When configuring a registration form for a Member area subscription (non-recurring), we can set the expiry date using either the “Member area Expiry Date” or “Member area Expiry Duration” fields in the form. These will adjust the member’s expiry date to the Member area.

However, if the Member area is of a recurring type, the expiry date is always set based from the current date (date of sign-up), regardless of if the “Member area Expiry Date” or “Member area Expiry Duration” fields are used.

This is probably fine in most cases, however, being able to set the renewal date (expiry date) with these fields for recurring Member area subscriptions would make the system much more flexible for different types of membership models.

Some scenarios include:

• having an initial/custom trial period (initial price can be set with discount code^).
• set all subscriptions to start the 1st of the month.
• having a set/consistent recurring date for all subscriptions (ie: all start in September) and pro-rata the initial sign-up price (initial price can be set with discount codes^).

^using the initial discounted price only for the initial payment or for subsequent renewals is already an option in the CMS, so renewal payments are already sorted even with this change of renewal date.

From what I can tell, the only thing I see that needs adjusting in the CMS is that, if you add a “Member area Expiry Date” field to a subscription form that is recurring, then that date be used to set the ‘billing cycle anchor’ ( Stripe API reference – The subscription object ) instead of using the current date.