How trials and grace periods work#
For: Admin You’ll need: Owner role.
This article explains the lifecycle: when Shiftavo considers your subscription on trial, active, past due (in grace), paused (suspended), or canceled, and what changes when each state flips.
Billing state lives on your account, not on each company — so a state change applies to every company you own at once. Which plan you’re on is a separate question — see the plan cards on your account page.
States#
Trial — your account is on a free trial for 30 days. Everything works exactly like the Pro plan, across all your companies — the solver, the forecast, the kiosk, the API — so you see the whole product before choosing.
Trial ended (grace) — the 30 days are up and you have not picked a plan yet. Everything keeps working for 7 more days, still on Pro, so nobody on your team notices. The account page shows a ‘Trial ended’ badge with the date access pauses.
Active — you have a valid subscription and the most recent invoice was paid.
Past due (grace) — a payment failed. Your companies keep working for a short window so you can fix billing without losing data.
Paused (suspended) — a grace window ran out: either the trial’s 7 days passed without a plan, or a failed payment was not fixed in time. Nobody can open any company on the account — the owner included — and sessions are revoked immediately, so anyone signed in is signed out. On the account page every company shows an ‘Unavailable’ badge; the owner also gets a ‘Manage billing’ link. There is no read-only mode — access comes back when you pay.
Canceled — the subscription was canceled in the Stripe Billing Portal. Your companies stay open until the end of the period you’ve already paid for. At period end the account flips straight to ‘Canceled’ and every company becomes unreachable at once — there is no post-cancellation grace. To come back, pick a plan again on the account page (‘Account’ → ‘Plan’ → ‘Choose’).
Important
Nothing is ever deleted when an account pauses. Your schedules, people, time records and history stay exactly where they are. Pick a plan and everything is back, as you left it. The only thing that deletes data is you, deleting a company or your account.
Note
The badges in the Subscription panel on your account page name these states as ‘Trial’, ‘Active’, ‘Past Due’ (with a ‘Payment failed’ note), ‘Trial ended’ (with the date access pauses), ‘Paused’ (with a note that nothing has been deleted), and ‘Canceled’.
What drives state changes#
Two things change the state:
Stripe webhooks — every time something happens in Stripe (a charge succeeds, a charge fails, a subscription is canceled), Stripe pings Shiftavo and the state is updated immediately.
The billing-lifecycle background job — runs daily and walks expired trials and grace periods, applying the next state when a deadline has passed.
You don’t trigger either — they happen on their own.
What you hear during the trial#
Shiftavo tells the owner — in the app, by email and by push — at each step, so the end of the trial is never a surprise:
When |
Message |
|---|---|
7 days before the trial ends |
what you have built so far, and the date |
The day before |
nothing disappears — you just need a plan to keep planning |
The day the trial ends |
everything keeps working for 7 days; pick a plan before then |
2 days before access pauses |
one click keeps everything going |
When access pauses |
nothing has been deleted; pick a plan and everything is back |
Every message links to the plan picker on your account page. Only the owner receives them.
How to fix a failed payment#
Open the account menu → ‘Account’ and scroll to ‘Plan’.
In the Subscription panel, click ‘Update payment’ (shown while past due) to open the Stripe Billing Portal.
Update the payment method.
The next charge attempt usually happens within minutes. When it succeeds, your account flips back to ‘Active’ and every company is restored.
Worked example#
Your card fails on 3 May. The account shows ‘Past Due’ that same day, and everything keeps working. Fix the card via the Stripe Billing Portal within the grace window and you flip back to ‘Active’. If the charge still fails when the window runs out, the account flips to ‘Paused’ and nobody can open your companies until you pay.
Or: you signed up on 1 April and never picked a plan. On 1 May the trial ends — the account shows ‘Trial ended’, and everything keeps working on Pro until 8 May. On 8 May the account flips to ‘Paused’. On 20 May you pick a plan: the account is ‘Active’ the same minute, and every shift you published in April is still there.
Note
When the trial’s Pro tier lapses, features that belong to a higher plan than the one you bought disappear from the menu — nothing is deleted, and picking that plan brings them straight back.
Verify it worked#
Open ‘Account’ and scroll to ‘Plan’. The Subscription panel should read ‘Active’, and members can use Shiftavo normally in every company.