The Recurring Billing section can be used to turn your product into an Installment Plan or other automatically-billed type membership, for example, the member could be billed yearly or monthly indefinitely. A few points to keep in mind…
- When purchasing a product with recurring billing setup, only that one product can be in the cart.
- As of October 2020, Paypal now allows the re-billing price to be changed any time. Your club will need to adjust the rebilling price on Paypal’s site 10 days in advance for each customer.
- The member can stop paying at anytime by cancelling the automatic billing in their Paypal account. So for example, if they are moving out of town, they can stop their yearly payments themselves.
- Members on indefinitely billed plans (yearly or month-to-month) will not receive invoices using the Mass Invoice module. Invoices are for members that need to pay, someone already committed to paying at a regular interval would only get confused by an invoice.
Our clients use the Recurring Billing more often for an Installment Plan option than a yearly automatic payment. Installment Plans are a great “Early Bird” incentive. So for example, the club might tell members in January to February they can pay their dues over 4 months. Around March, they might stop offering that payment option altogether or change the terms so the installments occur over 3 months. And so on, the later it gets in the Spring.
Setting up Recurring Billing
By default, recurring billing options are turned off. To toggle them on, switch this setting from No to Yes.
If set to Yes, the page will reload with more options…
- Recurring Period – The options are Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-Yearly (every 6 months) and Yearly.
- Times – The number of times the product will rebill. Unlimited will rebill until cancelled. 1 is not an option. 2 would bill a total of 2 times (includes the first payment), 3 would be 3 times, and so on.
- Sign Up Fee / Initiation – This option allows you to add in a one-time set up fee (or in Swim & Tennis Club vernacular, this is typically the first year Initiation Fees). This fee is not included as part of recurring billing cycle. At checkout the buyer would see something like this…
Be sure to read the next article about Expirations in regards to automatically billed products.
