Subscription Cancellation Workflow Automation for Community Groups and Courses

This article walks you through how to handle subscription cancellations for customers who have access to your courses and/or community groups. You'll learn:

• How the built-in "Billing and Subscriptions" section works in the client portal (and how to disable it)
• Two alternative cancellation methods that allow customers to cancel at the end of their billing cycle instead of immediately.
• How to build a workflow that automatically revokes course or community group access upon cancellation.

Table of Contents

• The Built-In Client Portal Cancellation (and Why You May Want to Disable It)
• Alternative Cancellation Methods
  • Option A: Cancellation Form
  • Option B: Stripe Customer Portal
• Building the Cancellation Workflow
• Hiding PayPal at Checkout

The Built-In Client Portal Cancellation (and Why You May Want to Disable It)

The client portal includes a built-in "Billing and Subscriptions" section where customers can cancel their own subscriptions.

The video above shows where customers can access the Billing and Subscriptions section, and how to disable it from appearing in your client portal.

Alternative Cancellation Methods

If you'd prefer to let customers cancel at the end of their current billing cycle (rather than immediately), you can use one of the two methods below.

Option A: Cancellation Form

You can create a cancellation form that, when submitted, sends you an internal notification reminding you to log into your Stripe account and set the customer's subscription to cancel at the end of their billing cycle.

Steps:

1. Create a form under Sites —> Forms.
   1. See: How to Create a Form
2. Enable internal notifications on the form so you're alerted when someone submits it.
   1. See: How to Set Up Internal Notifications in Workflows
3. Link to the form in one of these locations:
   • Inside your course as a dedicated "Manage Subscription" lesson
   • Inside your community group in the links area on the right-side menu, right below the thumbnail image

Example Cancellation Form:

In this example, the "Cancellation Reason" field uses a radio button, and the last field is a single-line text field. You could use a multi-line field instead to give customers more space to type.

Option B: Stripe Customer Portal

If you'd prefer customers to manage cancellations on their own, you can enable Stripe's Customer Portal. This allows customers to:

• View their invoices
• Update their payment method
• Cancel their subscription at the end of their billing cycle

📖 Stripe's Customer Portal Documentation

Where to Link It:

• Inside your course as a dedicated category and lesson (e.g., "Manage My Subscription")
• Inside your community group in the right-side menu, right below the thumbnail image

Building the Cancellation Workflow

When a customer cancels their subscription — whether through the Stripe Customer Portal, or by submitting your cancellation form ( so you will be notified to manually set the subscription to cancel at the end of their current billing cycle — you can use a workflow to automatically revoke their access to courses and/or community groups.

The video above walks through how to create this cancellation workflow step by step.

How to Set It Up:

1. Create a new workflow
2. Add a "Subscription" workflow trigger.

3. Set the trigger to filter for subscriptions with a "Canceled" status.
4. Add the following action steps:
   • Course Revoke Offer — to remove access to the course
   • Revoke Group Access — to remove access to the community group

Hiding PayPal at Checkout

Since the cancellation workflow does not support PayPal subscriptions, you should hide the PayPal option at checkout to ensure all subscriptions are processed through a supported payment gateway.

Add the following CSS to hide the PayPal button:

/* Hide PayPal button */
.order-form-v2 .paypal-content {
  display: none !important;
}