Initial payment with Monthly ARB

[melvin6284397]

Hi..

    I would like to create a profile with a single subscription request . I want to make the user to pay an initial amount and start to pay monthly amount after one month from the date of subscription creation. I set "trialOccurrences" to one and "trialAmount" to the initial amount to be paid. Then set the monthly amount to "amount". But the payment doesn't get paid.

Please do favor for me...

[TJPride]

ARB subscriptions do not charge immediately. All the trial period does is make the first x payments be a different amount. If you want to do an immediate charge, you need to either do that with AIM, or switch entirely from ARB to CIM and an automated routine.

[cybert2t]

Hello TJPride:

I want to implement the same behaviour. But I'm confused whether to use AIM or CIM.

I want to charge customers the first time when they choose one of my subscription plans, and keep charging each customer every 30 days after he choose the plan. But I also would like to Create, update, and cancel subscriptions anytime.

I just read the AIM main page http://developer.authorize.net/api/aim/

and it does not say anything about subscription there.

Could you please tell me whats best option to achieve my goal???

Thank you in advance.

[stymiee]

To charge the user immediately use AIM. To charge them on a scheduled basis every 30 days after that use ARB. You can update and cancel the subscript using ARB at any time. There are some limiations and you should read the ARB guide to make sure that it meets your specifications. If it does not you can use CIM but that will require you building your own subscription engine to charge the payments whenever you want. But it will also give you the greatest flexibility in terms of terms of when and how the user can be billed.

[TJPride]

Having implemented ARB, I can definitely say it's harder to deal with than CIM. For one thing, you have to set up AIM for the initial charge AND a silent post page in addition to the ARB handler itself; for another, the logic of what happens if someone's credit card expires can get a bit messy. It's just simpler all around to use CIM, imho.