PayPal subscriptions and AMEX...

[tallship]

I have a customer who just wants his monthly bill to paid automatically, using his AMEX card. He considers it a hassle to have to login and go through the payment procedure each month.

Last month I told him just to choose "PayPal Subscribe" instead of "PayPal Checkout" on his invoice once he logs in, and I thought that he had last month. today he sends an email to me asking how to do this, His bill isn't actually due until tomorrow, however, (but he has received a payment reminder, which is configured to send out one day before the due date) and I'm hoping that his subscription will just go through and automatically happen.

From the control panel, I logged in as the client and looked at his invoice, and there's no option there for "PayPal Subscribe" - only PayPal Checkout. Other users have both options in their invoices, and last month he did too. Does this mean that he has a current subscription?

When I go to clients ==> manage clients ==> choose the customer ==> choose transactions  for that customer, and then pick the transaction ID for last month, it shows that it was a paypal subscription, as per the screenshot included in this post.



So, considering that his invoice is actually due on the 20th (I guess about 20 minutes from now), should I expect this transaction to just automatically go through?

What else do I need to do for this? If anything? Is there any place I can look to see or verify how many customers are currently using "subscriptions"?

Thanks

[Lawrence]

If it helps any,

1. HostBill will not allow a Paypal subscription if the invoice is late.
2. Paypal will not permit subscriptions on invoices due a day earlier.

You need to check in Paypal if there's an active subscription.
- Transactions won't help in this scenario, they're only for verifying payments made, and verifying a subscription / payment went through.
- In some rare cases, HostBill will not permit a Paypal subscription for invoices due 1-2 days beforehand. (Weird, but it happens)
- You should tell your client to pay his invoice up to 3 days earlier than the due date to ensure there're no errors in processing.
- You need to have invoices generated before the payment is submitted.

If you are having issues with logging in as the client and seeing the "Subscription" button, verify that you have subscriptions enabled in your Paypal module settings. You should have a similar configuration as the attachment in my post.

[Patrick]

I had a user a couple of weeks ago change from just paying monthly to subscription no problem with a problem or two and even it's status doesn't show the same as yours which is weird 



Problem is right now, for some reason it completely screwed his paypal subscription up.  It created duplicate subscriptions of each of his addons too.  Hard to really explain though.  All i can say is for this customer it completely messed up and it doesn't appear to be as simple as 1-2-3

edit:

Forgot to say a few things

[Patrick]

Looking at the history between him and my belling rep, it appears they too had difficulty with this from the start, so if you figure out this switch please update me.  Lately we've had a few want to switch over.  Like i said doesn't appear to be simple as 1-2-3

[tallship]

Hey thanks guys

This is really helpful stuff. I called PayPal and talked to their department handling this stuff and they were very helpful. Patrick, One thing. You may want to check and make sure that the user who made that payment (switched back from subscriptions) doesn't actually still have a subscription.

And I don't know how a customer cancels a subscription either, other than to login to PayPal directly and do it for themselves. Or whether that sends an email to the HostBill API notifying HostBill of this and placing the option to subscribe back on their future invoices either.

Aside from cancelling in PayPal itself, I'm not sure how a user cancels a subscription, so they may get billed on the anniversary date of their subscription.

I guess we have the option of logging into our own vendor PayPal accounts and deleting the subscriptions too? Can we do this directly From HostBill somehow?

If you have one of the enhanced PayPal methods (I'm not sure which one, or even if HostBill supports them), then you can adjust their subscription dates to occur on a different date, but not with regular subscriptions, which are fixed to occur on the same day of every month that the original payment went through.

If it helps any,

1. HostBill will not allow a Paypal subscription if the invoice is late.

It helps a lot actually Lawrence - thanks And item #1 is really important to know!

In the graphic below, you mean where the overdue invoice notifications of days +1, +2, and +3 and beyond are mentioned, right?

2. Paypal will not permit subscriptions on invoices due a day earlier.

I'm not quite sure what that means, so if you would be so kind as to clarify... It could mean one of two things from what I've seen in the interface. When you set up the billing on the service in the order pages, you can set a couple of items...

Under Settings ==> Products and Services ==> Order Pages / Name of Order Page ==> Inventory Item (Name) ==> Automation There are the following options:



So you're saying what? That under Generate Invoices (Set as 1 day before due in the graphic above), that they can't start the subscription until, in this case, the actual day before the invoice is due? I usually set this value to either 7 (default) or 10, and set the invoice reminder to either 3 or 1 days before the invoice due date (but I'm thinking this would freak out subscribers because they would think they're being asked to pay the invoice even though they have a subscription?).

And I leave the overdue reminder set to 1,2,3, generally suspending services at due date +5.

I'm completely open to suggestions here as to how to set these settings - obviously, in my case, this is a one off custom service for a client renting a dedicated server in one of my racks, so the inventory item in this case is unique for them, but in a generic sense I don't think this would work because w/multiple, non-hidden order pages, users can sign up and should receive their upcoming invoice 7 or 10 days early, with a reminder at -3 days or so, and then the overdues at +1,+2,+3 - so I'm wondering if invoices for users that have subscriptions look any different when they receive them, so they know not to manually remit payment on those?

You need to check in Paypal if there's an active subscription.
- Transactions won't help in this scenario, they're only for verifying payments made, and verifying a subscription / payment went through.
- In some rare cases, HostBill will not permit a Paypal subscription for invoices due 1-2 days beforehand. (Weird, but it happens)

According to the graphic above, are you referring to the Generate Invoices field? And generally speaking, I should leave that set to either 7 or 10? And they can begin their subscriptions then (before the actual due date)?

Okay this is what happened in this particular instance:

   
• The client opened a ticket and said he doesn't want to manually pay anymore - he wants payments to automatically occur
• I responded with, "Simply choose the 'PayPal Subscribe' button
• I created the order page on the 3rd of June, and back dated it to his anniversary date of the 20th of May, and sent the invoice.
• I hadn't noticed at first, but the invoice due date automatically set itself to be one week (by default) after the date I created it (created on the 3rd, so due on the 10th).
• He paid by subscribing on the 3rd - This is inline with what you said since the invoice was not overdue.
• 7 days before the due date of the 20th of June he received a new invoice (13 June).
• 3 days before the due date of the 20th of June he received a reminder (17 June) At this point he asks about his subscription and why he received the reminder)
• 19 June - I make my OP in this thread
• 20 June - no payment occurs, and I call PayPal. They confirm that the Subscription is valid and Payment will not happen until sometime on 03 July.
• I contact the customer letting them know this, then suggest we simply adjust their invoice dates to the 3rd of each month (I adjust the creation date of the service to 03 May, change the next due date to 03 July instead of 20 June, and delete the current invoice
• I sent a one off prorated invoice for 14 days to customer
• I check, their recurring invoice is gone with the message that the next invoice will be sent out with a due date of 03 July in a week or so (however many days prior on the Generate Invoices option)
• Subscription is still there in PayPal, and is set to occur on the 3rd of next month.

I hope that was better than clear as mud

- You should tell your client to pay his invoice up to 3 days earlier than the due date to ensure there're no errors in processing.
- You need to have invoices generated before the payment is submitted.

Okay then, maybe I should set things back to 7 or 10 days for Generate Invoices w/a 3 day reminder again, for other inventory items? I'm wondering whether to set that for this customer also, but don't want him to be confused that he's receiving invoices and being asked to pay when he has a subscription already. Suggestions on that?

If you are having issues with logging in as the client and seeing the "Subscription" button, verify that you have subscriptions enabled in your Paypal module settings. You should have a similar configuration as the attachment in my post.

Yes that is setup, and so far, appears to be working as you describe LOL! I'll get the hang of how to tweak my settings later, but it's kinda freaky doing this w/live clients - they just expect everything to work w/o any weirdness.

Thanks again guys!