Why Isn't My WooCommerce Sign-Up Fee Charging?

Why This Happens

The sign-up fee is stored as its own field on the subscription product, separate from the recurring price, and WooCommerce Subscriptions adds it to the first order's total automatically. It never applies to renewal orders — by design, it's a one-time charge tied specifically to the subscription's creation.

Common Causes

• The field is empty or zero on the product or variation — the most common and simplest cause.
• A coupon is configured to exclude or discount sign-up fees specifically. WooCommerce Subscriptions coupons have a distinct "apply to sign-up fees" setting separate from discounting the subscription's recurring total, and it's easy to configure one without the other.
• Confusing it with a trial. A sign-up fee still charges on the first order even when a free trial delays the recurring amount — if it looks "missing," double-check the order total actually shows $0 recurring plus the fee, rather than the fee being genuinely absent.
• A customer expecting the fee on every renewal, which isn't how it's designed to work — if recurring charges should include an ongoing extra amount, that needs a different setup (folding it into the recurring price, or custom logic) rather than the sign-up fee field.

How to Fix It

1. Confirm the field is set with the intended nonzero amount on the product (or the specific variation, for variable subscriptions).
2. Check any coupon used at checkout for its specific sign-up-fee discount setting, separate from its recurring-price discount setting.
3. Place a test order without a coupon first to confirm the fee applies correctly on its own, then test again with the coupon to isolate whether that's the interference.
4. For a recurring extra charge rather than a one-time fee, that's a different setup entirely — usually folding the amount into the subscription's recurring price, or custom development if the two need to be itemized separately on every invoice.

See custom WooCommerce development for pricing logic more complex than a single sign-up fee, such as tiered onboarding costs by plan.