Change Subscription from Automatic to Manual Payments

If a customer has created a subscription using a payment gateway with automatic recurring payment support, and the customer now wants to pay manually, the store manager can use this tutorial to switch their subscription to manual payments.

The first part of this guide is written for store owners and outlines the administration interface available for this purpose. The second part of the guide is written for developers and provides information on how to programmatically change a subscription’s payment method to manual.

Store Manager Guide to Change a Subscription to Manual Payments

To change a customer’s subscription via the administration interface:

1. Go to the WooCommerce > Subscriptions administration screen.
2. Click the ID of the subscription you want to change to open the Edit Subscriptions screen.
3. Click the pencil icon next to the Billing Details section.
4. Click the Payment Method select box at the bottom of Billing Details.
5. Choose Manual.
6. Click Save Subscription.

Developer Guide to Change a Subscription to Manual Payments

If you need to switch a large number of subscriptions to use manual renewals, and you are proficient with PHP and/or MySQL, you can also programmatically change a subscription’s payment method to be manual.

Change a Subscription to Manual Payments via Database

To change a customer’s subscription via the database:

1. Find the ID of the subscription – this will be displayed on the Manage Subscription table next to the subscription.
2. Open MySQL editor (like PhpMyAdmin).
3. Search the wp_postmeta table for a row where the post_ID is the ID found in step 1 and the meta_key is '_requires_manual_renewal'.
4. If a row is found, change the meta_value for that row to true.
5. If a row was not found in step 3, insert a row into the wp_postmeta table where the post_ID is the ID found in step 1, the meta_key is '_requires_manual_renewal' and the meta_value is true.

You can also bulk insert or update this meta data via a custom MySQL query for a batch of subscription IDs.

Change a Subscription to Manual Payments via PHP

To change a customer’s subscription using PHP:

1. Find the ID of the subscription – this will be displayed on the Manage Subscription table next to the subscription.
2. In you PHP code, instantiate an instance of that subscription using wcs_get_subscription( $subscription_id )
3. Call update_manual() on the subscription instance with a value of true to set the subscription to require manual renewals.