Bi-weekly Subscription: Next Billing Date Skips First Anchor Even with Cutoff Set

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

A developer is experiencing unexpected behavior with Shopify’s subscription API when configuring a bi-weekly billing plan.

Configuration:

  • Billing interval: every 2 weeks
  • Anchor day: Monday
  • preAnchorBehavior: ASAP
  • cutoff: 0 in delivery policy

Issue:
When a customer checks out on Thursday (after the current week’s anchor), the next billing date is set to the second Monday following checkout (e.g., October 27th) instead of the immediately next Monday (e.g., October 20th).

Expected behavior:
The next billing date should be the very next anchor day after checkout.

Status:
The developer is seeking advice on whether this can be configured differently or if it’s a limitation of how Shopify handles intervals greater than 1 with weekday anchors. No responses or solutions have been provided yet.

Summarized with AI on October 23. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi all,

I’m working with Shopify’s subscription APIs and have a selling plan configured as follows:

  • Billing interval: every 2 weeks (interval: WEEK, intervalCount: 2)

  • Anchor: Monday (anchors: [{ type: WEEKDAY, day: 1 }])

  • preAnchorBehavior: ASAP

  • I have also set cutoff: 0 in the delivery policy.

When a customer checks out on a Thursday (after the anchor day for the current cycle, example October 17th), I expect the next billing date to be the following Monday (the next anchor, e.g., October 20th). However, Shopify is setting the next billing date to the second Monday after checkout (e.g., October 27th).

Is there any way to configure the selling plan so that the next billing date is always the very next anchor after checkout, even for bi-weekly subscriptions? Or is this a limitation of how Shopify handles intervals greater than 1 with weekday anchors?

Any advice or workarounds would be appreciated!

Thanks!