List of Delayed Downgrade Scenarios and How Subscriptions and Delayed Orders Are Affected

These are scenarios where a customer downgrades one of the services they use and the system delays the processing of the downgrade order until the next billing date to gather the necessary usage statistics and issue an invoice that will not need future corrections.

Note: The delayed processing of orders with downgrade items does not affect resource switching. If you make a negative resource switching (for example, if you switch Resource A = 100 mailboxes to Resource B = 50 mailboxes) Billing will not consider it a downgrade and will not delay the order processing because of this item.

This table lists the main possible scenarios involving the delayed processing of orders with downgrade items. The table also shows the most important effects on the respective subscriptions and the delayed orders themselves. All the scenarios are valid for all the three available billing models in Billing: Charge Before Subscription Period, Charge Before Billing Period, and Charge After Billing Period. For more information see Billing Models.

Assumptions:

In all the scenarios we assume that there are no open Change Orders placed for the related subscriptions.

Scenarios	Possibility	Effects on Subscription	Effects on Order with Downgrade Item
Scenario 1. Downgrading a Resource	Possible	Subscription status does not change Services change on the next billing date according to the delayed order	The processing of the order with a downgrade item is delayed until the next billing date
Scenario 2. Downgrading a Resource and Purchasing or Upgrading Another Resource	Possible	Subscription status does not change Services change on the next billing date according to the delayed order	The processing of the order with a downgrade item is delayed until the next billing date
Scenario 3. Downgrading a Resource and Manipulating with the Subscription
A. Put the subscription on or release it from credit or administrative hold	Possible	The subscription is put on or released from credit or administrative hold	The delayed order with a downgrade item is not affected.
B. Switch the service plan or subscription period	Impossible with a downgrade order in the Scheduled status Billing returns an error message	None	The delayed order with a downgrade item is not affected.
C. Place another change order to upgrade or downgrade a resource for the same subscription	Impossible with a downgrade order in the Scheduled status Billing returns an error message	None	The delayed order with a downgrade item is not affected.
Scenario 4. Downgrading a Resource and Canceling the Subscription	Possible	The subscription is cancelled.	The delayed order with a downgrade item is cancelled.
Scenario 5. Downgrading Resources via API and Manipulating with the Subscription
A. Place a change order to downgrade a resource via API.	Possible	Subscription status does not change Services change on the next billing date according to the delayed order	The processing of the order with a downgrade item is delayed until the next billing date.
B. Switch the service plan or subscription period via API.	Impossible with a downgrade order in the Scheduled status Billing returns an error message	None	The delayed order with a downgrade item is not affected.
C. Place another change order to downgrade a resource for the same subscription via API.	Impossible with a downgrade order in the Scheduled status Billing returns an error message	None	The delayed order with a downgrade item is not affected.