Rapid testing of recurring/subscription billing using Recurly

Question

Short question: How can I quickly simulate/test the process flow in Recurly without having to wait 24 hours to see what happens?

Detail: My back-end developer is setting up Recurly to handle our product's subscription billing and we're trying to simulate what'll happen when our customer goes through our process:

1. Starts out on Plan 1 at Price A
2. Gets automatically moved to Plan 2 at Price B

That's the basics, and there are permutations like referral bonuses which postpone the next invoice date for the customer if he brings in more new customers. For example, we'll give our customer 4 weeks free service for each new customer who signs up via his referral link.

The bottom line is this: we need to be able to just press a magic button and simulate time flying by so we can see exactly what happens when the customer's account goes from Plan 1 to Plan 2, without waiting 24 hours to see what bugs there may be.... think of it like rolling your system clock forward 59 minutes so you can see what happens at minute 60.

Anyone familiar with Recurly done this before? I know I can ask customer support, but I'd like a Stack answer (they're usually better anyway) and I'm trying to earn points as the new kid on the block.

Answer 1

Easiest is to use their API. Create a new subscription with your plan but set first_renewal_date and/or trial_ends_at to the next minute or so. You can also try to update an existing subscription and set timeframe to "now".

API Documentation: http://docs.recurly.com/api/subscriptions

Use one of their client libraries (for PHP, Ruby, Python or .NET): http://docs.recurly.com/client-libraries/net

Don't forget to use your test account so you don't fill up your production account with test subscriptions.