How do I upgrade from free to Pro mid-cycle?

This matches my experience exactly. The hard part is staying consistent once the initial novelty wears off.

Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it — the kind of thing I will want to reference again in a month.

I respectfully disagree on one detail. In my setup the opposite held true, though I suspect it comes down to community size.

This is the answer I wish I had found six months ago. Would have saved me a weekend of trial and error.

Tried this on a staging copy first and it behaved exactly as described. Confident enough to roll it to production now.