Subscriptions

Preliminary Remarks

The Subscriptions tab lists all subscriptions that the customer has purchased.

The list view provides comprehensive information about subscriptions at a glance. The individual subscription can be opened in the detail view, where further information can be viewed and various actions can be carried out.

Note: All prices shown here are gross prices.

List view

Subscriptions Tab

By default, all subscriptions, both active and inactive, are displayed in the list.

1. The slider can be used to hide inactive subscriptions. Filter the list by newest or oldest first.

2. Already expired and future levels of a subscription are automatically bundled with the active level.

3. Click on the arrows to open more information on the past/future step.

Multiuser Subscriptions Tab

When a user is added/invited to a multiuser subscription and the subscription is activated, this multiuser subscription is displayed here.

The subscriptions can be

• canceled now
  → If cancellation is to be withdrawn, a new subscription must be created.

• canceled at a given date
  → If cancellation is to be withdrawn before the specified date, the subscription is activated again.

Why is the "Renew” button greyed out?

→ The button is greyed out if the maximum user amount defined in the multiuser subscription has already been exceeded and no more users can be added.

Detail view - Action bar

1. Change Payment Method

You can change the payment method at the subscription level. To store a new payment method, go to the customer account → Add payment method. Only bank accounts can be added via the Merchant Backend. If your customer wishes to have a different payment method, they need to store a new payment method by themselves in the Self Service.

Limitations

• Only payment methods which the customer has already stored within their account can be selected.

• Only payment methods which are allowed according to your payment settings can be selected.

2. Addresses

You can change both the delivery and invoice address at the subscription. You can only select addresses which have already been stored in the customer’s account. To create a new address, go to the customer acccount → Tab delivery address/invoice address.

3. Cancel

If the customer wishes to have their subscription canceled, use the Cancel button. Depending on the offer type and subscription runtime, you will have different cancellation options to choose from.

→ 📄 Find a detailed breakdown of all cancellation options in this article: Cancellation Options

4. Pause

You can pause a subscription for a specific period of time when your customer doesn’t need access; or set a delivery break for your print customers.

→ 📄 Find a detailed comparison and explaination on what happens during pause and delivery in this article: Subscription pause and delivery break

5. Goodwill

Your customer is unhappy with your service or delivery didn’t work as expected? You can give your customers some free services as goodwill actions:

1. Add access right (for time-based and issue-based subscriptions)

2. Add accounting period for free (for time-based subscriptions)

3. Redeliver issues for free (for issue-based subscriptions)

4. Add free issues (for issue-based subscriptions)

→ 📄 Find a detailed explaination on how goodwill works here: Goodwill Functions

5. Retry Payment

A payment attempt may fail, for example, due to an expired credit card or an inactive bank account. Under Customer Account → Subscriptions → Subscription Details → Accounting Periods, you can see which accounting period(s) are affected, how many booking tries were made and whether a payment retry is allowed for the period. You can also check the transaction log to see if a transaction has failed.

In the event of a failed payment, the process control feature is activated; this can be configured under Settings → Finance → Payment Methods → Process Control. Using the “Retry payment” function, a support agent can manually intervene and trigger a new payment attempt.

Note

The system does not trigger the retry until the next morning. This means that whether the manually initiated payment attempt was successful can only be verified the following day.

Past periods can only be billed if product access is not blocked for that period. Product access may be automatically blocked by the process control—depending on the settings that have been configured.

6. Block/unblock Access

Access for this subscription can be blocked manually here. As soon as the subscription has been blocked, the blocked label appears in the subscription status. To unblock access again, click on Unblock access in the action bar.

Note

The customer is not informed about the blocking - neither by e-mail nor in Self Service.

7. Invoices

You can define the invoice dispatch at subscription level.

Mail Dispatch

If E-Mail is selected, recurring invoices for this subscription will be sent to your customer via email only.

Note

If dispatch of recurring invoices is disabled in Settings → Financial → Invoice Settings → Invoice Management, this option is not available.

Postal dispatch

Future invoices for this subscription are only sent by post. Frisbii Media does not handle invoice dispatch by post - you need to work with a third-party system; for data transfer, you can use the .csv file which is generated automatically and can be downloaded in the Downloads section (analog_invoices_generationdate.zip) - the PDF invoices come within the zip file.

Note

Make sure that the customer has stored an active and relevant delivery address in their customer account.

No Sending

If you do not select a shipping method, the customer will not receive recurring invoices, but they can still access their invoices at any time in Self Service.

8. Add Order Indicator

An order indicator can be added to a subscription at a later date.

8. Edit Additional Data

Additional data can be edited on the subscription.

9. Offer Change

You can change the offer of the subscription, e. g. to up-sell from a monthly to an annual subscription without having to cancel the currently active subscription and creating a new one manually.
Find a detailed instruction here: Up-/Down-Selling

Detail view - the different tabs

Subscription

All information about the subscription is displayed here.

If it is a multi-step subscription, the step and their corresponding data are displayed on the left-hand side. Clicking on one of the levels takes you to the corresponding step data.

Note: For issue-based subscriptions, the outstanding deliveries are also displayed. As soon as all deliveries within the current accounting period have been delivered, the counter is set to 0. It is updated to the full number of outstanding deliveries as soon as the invoice for the next billing period has been created.

Data on the invoice recipient, invoice address and delivery address, as well as all important data relating to the product (name, quantity, discount, status, price per issue, unit price, price sheet) are displayed. In the lower area on the left-hand side, further subscription data such as subscription number, type, contract details, etc. are listed. On the right-hand side you will see data on the payment method and booking data.

Start date and reference start date

In the subscription data, you always see the Start date. If the Reference start date differs from the start date, it is shown as an additional, indented line directly below the start date. If both dates are the same, only the start date is shown. A help text explains what each date means.

When do the two dates differ?

When a customer buys an offer, the start date and the reference start date are usually the same. They differ in the following cases:

• Imported subscriptions: When you import a subscription, you also provide a reference start date from which Frisbii Media calculates the billing. The start date usually lies much further in the past.
  Example: A customer has had their subscription since 12 Sep 2016 and was billed irregularly in your previous system. During the import, you set the reference start date to 1 Jan 2025 so that billing follows a regular cadence from then on.
  → Start date: 12 Sep 2016 · Reference start date: 1 Jan 2025

• Cross-selling: This is the only case in which the reference start date can be earlier than the start date. The current billing period is kept.
  Example: A subscription runs from 1 Jan 2026 to 1 Jan 2027. On 24 Sep 2026, the customer switches to a new offer via cross-selling. The customer gets access to the new offer immediately, but is only billed on the next regular billing date.
  → Start date: 24 Sep 2026 (date of the switch) · Reference start date: 1 Jan 2026 (start of the current billing period)

Note

When you import a subscription, the reference start date must not lie more than 2 years in the past and must not cover more than 12 accounting periods, whichever limit is reached first. Find more details in Import Subscriptions.

Use Cases

• Understand imported subscriptions: See why invoices are created on dates that do not match the start date.

• Answer cancellation questions: Explain to your customer why their cancellation deadline falls on a certain date. It is calculated from the reference start date, not from the start date.

• Check manually set dates: Verify which date was set as the basis for billing, for example after an import or a cross-sell.

• Investigate billing issues: Compare the reference start date with the accounting periods to understand how the billing dates come about.

Issues

This tab is only displayed for issue-based subscriptions and shows the delivery log for each offer step. All issues already delivered are sorted here in ascending order.

Invoices

All invoices already created are listed here . The invoices can be opened and downloaded in the detail view.

Activities

A history of what has been changed to this subscription is automatically created here. An activity can be added manually by clicking on the plus symbol.

Additional Data

All data that has been added to the subscription is displayed here.

Accounting Periods

Here you can track whether access was blocked during an accounting period and what triggered this blocking (e. g. unsuccessful debit - see also settings for process control).

The tab also shows the payment details of each accounting period. This helps you investigate failed payments and billing issues without having to go through the transaction log.

Note:

If "CUSTOMER" is displayed as the error source, the process control settings apply.

If "MERCHANT" is displayed as the error source, the process control settings do NOT apply.

Discount

Grant a discount on the customer’s active subscription, for example, for goodwill reason.

Use Cases

1. A customer is on a monthly subscription plan. You want to offer them a discount for their next subscription step. You set up a discount that automatically applies starting with their next renewal and expires after the selected step. No further action is required—the discount ends automatically, and the customer returns to standard pricing.

2. A long-term customer experiences service issues and you want to compensate them. You apply a permanent discount to their subscription that will remain in effect for as long as they stay subscribed. This shows your commitment to customer satisfaction without requiring ongoing manual adjustments.

3. A customer experiences service issues and you want to compensate them. You grant a temporary discount to their subscription that will run out automatically after the given time.

Important note

The discount is going to be valid for the next invoice(s). No partial cancellation and no invoice correction is triggered retroactively.

Example:

Subscription interval: 1 month (billed every month on the 2nd)

Discount set from 03.02.2026 until 01.04.2026

Invoices discounted: only the invoice on 02.03.2026

→ If you want to give a discount on an already billed period, you can do an invoice correction.

General Note

• If the start and/or end date of the limited-time discount coincides exactly with an invoice date, then the discounted price applies on that date.

• If a permanent discount was applied via Merchant Checkout and an additional temporary discount was also applied, then BOTH will end when the temporary discount expires.

Follow these steps to give a discount on subscription level:

1. In the subscription detail view, click on % Discount.

2. Define the discount runtime.

   1. Permanent: The permanent discount can start immediately or - if the subscription has several steps - start from a selected step (e.g. step 2). The discount does not have an end date. It can be manually canceled any time.

   2. Selected step: This option is available if the subscription has several steps. The discount ends when the step runtime ends.

      Restriction

      You can only grant a discount on future steps! In Frisbii Media, the invoice for the currently active step has already been created, and as we do not support discount retrospectively, the discount cannot be granted on the currently active step, but only on future steps.

      Be aware that if you choose the last step and the subscription does not have an end date, then the discount does not have an end date and the discount must be manually terminated, if necessary.

   3. Temporary: Give a discount for a selected period of time. The discount ends when the end date is reached.

      Note on issue-based subscriptions

      As the start and end dates of issue-based subscription steps are not fixed in advance, it cannot be guaranteed whether the time-limited discount will apply only to the current step or also to subsequent steps.

3. Define the discount in percent for this subscription.

   You cannot give a discount of 100 %. If you want to give a discount of 100 %, use the goodwill function “Add accounting period for free”. This function can be found in the customer account in the action bar under Goodwill.

   

   
   

4. Give a reason for granting this discount by using the free text field, or a predefined text block.