Maybe I misunderstood something but I cannot edit neither the start date nor the expiration date for a non renewable subscription.
There must be a way to decide the duration, in our case we sell teams for a football app and need to create a non renewable subscription for each team valid for the whole season, to be renewed manually when the next year (and season) comes up.
What am I doing wrong?
You're correct in that they're very similar conceptually. The difference being that you can purchase a non-renewable subscription multiple times whereas a non-consumable can only be purchased once. The purchase also remains in the receipt indefinitely so it's not quite like a consumable either. There's a good comparison of the differences here: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/StoreKitGuide/Chapters/Products.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008267-CH2-SW4.