Billing Settings

This article will cover the billing options and what they do in Settings > Products

Note: This article is part of the overall Product Settings article.

Billing settings control when and how your contacts are charged. This article will go through each of the available options and what they do:

General

  • Billing - Choose your billing frequency
    • Single payment - bills a one time payment that cannot be renewed
    • Weekly/Monthly/Annually - Bills for that time frame, with the option to renew
  • Approve purchase before payment - Choose if an administrator is required to approve the purchase before the contact is invoiced
    • If this option is active, contacts will not be billed on registration through your shop, but they will still need to supply payment details
  • Requires pre-authorisation - Choose if payments will be taken automatically when a customer is invoiced
  • Choose the pro-rata method - Choose if you wish to automatically pro-rata the price for purchases made part-way through a schedule or season

Tip: It's useful to understand how pre-purchase approval and automatic payments work together:

  Pre-Purchase Approval No approval required
Automatic payments

Contact is not billed on registration

Payment collected automatically when approved and for future invoices and renewals

Contact is billed on registration

Payments will be collected automatically for future invoices and renewals

User must authorise payments

Contact is not billed on registration

After approval, contact must log in to authorise the payment, and for future invoices and renewals

Contact is billed on registration

Contact must log in to authorise payments for future invoices and renewals

Instalments

Here we can manage our instalment options. Instalments run monthly and customers can choose how many instalments they'd like to pay up to a maximum allowance.

  • Allow monthly instalments - Toggle whether instalments are active for this product
  • Maximum instalments - Set the maximum allowable instalments
    • This will generate the number of remaining instalments and the final available instalment date
  • Per Instalment Premium - Set an additional charge to be taken for each instalment

Billing

Weekly/Monthly/Annually Only

Here we set when contacts are billed and when billing period start:

  • Anniversary of original purchase (i.e. a rolling period) - billing period is flexible and renews the same day/date as the purchase was made

    • Weekly - Renews the same day each week as per the original purchase
    • Monthly - Renews the same date each month as per the original purchase
    • Annually - Renews the same date and month as per the original purchase
  • A specific day of the week/month - Let's you choose a fixed date that everyone will be billed
  • A specific month of the year - Let's you choose a fixed month that everyone will be billed (annually only)
  • Tick this box if this is the date you want the collected funds to clear in your account - tick this for invoices to be requested in advance of the selected date, so that they will have cleared into your account by the date chosen above. See the GoCardless or London & Zurich articles for more
  • Force the purchase of the next period (Subscription/Membership products only) - Set how many days before the start of a new billing period that contacts will stop signing up for the current season and instead pre-order the next. For more information see the full article here.

Payment Providers

Here you choose which payment providers you want available for that product. You can pick and choose different combinations and have different settings for each product.

  • Initial payment by - Which payment providers are available for the first payment of a product
  • Subsequent payment by - Which payment providers are available for renewed payments or for instalments

Caution: You must have a payment provider selected before any purchases and sign ups for a product can be made.

Renewals

Only available for Weekly/Monthly/Annually billing

Here you can choose your renewal options for products

  • Automatically renew customers - Tick to allow this product to automatically renew based off the billing settings above
  • On renewal, only invite customers whose age will fall within the age restrictions criteria - If you want renewals to obey your age restrictions, choose this option
  • If customers are not automatically renewed to this product, you can select another product they should renew for (if relevant) - If you select the option above, here you can choose what product a contact would be invited to instead
    • This is commonly used for children progressing through age groups in team sports
  • Days before renewal to generate orders - This is how many days before a renewal is sent out that a scheduled order is generated
  • Send pre-renewal message - Set up a notification to be sent ahead of renewal
  • Send on-renewal message - Set up a notification to be sent on renewal

    Billing Suspension

    Here you can choose to suspend the billing for this product until a set date. Suspended products will not be purchasable or billed for until the next date comes around. If a product is suspended, it will not be available for your shop.