How does prorating work when I change my number of driver seats? How does this appear on my invoice or bill?

How does prorating work when I change my number of driver seats?

As a part of a paid plan, you pay for a number of driver seats in a monthly plan and you can put any driver in your roster into that seat. For example, if you have 2 seats, and you have 4 drivers in your roster, you can manage and change which 2 drivers are using your seats (e.g. set to active) at any given time.

More on how this works: How do I manage my driver seats?

Our plans are flexible: you can also add seats briefly to scale up and scale down based on your demand. For example, let's say you have a busy delivery period for Mother's Day weekend. You can add seats (upgrade) to activate the additional drivers for that weekend, and then deactivate them after, and remove the seats (downgrade). We'll prorate your plan for the days used in that scenario -- this Shopify Help Center article describes the mechanics of prorating:

"If you upgrade or downgrade your subscription with an app, then the app will prompt you to agree to a new recurring app charge. This is because Shopify allows each app only one recurring app charge to be enabled at a time. The existing recurring application charge will be canceled and replaced by the new charge.

Depending on the app, the new recurring app charge is either applied immediately, or after the app's current billing cycle ends.

If the new app charge is applied immediately, then when you upgrade your plan by moving from a less expensive charge to a more expensive charge, the charge is prorated based on the difference in price and the number of days remaining in the billing cycle. For example, if you begin a 30-day billing cycle on a $5.00 plan, and upgrade to a $15.00 plan on day 15 of the billing cycle, then you're charged $5.00 + ($15.00 - $5.00) * (15/30) = $10.00 USD.

If the new app charge is applied immediately, then when you downgrade your plan by moving from a more expensive charge to a less expensive charge, you're automatically offered an application credit based on the difference in price and the number of days remaining in the billing cycle. This application credit can be used towards any future application purchase on Shopify."

How does this appear on my bill or invoice?

To note there are two periods to account for on a Shopify bill:

Your billing cycle (e.g. when your invoice was issued, and whether it's a 30-day cycle)
The app's 30-day subscription cycle.

For a 30-day billing cycle, you may see charges and event related to 2 subscription cycles, but only inclusive of the dates for the billing cycle:

In general, upgrades and downgrades are processed against a 30 day subscription cycle, and Shopify works by creating charges and credits against the remainder of the 30 day subscription cycle. To note, events that happen after the invoice date would appear on the next invoice, but for the same subscription cycle.

Upgrades will be shown as charges in the Apps section of your Shopify bill. Downgrades will be shown under Credits in your Shopify bill.

For a regular monthly subscription, you'll see a charge for the full 30-day cycle for the price of the plan at your current number of seats. If a subscription is cancelled in this cycle, then this is the final charge for the subscription plan.

For upgrades, you will see a charge for the difference from the previous plan, prorated to the remainder of the remaining 30-day cycle from the upgrade date (e.g. if the new app charge is applied immediately, then when you upgrade your plan by moving from a less expensive charge to a more expensive charge, the charge is prorated based on the difference in price and the number of days remaining in the billing cycle. )

For downgrades, you will see a credit for the difference from the previous plan prorated to the remainder of the 30-day cycle from the downgrade date (e.g. If the new app charge is applied immediately, then when you downgrade your plan by moving to a less expensive charge from a more expensive charge, the credit is prorated based on the difference in price and the number of days remaining in the billing cycle).

Note: if you have a bill or an invoice based on a billing threshold, upgrade or downgrade events that happen after the invoice date would appear on subsequent invoices for the same subscription cycle.