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Subscriptions bill a client on a schedule from a plan you define: a monthly retainer, a quarterly maintenance plan, an annual membership. Each period Hiveku charges the client’s saved card, or emails them an invoice when there is no card, retries declined cards automatically, and counts the subscription toward MRR. Everything lives under Commerce > Subscriptions (the Subscriptions & plans page), with two tabs: Subscriptions and Plans.
Step-by-step walkthroughs with screenshots: Sell a Subscription Plan and Subscribe a Client for your first plan, and Bill a Client Every Month to bill the same lines every month without a plan.

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Plans

A plan is what you sell. Create one under Plans > New plan: A subscription is one plan times a quantity. For tiers (Starter, Pro, Enterprise), create one plan per tier. For seats or locations, set the subscription’s Quantity.
Editing a plan’s price or tax rate changes what every subscriber pays from their next renewal, unless that subscriber has their own price or tax rate. Nothing already invoiced changes.
Archiving a plan stops it being sold: it can’t be used for new subscriptions or on payment pages. People already subscribed keep renewing. The Plans tab shows which payment pages sell each plan, and the archive dialog names each page and what archiving does to it. Restoring the plan puts it back.

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Subscribe a client

1

Open the dialog

On the Subscriptions tab, click Subscribe a client.
2

Pick the client and the plan

The client is a CRM contact or company. Charging a card needs a contact, and the emails go to the contact’s email address.
3

Choose how billing starts

  • Charge now: bills the first period now and charges the card.
  • Invoice now, don’t charge: issues the first period’s invoice now, for the client to pay.
  • Start on a future date: the first bill goes out on that date.
  • Free trial first: nothing is charged until the trial ends.
4

Set the details

  • Card on file: which saved card renewals charge.
  • Start date.
  • Quantity.
  • Price override: this client’s own price instead of the plan’s.
  • Tax rate (%).
  • Payment terms: how long the client has to pay an emailed invoice.
  • Bill automatically.
  • Email the customer a confirmation.
5

Subscribe

Click Subscribe (or Subscribe & charge $X).
Other ways a subscription starts:
  • From an invoice. In an invoice’s More menu, Turn into subscription subscribes the client with that invoice as the first period.
  • From a payment page. Clients sign themselves up on a subscription payment page. Their card is kept, and the subscription renews on it like any other.
  • By an AI agent. See AI agents and the API.

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When renewals happen

  • The renewal day is the start date’s day of the month, moved to the last day in shorter months. For a free trial, it’s the day the trial ends, unless a renewal day was set through the API or an AI agent.
  • Renewal time. A renewal is billed from 13:00 UTC on its date.
  • First periods are always full. A start date long enough ago that a whole period has already passed is refused. Send a separate invoice for past work instead.
Bill automatically off makes the subscription a record only: nothing is billed. This is useful while you move a client over from another system. Each renewal invoice has one line for the plan, plus tax; the first also carries the setup fee. To bill several lines every period, use Make recurring on an invoice instead. It repeats that invoice on a schedule.

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What the client receives

  • A “You’re subscribed” email when you subscribe them, if Email the customer a confirmation is on. Payment page sign-ups always get it.
  • An upcoming charge notice three days before each card renewal. It goes when the subscription is Active or Trialing, has a card, has Bill automatically on, and isn’t set to cancel.
  • A receipt after each charge, or the invoice by email when there’s no card.
  • A card-expiring notice with a link to save a new card, up to 14 days before a renewal whose card will have expired by then.
  • A cancellation confirmation when the subscription is cancelled.
Emails come from your branded address when your commerce domain is verified, and from Hiveku otherwise. Nothing is sent to a contact with no email address, or one that bounced or unsubscribed.

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Statuses

  • Trialing: in a free trial; the first charge comes when it ends.
  • Active: billing on schedule.
  • Past due: the latest renewal was declined and is still owed. Renewals keep coming, and it returns to Active once paid.
  • Paused: no billing until you resume.
  • Unpaid: three periods in a row were declined, so billing stopped until you restart it.
  • Cancelled: ended by you, or by the client from the portal if you allow it.

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Failed payments

When a renewal charge is declined:
1

Past due at once

The subscription turns Past due. The invoice stays open with its pay link, and your normal invoice reminders apply to it.
2

Automatic retries

The card is charged again 3 days later, then 7 days after that. Retries stop at once for a card the bank will never approve, or a card that was removed.
3

Uncollectible

14 days after the third failed attempt, the invoice is marked uncollectible.
4

Unpaid after three periods

When three periods in a row are declined, the subscription turns Unpaid: billing stops, Bill automatically switches off, and an urgent item appears in your Commerce inbox. To restart it, get a new card from the client (Send card update link) and attach it, set the Next billing date on the subscription’s Billing card, then turn on Bill automatically under Edit. The subscription is Active again, its declined periods count from zero, and it bills on that date.The date must be on or after the day the last period already invoiced ends, so no days are billed twice. That period’s invoice is still open for the client to pay. If you pick an earlier date, Hiveku names that invoice and the earliest date you can use. An Unpaid subscription can’t be paused; restart it or cancel it.
This schedule is the same for every account, and nothing cancels a subscription automatically. The quickest fix for a declined card is the subscription’s Send card update link: the client saves a new card, nothing is charged, and the link lasts 7 days.

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Changing a subscription

Open a subscription and click Edit to change:
  • The plan. The new price applies from the next renewal, and nothing is prorated for the period already in progress. The new plan must be in the same currency, and changing the plan clears a price override.
  • The quantity, the price override, the tax rate, the payment terms and Bill automatically.
  • Restart the period today. This moves the billing period to start today, with no charge and no credit.
The card (Change card or Attach a card) and the Next billing date are on the subscription’s Billing card. Bill this period now bills the current period straight away instead of waiting for the date.

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Pause, resume and cancel

  • Pause stops billing and keeps the subscription. Resume moves the next billing date to the next renewal day still ahead, so the paused time isn’t billed.
  • Cancel at period end lets the client finish the period they paid for. End now stops it immediately.
    • Invoices already issued stay due.
    • Nothing is refunded automatically; refund a payment from its invoice if you need to.
  • A cancelled subscription can’t be resumed. To bring a client back, subscribe them again.
  • An Unpaid subscription can’t be paused or resumed. Restart it as described under Failed payments.
  • A subscription that was never invoiced can be deleted outright.
Clients can cancel from the client portal only if you allow it. Turn on Cancel their own subscription in the portal settings, and choose under When a client cancels: At period end (the default) or Immediately.

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MRR and ARR

  • MRR (monthly recurring revenue) counts Active and Trialing subscriptions, before tax, at their monthly equivalent: a $999-a-year plan contributes $83.25.
  • Reports > Recurring revenue shows MRR, ARR (MRR × 12), the next 12 months, annual renewals and what was invoiced this year.
  • Churn. Reports shows the share of subscriptions cancelled over the last 90 days.
  • The Overview MRR card also includes recurring invoices.
See Reports & Analytics.

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Usage and time

Subscriptions don’t bill usage. Log usage and time under Commerce > Usage, where entries wait as Unbilled until you bill them on an invoice. See Bill for Your Hours and Usage.

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Workflows

Use a Subscription Trigger to run your own steps on subscription events, for example subscription.created, subscription.renewed, subscription.past_due and subscription.cancelled. See Workflows.

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AI agents and the API

Connected AI agents can list subscriptions and plans, read one subscription, create a plan, and start a subscription with these tools:
  • accounting_subscriptions_list
  • accounting_subscription_get
  • accounting_subscription_plans_list
  • accounting_subscription_plan_create, which creates a plan as New plan does:
    • the name and the price are required;
    • the cadence, free trial, setup fee, tax rate and currency are optional;
    • the currency defaults to your account’s.
    • If a plan with the same name already exists, nothing is made. The agent gets that plan back, with whether it bills what was asked, and asks you when it doesn’t.
  • accounting_subscription_create, which shows a preview first and creates only on a confirm.
With an API key, the same operations are at /api/olympus/accounting/subscriptions and /api/olympus/accounting/subscription-plans. Creating a plan and starting a subscription work only with a person’s own connected key: the VS Code extension, the Claude Code plugin, the Codex plugin, or a key made under Settings > LLM Connectors / MCP keys. That person must be allowed to create subscriptions in the app. Hiveku’s own assistants, and keys with no owner, are refused.

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Troubleshooting

Check the next billing date; it may not have arrived yet. Check for an Automatic billing off badge: Bill automatically is off, or Hiveku switched it off because the subscription fell behind and posted a “Subscription is behind on billing” item to your Commerce inbox. A Paused or Unpaid subscription doesn’t bill either.
The subscription has no card on file. Send a card update link, then, once the client has saved a card, click Attach a card on the subscription’s Billing card. Later renewals charge it.
Plan changes never prorate. The new price starts at the next renewal. Use Restart the period today to begin a fresh period, or send a one-off invoice for any difference.
MRR counts Active and Trialing subscriptions only, before tax. Past due, Paused, Unpaid and Cancelled ones aren’t counted. Yearly plans count a twelfth of their price each month, and quarterly plans a third.

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What’s next?

Set Up Recurring Subscriptions

Hands-on walkthrough of your first subscription.

Payment Pages

Let clients sign themselves up to a plan.

Reports & Analytics

MRR, ARR and churn.

Payment Processing

Saved cards and the processors that charge them.