Unable to create recurring charge with appSubscriptionCreate

[rorz]

Hi there,

One of the merchants who installed our app today has been unable to start a recurring application charge (with a usage charges line item). We've been getting a 500 from the GraphQL API (2020-07) when trying to use the `appSubscriptionCreate` mutation. As far as I can tell, nothing has changed on our side.

The request ID for that one is: 8ce7a8bd-9fff-43f2-a9eb-ac637f79ae9a

I also thought I'd play around on our staging environment, and found I wasn't able to create a test charge either. Here's the request ID for that: 179d4d86-472c-417d-9338-4d1b15b4afdd

Would appreciate anyone being able to look into this for us as I'd like to rule out a fault on the API's side.

Thanks

[rorz]

Update:

I have an inkling that this has something to do with user permissions of the account, in the store that is trying to authorize the charge...

I realized that my staging / development store login was using a staff account with reduced permissions, and when I logged in as the development store owner account, the recurring charge went through again.

Hopefully this is what the merchant's issue can be attributed to? Would still really appreciate if someone from Shopify could chime in on that first request ID I posted... As I'm unable to decipher what the 500 status being returned means for them.

Thanks in advance.

[syf_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @rorz,

Your hunch is completely right! For anything related to App Subscriptions, only the Account Owner can authorise or has access to such information.

Regarding the 500 status code, the error was pretty much the user (staff account with full access in this case) trying to authorise the recurring charge was not the Account Owner. As someone having a developer background, I know how unhelpful generic error messages can be, and how tough they make the debugging process. I'd get in touch with the team in charge to see if a more useful error message can be returned so devs are not left scratching their heads trying to figure that out. 

I see you were finally able to create the recurring charge also.

Hopefully this proves insightful. If you have any additional questions on this, please do get back to me.

Best,
Seth.

[rorz]

Thanks for confirming this @syf_ ! Good to know it's related to account permissions, and appreciate the clarification on account owners being the only ones able to authorize charges.

Cheers