Account renewal dates are generally associated with the subscription(s) an account has. For monthly customers, they might not have a renewal date and thus might not need to have an account (next) renewal date in Natero. For annual customers, it is useful to track their renewal dates in Natero so you can be more proactive with upcoming renewals (using alerts) and put process in place (using workflows) to manage renewal accounts more effectively.
There are two options for setting renewal date in Natero and you can decide what works for you:
1. We can set renewal date based on the subscription import, this date needs to be attached to the subscription in some way. Often we use the subscription end date. Doing it this way allows us to track a history of renewals as well as updating the account's next renewal date field.
2. We can set just the account's next renewal date field based on any field (or you can send via the Account API -- Accounts endpoint), however this will NOT save the history of renewals, and thus we won't be able to populate the monthly renewal rate chart in the Financial dashboard.
The main difference between these two approaches is:
- The difference on whether history is maintained and;
- The difference in where the field comes from. (2) is more flexible, while in (1) it must come from someplace related to the object holding the subscription (it is up to you where that is).
If you have this field in a place other than the subscription, and it is hard to attach to the subscription, then approach 2 is probably sufficient.