The GEM-CAR software allows you to create subscriptions and recurring operations.

A subscription defines a contract for the repeated supply of a service or product for a period defined in the options for that product or service.

An invoice for a single product will automatically be issued when your subscription expires.

In order to define subscriptions for your clients, you must first have at least one product or service available for subscription.

To check that a product is available for subscription, go to the main menu on the left of the screen: Inventory > Products and Services.

Select the product you are interested in.

Click on the Options tab.

Check "This item is available for subscriptions".

Click on Save.

Method 1 (Prepare the subscription in your customer file)

To add a subscription, go to the member's account, Subscriptions tab.

Note: Although it is also possible to add it from the Sales menu under Subscriptions, you will need to fill out the form. This menu is especially useful for viewing the complete list of your subscriptions and for modifying them if necessary.

Renewal method

• Active/Inactive
• Customer to bill
• Billable Frequency: Renew every month, 3 months or years
• Number of subscription: Number of times the subscription will be renewed, put 0 if not ending
• Product or service: Choose the desired subscription
• Price: Enter the price of the subscription, price used for renewal
• Text to display on the invoice: additional information to display on the invoice. The period is registered automatically
• Next billing: the date of the next renewal Cannot cancel before
• Start of coverage: the start date of the subscription

Important: Specify a “Next billing” date later than the “Creation date”. Otherwise the system does not execute a “past” subscription.

Please note that all subscriptions of the same date to the same customer will be grouped together on the same invoice. To return to my example from the beginning, if my membership to my tennis club falls on the same day as the rental of my locker, I will only receive one invoice.

Understanding coverage intervals

In my example, the “Next billing” date is May 14, 2025.

Remember, when specifying this date, it must be May 13, 2025 or before. In fact, it is on this date that the system will be activated. If the date has passed, the system will not activate and your subscription will never work.

On May 14, 2025, the system will generate a sale based on the “Renewal Method” and display this interval on the invoice:

Note that the system added 1 year to the three dates before generating the sale. If you open the subscription on May 16, 2025, you will get this:

As a conclusion, if you had wanted the coverage interval displayed on the invoice to be from June 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025, you would have had to indicate June 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024 on the first screen since the system adds 1 year before creating the subscription.

Note: For a monthly subscription, it is always better to choose the first day of the month than the last; in fact, months do not always have 30 or 31 days (sometimes even 29). The subscription will still happen, but it won't be as accurate.

Tip: Subscriptions can easily generate invoices and send them to your customers. It is therefore recommended that your first subscriptions be manual. If everything goes according to plan, it will be easier to automate them than to spill invoices into automatically generated duplicates.

Manual: Renewal method on “The system will notify you that a subscription has expired, but the following steps will need to be done manually”

Automatic: Renewal method set to "The system will automatically create a sale and invoice with this product or service and send it to the customer by email"

There are email templates for different actions for subscriptions. Check out this article on this subject which are detailed in the “Tips” section.