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# Subscription Recurring Billing Considerations

A subscription is a recurring sale of your offering (products or services) and the entitlement to access them. It is billed according to a billing schedule (called billing plan), which indicates the frequency of billing, and purchased by a customer (customer Account stores the customer details along with the customer's payment method).

Subscriptions are the most common elements used by Subscribe's merchants. Vindicia Subscribe supports flexible billing plans, that define the frequency of billing and allow you to develop new business models accordingly. The subscription element in the system (per customer account) generates a transaction every time a billing action is required.

The majority of Subscriptions are billed on their **anniversary date**, the day they were created defined by their billing frequency as part of a billing cycle every day, week, month, or year.

The subscription service period **Start** and service period **End dates** reflect the current billing cycle duration. For each successful billing, the dates are renewed accordingly.

Subscribe updates the subscription status based on the system's ability to collect payment and the input from the customer.The status changes based on retry logic rules, the defined grace period, or when the subscription expires. A subscription will be canceled, if its payment cannot be collected.

A subscription entitlement determines whether a customer has access to your offerings by providing access codes that are recognized by your system. Entitlements are defined in the Product and/or Billing Plan and granted by the subscription that includes these items. Entitlements are active as long as the subscription is in a good standing. For more details, see [Subscription Entitlement](subscriptions#section_qg1_csp_rpb).

Subscribe also support more complex scenarios such as seasonal billing, like a sport's or TV **season** allowing you to bill and provide active entitlements during a defined time-frame, and not at other times of the year. For more details, see [Season Sets](seasonSet).

## Offset Billing

Subscribe provides the ability to separate the subscription billing date from the service start/end date. This is especially useful for payments methods that are external to Subscribe and where an invoice is generated and paid prior to the subscription start.

For example, we want the subscription to start on June 1st, but the bill needs to be sent 5 days prior, to provide time for payment receipt. In this case, the system will issue an invoice for May 25 to bring the system up to date and the next billing will happen on June 25. The service period will be from the first till the end of the month. The offset billing in Subscribe is controlled by the billing plan. If a billing plan is modified on a subscription, the billing offset is canceled.

* **[Billing Retry Logic](../topics/billingRetryLogic)**

**Parent topic:**[Subscribe Charging and Billing](../topics/chargingBilling)


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