Creating Subscriptions w/ Initial Setup Fee and possibly a trial period too

[smcleod]

We tried configuring this system under PayPal, however ran into an issue with upgrading the subscription, it capped us at a 20% increase so we are looking at alternate solutions... Let me paint a picture of what we are trying to accomplish, so someone here can hopefully point us to the right documentation and/or even tell us if this is possible using Authoize.Net:

3 Things we need to accomplish

(1) New Subscription

    - # of Seats / Licenses

    - Monthly / Annually (interval)

    - Initial Setup Fee

    - May have a trial period

 We use the # of seats/licenses to determine what the monthly / annual subscription amount will be programmatically.... so it is different for everyone, and can be changed dynamically as the user can add/remove seats when they wish... during a modiy subscription operation

(2) Modify Subscription

    - Increase / Decrease # of seats

    - Change interval (Monthly / Annually)

    - In Authoize.Net are there caps that we can increase the subscription amount by a certain percentage, hopefully not?

(3) Cancel Susbscription

    - This is pretty simple one, and from what I've read so far, I know this is possible, but wanted to paint complete picture :)

One other thing, the user may have more than one subscription, but at this time, not looking to process them at same time, but can be done separately....

Thanks in advance!

[TJPride · Accepted solution]

There are two ways to do this.

First, you can use AIM (Advanced Integration Method) to do the initial charge, then use ARB (Automated Recurring Billing) to do the ongoing billing. ARB amounts and billing dates can be changed as necessary, but there's no way to do an immediate charge when you set up the subscription, hence AIM as well. Integrating AIM + ARB and working out all the details can be fairly complicated if you're doing it for the first time, however.

Second, you can use CIM (Customer Information Manager) to create a profile and billing profile for each customer, then have an automated process run every morning to check for payments coming due and then bill those profiles. This method is a lot simpler to implement, since you're only dealing with one API and not two, and can have your automated script log everything up front rather than having to set up a callback page to record the automated billing from ARB. Only downside is you have to automate the billing on your end, meaning you need experience with cron (or equivalent automatic triggers) and command-line running of your scripts.

I implemented my client using AIM and ARB, but at this point I rather wish I'd gone with CIM. It seems much more straightforward.

[smcleod]

Ah, I see... so instead of trying to get thier two different API's to work together, I can just write my own service to run on a schedule to automate the billing myself, instead of trying to utilize their ARB system.

Meaning I would only have to deal with AIM to do the initial charge, and my service that would run daily would handle the recurring billing, but still using AIM to do it. Basically this would give us full control for subscription processing...

Did I understand you correctly?

[TJPride]

No. CIM sets up billing profiles that you can then call whenever you want to charge the customer (including just after you set up the profile, so it works for initial charging). So you'd be using just CIM, not just AIM. AIM requires that the credit card info be supplied every time, so it can't be used for ongoing payments.

[pageclub]

with AIM + ARB how do you transfer the credit card details from AIM to ARB? i'm guess you can't do this....and will need to do this manually?

[TJPride]

Your page has the credit card information when it's charging for AIM, so you can also set up an ARB subscription at the same time. People generally charge AIM, see if the credit card information is good, then immediately set up an ARB subscription if it is.

You can also manually set up ARB subscriptions from AIM transactions in your control panel.