Pausing, canceling, and reactivating subscriptions
How to pause, reactivate and cancel a subscription contract from the Roadmap admin, and what each action does to the billing schedule.
Pausing and cancelling both stop a contract billing. Pausing is reversible, cancelling is not.
This article covers doing all three from the Roadmap admin. For what each status means, see Subscription statuses explained. For the guided flows customers get when they pause or cancel themselves, see Churn prevention: cancellation and pause flows.
Where the actions live
Open a contract from Subscriptions → Manage Subscriptions, then use the Manage subscription menu in the top right.
On an Active contract the menu holds:
Order now
Change frequency
Pause Subscription
Reschedule Next Delivery
Skip next delivery
Mark as Failed
Cancel Subscription
Cancel Subscription is the only item shown in red, because it is the only one you cannot undo.
Pausing a subscription
Choose Manage subscription → Pause Subscription.
A pause you apply from the admin is always indefinite. There is no duration to choose, and the contract will not resume on its own.
The contract summary then shows a Paused pill, a Paused at date, and a next billing date of Not scheduled.
That last part is what matters. An indefinite pause does not hold the existing billing date, it clears the schedule. Nothing will bill on this contract until someone reactivates it.
Indefinite pauses and timed pauses
A paused contract is one of two things, and the contract tells you which.
Indefinite pause
Timed pause
Status pill
Paused
Paused until [date]
Next billing date
Not scheduled
The resume date
How it ends
Someone reactivates it
It reactivates itself on that date
Every pause applied from the admin is indefinite. A customer's pause can be either, depending on how you have set up the Pause flow:
With the Pause flow on, the customer picks a duration, which gives a timed pause.
With Include "Pause indefinitely" also enabled, they can choose to pause with no end date instead.
With the Pause flow off, a customer pause is indefinite.
On the Paused tab of the Subscriptions list, the Next billing date column is the quickest way to tell them apart: filled in for a timed pause, empty for an indefinite one. Paused At shows when each pause started.
For how customers choose a duration, and how those resumes are scheduled, see Churn prevention: cancellation and pause flows.
Reactivating a subscription
Open the contract and choose Reactivate Subscription from the Manage subscription menu.
Reactivating always asks you for a date. The Reactivate Subscription modal has a single field, New delivery date, and tells you that the subscription will be reactivated and the billing schedule will be aligned to the selected date. Choose the date, then click Reactivate.
The same modal appears in every case: Paused or Failed, reactivated by you or by the customer from their account.
Reactivating a timed pause early works the same way. The scheduled resume is dropped and replaced by the date you pick.
A Failed contract needs a working payment method on file before it will reactivate. The usual order is to update the card, confirm it works with Order now, then reactivate. See Updating a customer's payment method and Manually charging a subscription (Order Now).
Cancelling a subscription
Choose Manage subscription → Cancel Subscription.
The contract summary then shows a Cancelled pill and a Cancelled at date. The next billing date line disappears entirely, because there is no longer a schedule to show.
What an admin cancellation does and does not trigger
Cancelling from the admin does fire the Klaviyo Roadmap: Subscription Cancelled metric, so any win-back flow you have built still runs. You can confirm it on the contract's Timeline, which records the event as Klaviyo: Roadmap Subscription Cancelled metric triggered, by Roadmap.
Cancelling from the admin does not add a cancellation reason tag. Those tags come only from the customer cancellation flow, where the customer picks a reason from your list. A contract you cancel on a customer's behalf will not appear in a segment built on cancelled: tags. If you need it counted, add the tag to the Shopify customer record yourself.
Either way, the status change itself is recorded on the contract. See The Subscription Activity Timeline.
Choosing between pause, cancel and Mark as Failed
Pause
The customer wants a break and you expect the contract back. Reversible, and the contract keeps its products and settings.
Cancel
The subscription is ending for good. There is no way back from this.
Mark as Failed
Payment is the problem and you do not want to wait for the retry schedule to finish. See Marking a subscription as Failed.
If you are unsure, pause. It stops the billing immediately and nothing is lost.
Related guides
Last updated