Why Am I Being Asked To Pay The Full Subscription Price For An Upgrade Or Add-On?
When you upgrade your SmarterQueue subscription, either by choosing a higher plan or using add-ons, you'll only pay for the additional functionality from that day onward.
That said when going through the checkout with your new plan, you might notice the full subscription price displayed. This will not be the actual charge, and in this article, we're happy to clarify further! 💪
In This Article
How Does SmarterQueue Billing Work
Initial Subscription And Renewals
When you first sign up for a SmarterQueue paid subscription, you are charged the full amount for your chosen plan in advance, for one billing cycle (one month or one year, based on your selection).
Unless you make any changes to your plan, it will automatically renew at the end of each billing cycle for the following month or year and you will always be charged the exact same amount.
All charges will be accompanied by detailed invoices, that you will always have access to in the Invoices section within your SmarterQueue account.
Subscription Upgrades
As you take full advantage of all the time-saving capabilities your subscription has to offer, you might end up needing additional functionality. No worries! You can always upgrade your plan or use add-ons to access specific features 💪
Your subscription will be updated as soon as you go through the checkout with the added features, even if you're in the middle of your current billing cycle.
The amount you'll pay will be pro-rated based on the difference between your current plan price and the new plan price, and based on how many days are left in your current billing cycle.
💡 e.g.: Consider you paid $200 for a yearly subscription on January 1st, and then changed to a $300 subscription on October 1st. The difference between the two plans is $100. Since there are only 3 months left in your current billing year, you will see a pro-rated charge of $25 (a quarter of the 100$ difference, as only a quarter of the year is left).
Why Am I Seeing The Full Subscription Cost
This is due to how our payment gateway, Braintree by PayPal, works.
When you go through the checkout with your updated plan, we will display the full subscription cost. This is to make sure that you see the total cost of your SmarterQueue account, and also to update our payment gateway of the price moving forward, for renewal purposes.
Moving forward, Braintree "sees" the full subscription amount and performs the following steps:
- It requests a pre-authorization of the full amount from your bank, which generates a confirmation popup within our website (the one you're asked to approve).
- Once you approve, it looks at your existing subscription/payments and the remainder of your billing cycle and determines that this is a small upgrade for your existing plan and billing cycle.
- It then determines the correct, pro-rated amount to charge and only processes that amount.
💡 e.g.: Consider you paid $200 for a yearly subscription on January 1st, and then changed to a $300 subscription on October 1st. Your pre-authorization pop-up will display the entire $300 amount, but the actual charge will be $25 (pro-rated amount for the difference between the two plans, for the last 3 months of your billing cycle).
We realize this is not optimal. While there's zero risk that you'd be charged more than a pro-rated amount for the exact update, we are looking into ways to improve this.
In the meantime, we assure you that if you're ever charged more than the correct, pro-rated cost of your upgrade, we'll be happy to help with a refund. Simply get in touch at hello@smarterqueue.com to let us know and we'll be right on it! 📧