Temporarily deactivating plugins is a common process in troubleshooting a problem.
Because Woo Subscriptions turns your WordPress site into a recurring billing engine, a number of issues can arise from temporarily deactivating the Woo Subscriptions plugin.
These issues may include:
- Missed scheduled renewal payments, including automatically retried payments.
- Subscriptions reaching the end of term, but not being transitioned to the expired status.
- Subscriptions that reach the end of the prepaid term not transitioned to cancelled.
Disabling scheduled actions
↑ Back to topWhen deactivating the Woo Subscriptions extension, steps should also be taken to stop associated scheduled actions.
Scheduled actions, such as renewal payments, are processed by Woo Subscriptions by a event library called Action Scheduler that is included in WooCommerce.
Because of this, the scheduled events for subscriptions will continue to run, even if the Woo Subscriptions extension is inactive. In these situation, while the event is triggered, the appropriate action, like creating a renewal order and processing a payment, will not be run.
Because no failure occurs, the event will also not be flagged as a failure.
To stop Action Scheduler from running, download, install, and activate the Action Scheduler Disable Default Runner plugin.
This plugin will stop the Action Scheduler queue from running altogether. This means that all actions for all plugins using Action Scheduler will stop, including WooCommerce Subscriptions.
Disabling a payment gateway plugin
↑ Back to topIt is also possible to disable a specific payment gateway plugin.
If a gateway plugin is disabled while Subscriptions is active, those subscriptions that use that gateway will be converted to use manual renewals. This means that the subscriptions can be paid for, but the customer will need to log in and pay for the subscription using a different gateway, rather than a payment being automatically processed.
Disabling a payment method
↑ Back to topIt is also possible to disable a payment method via the WooCommerce > Settings > Payments page.
Unlike disabling a payment gateway plugin, disabling a payment method will prevent new subscriptions from being purchased with the disabled gateway. Active subscriptions that were purchased using this gateway will still renew as expected, and automatic refunds can still be processed for subscription orders.