Specifics of managing postpaid Subscriptions

The Postpay model means that a customer pays after factual using a service, in the next Billing period.

Postpaid Subscriptions start provisioning immediately after the Order confirmation. Postpaid Subscriptions do not depend on the Account balance and have instead of that individual consumption limits called the Blocking threshold (see Viewing Subscription details). However, postpaid Subscriptions can be paid from the Account balance automatically and manually (see Paying for the Subscriptions included in an Invoice for the Postpay charging model).

In this article:

The Blocking threshold check

When an Account creates an Order for a postpaid Subscription, it may be possible to increase the amount of Resources. It may cause unwanted debt for this Subscription. To prevent this situation, the platform checks the Blocking threshold for a Subscription. Depending on the Order type (see Managing Orders) and the Plan terms, confirmation of an Order is available only when one or several of the following conditions are met:

• The total amount of an Order does not exceed the Blocking threshold for a Subscription.
• The monthly payment for a Subscription does not exceed the Blocking threshold for a Subscription.
• The total amount of all Charges of a Subscription for the current Billing period does not exceed the Blocking threshold for a Subscription.
• The total amount of all Charges of a Subscription for the next Billing period does not exceed the Blocking threshold for a Subscription.

Manual approval by a manager

The Reseller may require manual approval by a manager to let an Account use the Postpay model. In this case, the following limitations are applied to ordering postpaid Subscriptions:

• The first Order linked to a postpaid Subscription to a commercial period will be created and provisioned only after manual approval by a manager.
• Creating any subsequent Orders linked to postpaid Subscriptions to a commercial period is not available until the manager approves the first Order. The Order confirmation page and the list of Subscriptions include the corresponding message with information about the applied limitations, and the Switch to a paid plan (Switch Plan) button is not displayed.

Conditions of Subscriptions transition to the Blocked status

Subscriptions are blocked only within the Postpay model. A Subscription is blocked automatically in the following cases:

• The Subscription stop grace period is expired for a Subscription linked via an Invoice (see Viewing details of an Invoice for the Postpay charging model) to a Payment in the Expired status (see Viewing the list of Payments).
• The amount of consumption in the current period for the Subscription exceeded the Blocking threshold.

Activation of blocked Subscriptions

Activation of Subscriptions blocked due to the Payment expiration

Blocked Subscriptions are activated automatically when the related Payment gets the Completed or Paid from balance status (see Paying for the Subscriptions included in an Invoice for the Postpay charging model). If there are any other conditions for blocking a Subscription, the Subscription remains in the Blocked status.

Activation of Subscriptions blocked due to exceeding the Blocking threshold

Blocked Subscriptions are checked for activation automatically:

• Once a day, during the billing process — if the amount of all Charges that will be in the Blocked status after the Subscription activation is less than the current Blocking threshold.
• When the Blocking threshold has been changed.

During the activation process, a blocked Subscription acts as follows:

• Gets the status that was before Blocked.
• Remains in the Blocked status without moving to the Active status — if the Invoices for the postpaid Subscription have expired Payments.