Cancel Subscriptions with Auto Refunds

In this use case, the end customer A has a termed subscription with contract effective date from 2022-01-01. He made a payment with $1100 already for the current term. An invoice has been generated for the customer, with the amount of $1100. He canceled the subscription in the middle of the current term and should get a $700 refund based on the time and usage, but he claimed that he is not satisfied with the service. After investigating this case, you have agreed to refund $700 and an additional $100 to the customer.

In this guide, you will learn:

• How to cancel a subscription with refund by API.

Note: Only active subscriptions could be cancelled.

Step 1. Generate an OAuth token

See Create an OAuth token for details.

Step 2. Cancel a subscription using the "Create an order" operation

The following cURL code sample cancels the subscription A-S00020635 on 2022-04-30:

curl --location --request POST 'https://rest.zuora.com/v1/orders' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Basic e3tiYnlfZml4X3VzZXJuYW1lfX06e3tiYnlfZml4X3Bhc3N3b3JkfX0=' \
--data-raw '{
    "orderDate": "2022-04-30",
    "existingAccountNumber": "A00026428",
    "subscriptions": [
        {
            "subscriptionNumber": "A-S00020635",
            "orderActions": [
                {
                    "type": "CancelSubscription",
                    "triggerDates": [
                        {
                            "name": "CustomerAcceptance",
                            "triggerDate": "2022-04-30"
                        },
                        {
                            "name": "ServiceActivation",
                            "triggerDate": "2022-04-30"
                        },
                        {
                            "name": "ContractEffective",
                            "triggerDate": "2022-04-30"
                        }
                    ],
                    "cancelSubscription": {
                        "cancellationPolicy": "SpecificDate",
                        "cancellationEffectiveDate": "2022-04-30"
                    }
                }
            ]
        }
    ],
    "processingOptions": {
        "runBilling": true,
        "billingOptions": {
            "documentDate": "2022-04-30",
            "targetDate": "2022-04-30"
        },
        "refund": true,
        "refundAmount": 700,
        "writeOff": true
    }
}'

Step 3. Generate a refund automatically

In this case, the refund will be split into several parts:

1. Generate a credit memo (CM-0001) for -$700 based on the automatic calculation with his original term and payment.
2. Unapply $700 from the payment P-0001. It will cause INV001 to have an open balance of $700.
3. Refund $700 from unapplied balance of P-0001 by sending electronic referenced refund request (R-0001) to the payment gateway.
4. Create a standalone credit memo (CM-0002) for the remaining balance of $100 for INV0001.

These complicated parts are handled by Zuora automatically and no manual effort is needed from you.

Step 4. Verify the result

After the process is done, you can verify the result in the Zuora UI or through the GET API operations for Orders.

To verify the result through the Zuora UI, you can find the Subscription you canceled displayed at the top of the All Subscriptions page by navigating to Customers > Subscription in the Zuora UI. You will find the current status of this subscription is canceled already, with two credit memos generated in Associated Events > Credit Memos.

To verify the result through the API, See Retrieve Object Information for details.