How to give my customers the credits for the unused period when there is a subscription change?

Problem Statement

You want to know how to give my customers the credits for the unused period when there is a subscription change.

Solution

Summary

When you use the Change subscription option through the admin console or the APIs, you will have an option to choose "Apply prorated credits and charges" that lets you provide credits to your customer for the unused period. When you Apply changes the prorated credits gets applied and an invoice gets generated for the upgraded plan.

To know more on where the change Subscription can be accessed from and how to apply changes refer to this document.

Here is more information on proration. Here is more on proration on subscription change in specific

Warning: The next billing date does not change when you change a subscription from plan A to plan B with the same billing frequency.

If the plan frequency is different then the customers will be charged for the new plan and the billing frequency will be set accordingly.

If you need to change only the next billing date use the "change the next billing date"(Subscriptions details page > Action panel to the right) date and prorate the charges if applicable. Here's a video for reference.