row displays the category and the status.

The second row highlights the subscription name.

The third row displays the type of subscription and the cost.

Current assignments#

The current assignments section lets you toggle between the people, location and asset assignments on this subscription.

Along with the name, this section includes a badge indicating how long it has been since the assignment was made.

Timeline#

The timeline documents the complete lifecycle of each subscription, from purchase through billing updates, to-dos, contracts, assignments and notes. Every activity is recorded in one place, and each timeline entry can be edited with a single click.

Comments and attachments are supported on all timeline entries. Click any item to edit it, and you can add comments or upload attachments. Timeline items with comments show a comment bubble icon, and items with attachments show a paperclip icon on the activity line.

Actions button#

The actions button in the top right corner is how you manage the subscription. This is purposely the only button on the page: any action you need to perform on the subscription is done from the actions button.

The To-do button records a to-do on that subscription. If something needs to be completed in the future by you or someone else, this is where you create it. For example, the subscription is coming up for renewal and you need to contact the company to negotiate new pricing.

The Update Billing button records any changes that occur to the subscription. If you need to add more licenses, or the price changes, you record the change here. On a Lifetime Purchase subscription the same button is labelled Update Purchase.

The Quick Note button is simple and straightforward. It creates a timeline entry that is a simple note. Use it for recording informational, one-off events on the subscription.

Under the assignments dropdown you can update the current assignments of people, locations and assets.

Under the lifecycle dropdown, Edit Subscription Details is where you update the base details of the subscription, such as name, vendor and plan type.

The Add / Renew Contract button adds or renews a contract on the subscription.

Pausing, cancelling and retiring#

What the rest of the lifecycle dropdown offers depends on the subscription's billing type.

Recurring subscriptions#

A subscription with the Subscription billing type can be paused or cancelled.

Pause sets the subscription's status to Paused and asks how billing behaves while it is paused:

• Pause With Billing — you are still being charged. The subscription keeps counting at its normal cost.
• Pause Without Billing — the vendor has stopped charging you. The subscription counts as zero until it is unpaused.
• Pause Custom Billing Amt — you are charged a reduced amount while paused, such as a vendor's hold or archive fee. Enter the amount per billing period; a yearly subscription's amount is spread across the months of the year.

Pausing leaves the subscription's assignments in place. When it resumes, Unpause takes its place in the menu and returns the subscription to Deployed if it still has assignments, or Available if it does not. The pause and the unpause are both recorded on the timeline, and the Recurring Subscription Cost report and the dashboard's subscription cost card use them to charge the right amount for each month.

Cancel ends the subscription. After you confirm, every person, location and asset assigned to it is removed — each removal is recorded on the timeline — and its status becomes Cancelled. A cancelled subscription stops counting toward subscription cost from the date it was cancelled.

Lifetime purchases and free subscriptions#

Nothing is billed on a Lifetime Purchase or Free subscription, so there is nothing to pause or cancel. They have Retire instead, which removes every assignment in the same way and sets the status to Retired.

Undoing a cancel or retire#

A cancelled or retired subscription has a much shorter actions menu: To-do, Quick Note, and either Undo Cancel or Undo Retire. Assignments, billing and contracts cannot be changed until it is restored.

Undoing removes the cancel or retire entry from the timeline and sets the subscription back to Available. The assignments that were removed are not put back, so reassign the people, locations and assets that still use it.

Deleting a subscription#

Delete Subscription at the bottom of the actions menu permanently removes the subscription, its timeline and its attachments. This cannot be undone. When a subscription has simply come to an end, cancel or retire it instead, so its history and what it cost stay in your reports.