We’re in the process of submitting our Shopify app, and we’ve run into an issue where manual billing for usage-based subscriptions has suddenly stopped working.
This was working fine last week while we were preparing our submission, and it also worked in local Cloudflare dev mode. However, it has now stopped working, and we can’t figure out what changed.
What We’ve Checked So Far
Manual billing is properly set in the app submission form under the pricing section (Manage dialog).
We tried toggling between managed and manual billing, saving each time, and testing again“ but the app still behaves as if managed billing is enabled.
Despite these checks, the app seems stuck in managed pricing and won’t allow us to create a usage subscription.
When we attempt to create a subscription, we get the following GraphQL error:
Managed Pricing Apps cannot use the Billing API (to create charges).
We’ve seen this error before, but only when managed billing was actually enabled. Since we have manual billing enabled and saved, this shouldn’t be happening.
Possible Causes & Questions
Shopify Platform Update? Since this all worked last week, was there a recent platform update (possibly in January) that may have affected manual billing behavior?
Configuration Sync Issue? The dashboard correctly shows manual billing enabled, but the API doesn’t seem to recognize it. Is there a am override I don’t know about?
Anyone Else Experiencing This? If others are facing the same issue, it might indicate a larger problem with the Shopify platform.
Next Steps & Escalation
Since this issue is blocking our app submission, we’d appreciate any guidance on:
Fixing this on our end (e.g., any settings or workarounds)
Escalating the issue to Shopify Support if this is a platform-wide problem if there are any Shopify support folks listening?
Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Manual was set properly. What I determined was the dev store was essentially initialized with managed and didn’t allow it to be changed via the submission dashboard.
While I would consider that a platform/store bug there are probably some legitimate reasons for the behavior.
I decided to create a new dev store to see how it behaved, and I was able to determine that when the app submission is set to manual and the store created and app installed, it properly uses the billing api.
This appears to be a change in the platform behavior though, because I was able to successfully toggle between managed and manual pricing for existing storefronts before.
But it’s not a deal breaker for me, I just created a new store to test with the manual billing and I’m fine. So it’s resolved for me from that standpoint, but it’s definitely a change in platform behavior that I suspect others might confront as well.
Gulam,
That appears to be the case, at least for my dev stores.
It’s entirely possible this is also specific to the app submission process and post submission or production behave differently. I can only report my specific experiences with dev stores & app submission.
Can you please provide some details on below queries?
1 If managed pricing is selected do we explicitly need to redirect merchant to billing page to purchase plan ?
2 If a free trial period is selected then as well do we need to charge when merchant is installing the app or give them access to the app?
When onboarding the merchant onto your app, you should redirect them to the managed billing page as part of that for them to select a plan. Regardless of free trial or plan, except if you can use part of the app completely free
You should also check they are on an active subscription when using your app and redirect them if it expires etc
If you had used managed pricing and set a free trial, shopify will handle charging the merchant when that ends
Can anyone from the Shopify team or who has already implemented managed pricing confirm the flow when managed pricing is selected. When I click on install I am redirecting to this page
For this app I have free trial days so merchant needs to pay the app charges first to use the app. Is this expected or once free trial is completed then only merchant must be charged? Please let me know your thoughts.
And I noticed when app is uninstalled and then installed again merchant has to approve for charges. So cant we handle this like how free trial days are calculated even though multiple times app is installed and uninstalled.
One of the major query is difference in the dates shown in admin and email. Below is the email where it says first charge date is March 20 but actually free trial ends on February 18. Admin it says due on February 18 so please throw some light on this as well.
