Handling Paused Subscriptions in ChartMogul

A paused subscription is one where your customer temporarily stops paying but keeps their subscription, then resumes it later. ChartMogul recognizes pauses from supported billing systems and data sources, and you decide how a pause affects your MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) and churn in Data Settings.

Which Billing Systems and Data Sources Support Paused Subscriptions

ChartMogul tracks paused subscriptions from these sources:

• Recurly
• Chargebee
• Custom data sources (subscriptions added manually or by CSV import)
• The Import API

Stripe and GoCardless aren’t supported yet. See how Stripe and GoCardless pauses are handled.

How to Choose How Paused Subscriptions Are Handled

One setting applies to your whole account and every supported data source.

1. Go to Settings > Data & Integrations > Reporting Settings.
2. Under When a subscription is paused, select an option.
3. Click SAVE.

Which option fits depends on how you think about a paused customer:

• Keep MRR unchanged if pauses are short and customers almost always come back, so a pause shouldn’t move your revenue numbers.
• MRR to $0 if you want MRR to reflect only what customers are paying right now, while still knowing who is paused rather than gone.
• Cancelled and record churn if you treat a pause as a lost customer until they pay again.

When you change the setting, ChartMogul updates existing paused subscriptions to match. This can take some time.

With Set status to Cancelled and record churn, subscriptions never show a Paused status. ChartMogul reactivates the subscription when it processes the first invoice after the resume, so its MRR stays at $0 until then.

If your account had a Recurly source before paused subscriptions were supported, it may be set to Set status to Cancelled and record churn. This matches how ChartMogul previously handled Recurly pauses, so your historical numbers don’t change. You can switch to another option at any time.

What Happens When a Paused Subscription Resumes or Is Cancelled

With either Paused option, the pause ends at whichever of these happens first:

• The subscription resumes in your billing system. The status returns to Active. With the $0 option, the subscription’s MRR is restored.
• A new payment is recorded. ChartMogul treats the payment as the resume, even if your billing system hasn’t sent a resume event yet.
• The subscription is cancelled. The status changes to Cancelled and ChartMogul records churn as usual.

If a subscription is paused and resumed more than once, ChartMogul records each pause separately.

Where to See Paused Subscriptions

With either Paused option, paused subscriptions appear in these places:

• Customer profile — the subscription shows a Paused status, and its history shows when it was paused and resumed.
• Subscriber status — a customer whose only live paid subscriptions are paused has the Paused Subscriber status. A customer with any active or past-due subscription keeps that status instead. Learn more about customer and subscription statuses.
• Segments and filters — filter by the Paused Subscriber status to include or exclude these customers from any report. Learn more about segmentation.

Reports — the Report Data tables of subscriber and subscription reports, such as All Subscribers and All Subscriptions, split counts into paused and unpaused rows. The paused and resumed rows only appear when at least one period in the selected date range has a pause or resume. Select a row to see the customers in it.

• Data Platform — the Subscriptions table shows Paused and Resumed events.

How to Add Pauses to Custom Data Sources and the Import API

For billing systems ChartMogul doesn’t connect to directly, record pauses yourself:

• Custom data sources — add Paused and Resumed events to the subscription in the Data Platform.
• Import API — send subscription events with event_type set to subscription_paused when the pause starts and subscription_resumed when it ends. Learn more about creating subscription events.

The When a subscription is paused setting then applies to these subscriptions like any other supported source. You no longer need the earlier workaround of moving paused subscriptions to a $0 “Paused” plan.

How Stripe and GoCardless Pauses Are Handled

The When a subscription is paused setting doesn’t apply to Stripe or GoCardless. When a subscription is paused in either billing system, ChartMogul sets the customer status to Past due at the end of the current service period, and the subscription keeps contributing to MRR.

To track these customers, add custom attributes or tags to customers with paused subscriptions. You can then filter them out of your reports or create a segment for them.