How is subscription app different from standard blanket orders

The subscription app in Business Central builds on the standard functionality for blanket sales orders, but shifts the focus from agreed quantities to recurring invoicing. If you sell licenses, memberships, or other recurring services, the subscription app lets the system control the invoicing frequency and invoice the same lines each time on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis.

Blanket sales orders work differently. They handle agreements where the customer controls when they withdraw items from a fixed quantity, and the system keeps track of the remaining amount as part of your demand planning.

The key difference is who controls the timing. With blanket orders, the customer triggers each withdrawal. With subscription orders, the system drives the recurrence. You can still make adjustments on a subscription order, for example upgrading or downgrading the number of users in a given period.

How blanket sales orders work in Business Central

The subscription app is actually built on a standard functionality called blanket sales orders. A blanket sales order is made when you make an agreement with a customer, for example to deliver 100 units of a specific item over the course of a year or half a year, whichever period makes sense in the market you are in.

In this kind of agreement, the customer has agreed to buy a hundred pieces, but they control when they withdraw those items. So you might buy 50 in the beginning, then wait a bit and buy 20, and then the last 25 on a final sales order.

These frameworks are a good idea if you do demand planning, because the agreement becomes part of your planning. The system keeps track of the withdrawals on the blanket order and keeps track of the remaining amount, so you always have that visible in your demand planning.

How subscription orders focus on recurring invoicing

The subscription app uses subscription orders. It extends the blanket order with more fields, and what we have added means you can focus on recurring invoicing instead of the agreed quantity.

So you do not focus on a fixed quantity. You focus on recurring invoices for a license, a membership, or similar items. The general idea is that you invoice the same lines each time on the order.

For example, you might invoice 50 licenses every month. That could be a license to Business Central that your partner invoices to you. You can still control dates, and you can control the invoicing interval, whether it is monthly, quarterly, or yearly. The system keeps track of that for you.

The difference between blanket orders and subscription orders

The general difference between the two paradigms comes down to what drives the orders. Blanket orders focus on withdrawals that are generated by the customer. You generate a new sales order each time the customer does a withdrawal, but they are in control of when it happens within the given period.

With the subscription app, you put the system in charge of the frequency, because the system keeps track of the recurrence period. In both cases there is an underlying agreement with the customer, but the reason for creating the orders is different.

Handling changes on a subscription order

On a subscription order you can make changes during the agreement. Using the example of Business Central licenses, if you get extra users so that you have 60 users in the last quarter, you can make that adjustment in the system. If it is a downgrade to 40 users instead, that is handled the same way.

So in both cases there is an underlying agreement with the customer, but the reason for invoicing is different, and the items you are selling are probably different too.

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