Subscription Importer not working

Hello,

I have a subscription site that a year ago we created a "Member" subscription plan that was free and added a bunch of subscriptions. The users of these subscriptions were to login and pay their dues online. This was technically a plan upgrade which moved the user from the "Member" plan to "2018-2019 Paid Member" plan. As we are moving into the 2019-2020 term, my client would like us to unsubscribe all those users from "2018-2019 Paid Member" plan and resubscribe them to the free "Member" plan. He will then notify all his people that it's time to login and pay their dues again, which again will technically be a plan upgrade and will subscribe the users to the new "2019-2020 Paid Member" plan.

I have read in various forum posts that this "moving" of users from the paid plan to the free plan should be able to be accomplished using the importer. I have tried it various ways and it is not working for me. I get the following message...

Some users have already subscriptions: user ids: 817

0 users subscribed to plan: Member , with state: Active

Following Users could not be subscribed (usernames) because either: (A) an exclusive active subscription exists that would conflict with the imported user subscription, or: ( it is a children plan but the parent plan subscription does not exist:

Test

It is telling me two possible reasons for not working. I'm not understanding how these two possibilities apply to my situation.

How can I go about accomplishing what I am trying to do short of going through each individual user in the User Manager and changing their subscription?

You can't move a user to a plan they already have. Seams like you've some users that match your criteria that already have the Member plan. The below should move those who are expired or still subscribed to the paid plan to the free plan.

Import users from: All users from a given subscription plan
Source Subscription plan: 2018-2019 Paid Member
Status: Active and Expired

Destination Subscription plan: Member
Current state: Active

This again assumes users who are coming from "2018-2019 Paid Member" aren't already subscribed to Member. Is there a reason you need to move them back to Member? You should be able to set "2018-2019 Paid Member" to no longer allow renewals under the Pricing tab and no longer allow new registrations or upgrades under the Workflows tab. They shouldn't have any issues upgrading from "2018-2019 Paid Member" to "2019-2020 Paid Member" unless you're intending to reuse that existing plan, which I don't recommend.

Thanks for the reply, Krileon.

That makes sense. My client wanted them to go back to the free Member plan again so that it's basically starting over. I will just explain to him that it is better to have them upgrade to the next paid plan and I'll change the verbiage of the 2018-2019 plan so it's clear that they need to make this upgrade.

I have another question. These plans are for one year. My client begins asking his users to pay their dues before the next year begins, so how do I set the plan to run for 1 year and end on the same date for all users no matter when they pay, either before or after the term has begun?

so how do I set the plan to run for 1 year and end on the same date for all users no matter when they pay, either before or after the term has begun?

Use a by calendar plan duration. Specifically for your usage you'd use "This calendar year". Next you can adjust "Start date of calendar year" if you need to change when the "year" begins and ends. Be sure to review the "Bonus time before first period start (for calendar-based durations)" parameter carefully as if you allow them to upgrade before the next year has begin you should adjust this accordingly so they're subscribed to the next year and not the current year (e.g. if plan is available 3 months before begin of year this should be set to 3 months).

Technically with a this calendar year duration and manual renewals you never need to create a new plan. You'd just keep using the same plan and rename it if you feel it needs its name changed. Since it only allows manual renewal changing the price every year isn't a problem either.