topic Re: Multi-Year Subscriptions in Integration and Testing

Multi-Year Subscriptions

Veriture — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:50:09 GMT

What is the best way to handle multiple-year subscriptions? We have different subscription levels that are discounted for longer terms. For a two-year renewing subscription, the customer's card is charged initially, then again on the two-year renewal date, unless the auto-renew feature for the subscription is turned off. The ARB seems to allow only up to one year intervals. How can interals greater than one year be implemented in Authorize.net?

Re: Multi-Year Subscriptions

TJPride — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:51:54 GMT

Use CIM (Customer Information Manager) instead of ARB. You set up a payment profile for each person and then have an automated script run every morning to check who's due for a charge and bill against the profile. CIM is much easier to set up than ARB in general, imho, and you can use it for the initial charge as well and avoid messing with AIM.

Re: Multi-Year Subscriptions

Veriture — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 16:48:10 GMT

Thanks for the suggestion. I am working on implementation of CIM. While reviewing the CIM, I noticed the field named recurringBilling that accepts an input of true or false. It's not clear if that makes the call equivalent to an ARB call or not. For the case where a subscription is renewed every two or more years, would this field be set to false? What about a six-month renewal period?

Thanks in advance.

Re: Multi-Year Subscriptions

TJPride — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:55:50 GMT

Hmm, where's the field at? I'd personally just leave it at false to make sure there's no confusion - you're essentially doing the recurring part yourself if you're using CIM and an automated routine.

Re: Multi-Year Subscriptions

Veriture — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:56:22 GMT

Sounds like the right approach. That's the way I was leaning because it is a lone field with no other related fields listed.

Thanks for the help!