Managing cancellations
Overview
Cancellations are part of the subscription business. Kyvento supports both paths โ cancellation by your team and self-cancellation by the customer in the portal โ and handles cleanly what happens to the term and any open invoices.
Cancelling a subscription (backend)
Open the subscription and click "Cancel subscription". In the dialog, you select the cancellation mode:
- "Cancel at the end of the period" (default) โ the subscription continues until the end of the paid billing period and then ends automatically.
- "End immediately" โ the subscription ends instantly, without waiting for the end of the period.
Optionally, you record a reason (for your own analysis) and suppress the confirmation email to the customer.
What happens to open invoices
Existing open invoices are unaffected by the cancellation โ they remain due and, if necessary, go through the dunning process. A pro rata refund for unused time is not issued automatically for an immediate cancellation; create a credit note for this if needed.
Self-cancellation in the customer portal
Customers can cancel their subscription themselves in the portal โ for consumer protection reasons, always at the end of the period, observing the notice period stored in the product. The legal framework (Section 312k of the German Civil Code (BGB), the "cancellation button") applies to consumer contracts; Kyvento clearly points this out if you deactivate the portal button for special cases.
Withdrawal is not the same as cancellation
Within the statutory withdrawal period (ยง 356a BGB) consumers can not only cancel the contract but withdraw from it โ the contract then counts as never concluded. Kyvento treats this as its own operation: during the period a withdrawal button appears in the customer portal, and in the backend you find the withdrawal on the subscription itself.
What a withdrawal triggers is configured on the product: whether the contract ends, whether the refund is full or pro rata, whether it is issued automatically, and whether the subscription is suspended immediately. Setting the withdrawal period to 0 days disables withdrawal for that product โ common for pure B2B offerings.
On notice periods: Kyvento warns, but does not block
You can set any notice period on a product. If you choose more than 30 days, Kyvento points out that such a period is contestable towards consumers under ยง 309 no. 9 b BGB โ it is still saved, and the warning is recorded. The decision stays with you: for different B2B terms, it is best to create a separate product.
Undoing a cancellation
As long as the effective date is in the future, a cancellation can be reversed โ in the backend via "Reactivate", in the customer portal via "Withdraw cancellation". An immediate cancellation is final.
Next steps
- Just pause temporarily instead of cancelling โ see "Pausing or freezing subscriptions"
- Tidy up cancelled subscriptions โ see "Archiving cancelled subscriptions"