Troubleshooting license purchase errors

How to troubleshoot GitLab license purchasing errors

Customers may report encountering the following error message when purchasing additional seats for their licensed GitLab Self-Managed instance:

The Charge is not allowed to be updated on MM/DD/YYYY

This is caused by a customer renewing their license more than once so the newest license starts at a future date more than a year into the future and then refunding the future dated license. The future dating in the system causes problems with the present such as being able to add additional seats.

Example

  • Customer renews their license for 2020-03-01 to 2021-03-01 then renews again for 2021-03-01 to 2022-03-01
  • The newest license for 2021 to 2022 becomes the only available license for download
  • Working with support and accounts receivable the customer requests a refund on the newest license
  • Due to the nature of the Zuora billing system this creates an effective future date for amending the existing license which cannot be changed
  • The customer now sees the error The Charge is not allowed to be updated on 03/19/2021 when trying to add seats
  • To fix this the accounts receivable team need to go into the subscription and completely rebuild the subscription in Zuora by creating a 0 invoice for internal purposes that the customer never sees
Last modified June 27, 2024: Fix various vale errors (46417d02)