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Seasonal auto-pause

Auto-pause tagged clients in off-months, auto-resume when the season returns. Configuration, edge cases, and what clients see.

Seasonal auto-pause is designed for shops that run different service shapes in different seasons — lawn in summer, snow in winter, or pool service that goes dormant in winter months.

How it works

  1. You tag clients with a tag of your choice (default: seasonal).
  2. You configure active months — a 12-month checkbox grid under Settings → Seasonal.
  3. A daily cron at 3am UTC scans every tagged client.
  4. If the current month is NOT an active month: any active ClientService for that client is paused, with settings.paused_by = "seasonal_autopause" marked on the row.
  5. If the current month IS an active month: any ClientService previously paused by seasonal_autopause is resumed. Human pauses (by an owner) are never touched.
  6. Each affected client receives a subscription.paused or subscription.resumed email in their preferred language.
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The paused_by marker is critical — it means if a client manually asked to pause their service, the auto-pauser will not automatically resume it when the season flips. Human pauses stay paused until a human resumes.

Configuring the feature

Settings → Seasonal:

  • Tag name: the tag that identifies seasonal clients. Must exist; create it via the Clients page first.
  • Active months: check the months your service RUNS. Unchecked months are pause periods.

What clients see

On the pause day, affected clients receive an email (or SMS, if configured) roughly like this:

"Hi Maria — we're wrapping up lawn service for the season. Your recurring Weekly Mowing is paused until April 1st. Enjoy the winter! — Elisha Gardener Co."

On resume day they get the inverse message. Both are driven by message templates you can customize in the template studio.

Common setups

  • Northern lawn (e.g., Minneapolis): active April-October. Tag all clients as seasonal. All lawn service pauses Nov 1, resumes Apr 1.
  • Pool service (e.g., Chicago): active May-September. Pool-only clients tagged seasonal. Year-round clients (indoor pools, commercial) are not tagged and continue normally.
  • Dual-service shop (snow + lawn, Minneapolis): use two tags and two service shapes. Lawn clients tagged one way, snow clients tagged another. Each service's activation shape is independent.
The cron runs once daily at 03:00 UTC, which for US tenants is late evening (Eastern) or afternoon (Pacific) the previous day. If you configure new active months in the afternoon, the transition will apply starting tomorrow, not today.
If a client has multiple tags and one of them is your seasonal tag, they will be auto-paused based on the tag match. There is no AND logic yet. A client tagged both vip and seasonal will pause.

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