topic Re: Question about ARB trial period in Integration and Testing

Question about ARB trial period

BogdanD — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 09:00:35 GMT

Hello!

I faced with problem with creating of ARB subscription with trial period. Need to create subscription with 1 week of trial period and month to month payment after that trial. Can I create such subscription with standard mechanism or should I create 2 subscriptions to implement such behavior?

Thanks in advance.

Re: Question about ARB trial period

itdevworks — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:52:52 GMT

You cannot do what you ask with a single subscription. However, if your trial period has a cost (i.e. not nothing), then it would probably be better to charge the trial period using AIM and just start the subscription one week later. If your trial period does not have a cost, then simply set the <startDate> element for ARBCreateSubscriptionRequest for one week later.

When I am doing ARB implementations, even if there is no trial period (or it fits in to the regular subscription interval), I still use AIM to make the first charge. The advantage of doing this is you get to validate the customer's credit card immediately while they are still on your website (or whatever your application is) and have a chance to correct it if the card is turned down for any reason. Contrast this with exclusively using ARB, where the first payment is not charged against the card until some time later (even if the subscription starts "today"), and then you are stuck with the added time, expense and customer relations hassle of having to contact the customer to tell them their card was declined and maybe having to disable their account (and re-enable it later if they correct the problem). Making the first charge with AIM is clearly the way to go.

Re: Question about ARB trial period

BogdanD — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:30:12 GMT

Thank you very much Dave for detailed answer

Re: Question about ARB trial period

dcolumbus — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:59:54 GMT

Okay, so I'm not quite clear on this...

I understand that AIM payments go through almost immediately and the logic behind charging the first month with AIM and then 30 days later create an ARB subscription.

But how does the Trial period work? I'm using Formstack.com where I can create forms at the drop of a hat and they have two options: 1) AIM (one time), 2) ARB with a trial period... and it seems like I can charge a specific amount for that trial period.

What I'd like to setup is $14.99 a month with a $20 dollar activation period. So can I create an ARB subscription for $14.99 and a trial period of 30 days for $20?

Re: Question about ARB trial period

dcolumbus — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 05:23:06 GMT

For example:

http://tinypic.com/m/bi40i1/4

Does this mean that the customer will be billed $14.99 a month and for the first month it's going to be $34.99? ...because that's exactly what I want.

OR, does this mean that they will be charged $20 for the first 30 days and the $14.99 each month thereafter? If that's the case, would I have to make the trial $34.99?

The result I want is: the first month they are charged $34.99 (14.99 + 20) and then $14.99 every month thereafter.

Re: Question about ARB trial period

stymiee — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 14:55:06 GMT

If the trial period is only 30 days long then you don't need to use a trial period. The initial $20 payment will cover their first 30 days and then set up their subscription to start 30 days later at the regular price.

Re: Question about ARB trial period

dcolumbus — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:23:44 GMT

Okay, thanks for the reply but that didn't really answer my question. I attached that screenshot so that you could understand what it is that I'm submitting.

I'm not using a custom interface... I'm using formstack.com. According to the screenshot, which of the scenarios I asked about above would apply?

Re: Question about ARB trial period

itdevworks — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:55:46 GMT

The amount charged for the trial period is exclusive of the regular monthly amount. In other words, the trial period feature was created to support the scenarios where you want to charge less than the normal monthly amount, including charging nothing for the introductury period. In your case, the supported way (independent of the fact that you are using the formstack.com) to implement what you want would be to first charge the AIM amount for $20, and then create a subscription, starting immediately, for $14.99.

However, you stated that formstack.com limits you to AIM or ARB, not both at the same time, so the closest you could come would be:

Amount: $14.99
Interval Length: 1
Interval Unit: months
Start Date: <current-date>
Total Occurrences: <your call>
Trial Occurrences: 1
Trial Amount: $34.99 ($20.00 + $14.99)

I was concerned that it is possible ARB will reject a trial amount greater than the normal amount, but I just tried it on the Test server and it took it fine.

Re: Question about ARB trial period

dcolumbus — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 00:19:31 GMT

Excellent. Very thorough and very helpful.

I'll test it out.

Question about ARB trial period

uthman — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:53:30 GMT

Hi ,

I have a different scenario regarding trial period . I searched it on google but I got no satisfactory answer.

My question is how can I give last month of the year free for ARB.

For instance . I provide web design services to my customers who pays me $xx every month . Now a customer paid me for 11

months and I have promised him to give one month free service i.e (he wont be charged for 12th month) . So how can I set the trial period so that it charges nothing

for last month.

Simply if it possible that instead of giving trial period at the start of ARB , i can set it after 11 months.

Thanks in Advance.

Re: Question about ARB trial period

Elaine — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 22:41:56 GMT

Hi uthman,

The only way that it would be possible to not charge your customer during the life of a subscription would be to create all of the payments as trial period payments, except for the last scheduled payment. This would allow you to edit the payment amount to a $0.00 for any scheduled payment necessary, except for the last scheduled payment. A standard, non-trial ARB subscription occurence will not allow you to edit the amount to $0.00.

Also, at least one occurrence in the ARB subscription must be scheduled as a standard, non-trial ARB subscription transaction. If one is not included in the create request, the request will fail to successfully create the subscription.

Thank you,

Elaine

Re: Question about ARB trial period

itdevworks — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:29:54 GMT

Another possibility would be to somehow (see below) know when ARB transactions are submitted and to, if there is enough of a time window be capturing the transaction and batch settlement, to void the 12th one. If the time window is too small or unreliable, then immediately credit the transaction for the full amount.

As for how to know when ARB transactions are submitted, you could either go with SilentPost or use the ARB email notifications.

SilentPost - With SilentPost, you configure your account to make an HTTP POST (aka form submit) to a URL you specify whenever any transaction (ARB or not) is submitted to your account. The form fields of this post are the fields of the transaction. This is fairly easy to implement, but the downside is that the Authorize.Net servers do a fire-and-forget when making the HTTP POST call, so if there is any breakdown in communication between their server sending it and your server receiving it, the notification is permanently lost. The reliablity of this is somewhat dependent upon reliable your website and hosting provider are, but overall the chances of there being a problem during those few seconds of the year when you need the information being posted (basically, the time a post takes times the number of customers on this 11+1 plan of yours) is probably quite low.
ARB Email Notifications - In this method, you configure Authorize.Net to send you one or more emails on every day that at least one ARB transaction processes. Unlike the SilentPost method, emails are queued in an inbox, so messages are not lost because your website or server was offline the moment the message arrived. The downside here is the cost of building this infrastructure. You need to build a program, completely separate from your website, that runs on a periodic basis ("cron job" in *nix world, "Scheduled Task" in Windows) and checks a specified email inbox for messages matching a certain pattern (probably based on the sender and Subject line of the ARB notification emails), then download any such messages, extract the attached .CSV files, parse said .CSV files, and act upon the parsed contents accordingly. More reliable, more cost.
GetTransactions - A third possibility occured to me while I was writing the above two. There is a fairly recent addition to the Authorize.Net API which allows you to download transactions. You could build a program (again, separate from your website and scheduled to run daily or as often as you need) that downloads all of the transactions for the last 24 hours (if running daily, otherwise since the last time the program ran) and looks for ones that need to be voided or credited.

I don't know to what extent you were hoping for a solution that did not involve programming, but I don't think there is one. However, if you can do it, any one of these three should fit the bill.

Re: Question about ARB trial period

nilesh026 — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 09:33:29 GMT

Hello

i have new problem with trial period

i use arb payment method.

Amount: $120
Interval Length: 1
Interval Unit: months
Start Date: <current-date>
Total Occurrences: 9999
Trial Occurrences: 1
Trial Amount: $260

but it charge $120 why it not charge $260 for first time subscription

Re: Question about ARB trial period

RaynorC1emen7 — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 13:20:50 GMT

Could be a programming issue, can you post your code?

Re: Question about ARB trial period

clarkie6 — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:36:39 GMT

I have an issue where I need to do a 2 year subscription cycle, but ARB only allows up to 1 year. I know sort of a way around this, I am doing an AIM payment today, setting up an ARB for 12 months with 1 trial occurance and 2 total occurances. But, just wondering why you can only have ARB for 1 year or less? Any chance at changing this?

Re: Question about ARB trial period

thuytran1234 — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 02:46:33 GMT

Hi all,

I have a problem with free trial period.

When user sign up, they will free trial period in 2 weeks, after 2 weeks, they will charged money 10$/month.

When create subcription, I set start date = now addDays 2 weeks, but when I post request to https://secure.authorize.net/gateway/transact.dll, user still charge money immerdiately. ( I hope user will charged money after 2 weeks).

I don't understand where i wrong? Please help me.

Re: Question about ARB trial period

RaynorC1emen7 — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 11:30:27 GMT

ARB doesn't use that URL. AIM do.

documentation for ARB

http://developer.authorize.net/api/arb/

Re: Question about ARB trial period

mzelener — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 20:43:50 GMT

Hi,

I was reading this thread. When you say "I still use AIM to make the first charge". I was thinking to do exactly the same. But what if the ARB has only one charge? For example, a subscription for a month. When the firts month finish, subscription finishes and no other payment should be charged.

I was thinking to use AIM to make the charge and then use an ARB for a month and a $0.01 amount. Do you know if there is a better way to do this?

Thanks in advance!

Re: Question about ARB trial period

stymiee — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 20:33:30 GMT

If the subscription is for one month and thery pay up front then you don't really have a subscription. :) Just charge them once. There is no need to create a subscription in ARB at all.

Re: Question about ARB trial period

mikhailvk — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 07:22:40 GMT

We have a situation that I'm hoping someone can provide input on. We use Gravity Forms which currently only allows us to create an ARB in Authorize.net. We have immediate start dates, monthly charges. Moving forward, we are hoping to have the following on submission of form:

1. First Charges Drops immediately in for $50

2. In 2 months, we drop another $50 and continue to drop that $50 every month from there on out.

Is there a way we can accomplish this with a combination of trial and ARB?