Legacy Subscription Switching to Stripe Billing
Switching existing subscriptions to Billing
For date and time handling for initial phase creation vs renewal date and time, Stripe uses the Epoch timestamp for absolute time creation.
Any subscription switched to Stripe Billing must NOT have any changes made in Stripe Dashboard. Manual changes to Piano-managed entities in Stripe put the subscription out of sync.
Piano automatically cross-checks and repairs discrepancies it detects during its own validations. Changes Piano cannot cross-check, for example a product or price created directly in Stripe and attached to a subscription, cannot be repaired automatically. In those cases Piano stops managing billing and collection for that subscription, every operation except cancellation is blocked in the Piano Dashboard, and Piano keeps extending access to the original resource only while the subscription is active in Stripe.
A notification appears in the Subscription details view when this happens. Contact Piano support: support can reset the subscription state so that Piano manages it again. Fully automated reconciliation is planned for a future release.
All existing Piano billing subscriptions which conform to supported features will be switched to Stripe Billing. Clients and their apps are scheduled to be switched in cohorts based on their use of Piano features and further planning by the operation and switching team.
A small number of subscriptions may not transition automatically at renewal. This typically applies to subscriptions that are in a failed payment or suspended state at the time of renewal. These subscriptions transition at the next successful renewal or when the subscriber updates their payment method.
Switching upgraded subscriptions to Stripe Billing
Clients using Upgrades and Downgrades can now be switched to Stripe Billing. Subscriptions that have been previously upgraded can be automatically switched to Stripe Billing as they conclude upgrading or downgrading.
All upgraded subscriptions that meet our general eligibility rules can be moved to Stripe Billing just like any other existing subscription.
Subscriptions that still have an upgrade scheduled but not yet completed are not switched to Stripe Billing until that upgrade is completed or cancelled.
In practice, this means:
-
If a subscription was created earlier as part of an upgrade (even months ago and already renewed), it can now be moved to Stripe Billing once it is eligible.
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If a subscription has an upgrade scheduled but not completed (or suspended but not fully cancelled), it will be held back from switching until the upgrade flow is resolved.
Upgrades with Stripe Billing
All channels now behave like On-site Upgrades, Stripe processes payment off-session after the plan change is applied.
|
Channel |
What Happens Immediately |
On Payment Failure |
|---|---|---|
|
My Account Widget |
Plan changes. Access granted to new plan. |
Grace period starts. No rollback. |
|
Publisher Dashboard |
Plan changes. Access granted to new plan. |
Grace period starts. No rollback. |
|
Publisher API |
Plan changes. 200 OK = plan changed only. |
Grace period starts. No rollback. |
|
On-site Upgrade |
Plan changes. No behavior change. |
Grace period starts, same as before. |
On-site Upgrades
No behavioral change. On-site Upgrades with Stripe Billing work the same as in Piano billing: payment is off-session, and a failed payment puts the subscription in grace period. Clients using upgrade offers via on-site will see behavior consistent with all other channels.