IS THERE ANY WAY TO CHARGE THE CUSTOMER WHILE CREATING A CUSTOMER ONLY ONCE, I.E. NON RECURRING.
I have created a plan with NON AUTO RECURSION(CUSTOM). Created a customer with that plan code, but still the customer is created as recurring , he has not been charged now and billing date is set afer one month. Customer code is [email blocked].
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31 Posted by Dean on 24 Jan, 2013 04:16 PM
Hello Jayasree,
I understand tracked items can be a little daunting at first but they're actually pretty simple once you've worked with them once. They are extremely flexible to allow for all kinds of pricing structures. We clients with vastly different methods of billing, so we created tracked items to encompass all sorts of usage, fulfillment, overage and other plan specific details.
At any rate, I need some more information regarding your pricing structure before I can help you find a solid solution. Will each package have a different monthly rate? With the tracked items system you can achieve what you're looking to do, but we need to configure it in a way that satisfies your requirements. I'm thinking each tracked item will be a package. How many of them do you need, and what are their rates?
Cheers,
Dean
32 Posted by jayasree on 25 Jan, 2013 03:25 AM
Hello,
We have more than 100 monthly packages, each with a different price. And a customer at a time can buy more than one package.
For example a customer buys a package of price 9.99 on 03/12/2012 then we will charge the customer on prorated basis (for 29 days ( remaining days in December month) i.e. 9.34) till 31st of december, we will create a recurring profile and set his recurring amount to 9.99 and recurring start date will be 1/01/2013. For all customers. we are setting 1st as recurring date . Suppose the same customer again purchases a package of 14.99 on 15/01/2013 then he will be charged on prorated basis (for 16 days i.e. 7.73 ) and his recurring profile amount will be updated to 9.99+14.99 , then from 02/01/2013 he will be charged 24.98 .
So we need to set recurring amount and recurring date as 1st for all customers.
Hope you understand my requirement. Please give us a correct solution that suits our need.
Thanks and Regards
Jayasree
33 Posted by Dean on 25 Jan, 2013 03:21 PM
Okay, Jayasree. In CheddarGetter, a customer can only be on one pricing plan at a time. So, each 'Package' as you call it will need to be its own tracked item quantity. Is there a base rate that every plan will start out at? Will you be billing upfront or in rears? Here is a visual so you can see what your structure might look like:
Example Pricing Plan Config
*I'm assuming that each tracked item is an add-on, meaning it's either "on" or "off." In other words, the customer either has it or they don't. These are what you are referring to as packages. Am I correct in thinking this? As you can see above, the overage amount will be the cost of what you were referring to as a "Package." Let me know if you have any questions about this. Also, it may help to set up a Developer account so you can test some transactions after you set up some pricing plans.
Here is some helpful information on add-ons: http://support.cheddargetter.com/kb/pricing-plans/pricing-plan-basi.... When looking over this, try to think of add-ons as your packages.
Is billing on the 1st of the month a hard business requirement? We urge our customers not to bill this way, as it goes against the philosophy of rolling billing that reduces load and typically simplifies accounting tasks. It also makes it much more difficult to prorate, like in your case here, because you will have to prorate twice instead of once. We find that doing prorating like you described adds unnecessary complexity to the model. Our recommendation is to bill customers either immediately when they signup, or after a set number of days. If you have any questions about this please let me know.
Dean
34 Posted by jayasree on 28 Jan, 2013 05:48 AM
Hello,
We will bill the customer upfront. From the past 5 years we are using the process of setting the recurring date of the customers to 1st. We cannot change that process now. Using API how to set tracked items ?. Is there any way we can set recurring billing date to 1st for every customer.
For example If we create 3 pricing plans with prices (9.99,12.99,14.99). If a customer purchases wishes to purchase pricing plans of 9.99 & 12.99 at a time then we have to set the customer to one pricing plan( for ex 9.99) and then add a track item with overage amount 14.99. Then his recurring amount will be set to 9.99 +12.99 ? .
Thanks and Regards
Jayasree
Support Staff 35 Posted by Marc Guyer on 28 Jan, 2013 02:51 PM
Hi Jayasree
You can continue to bill existing customers on the 1st with CheddarGetter. However, I suggest that you utilize rolling billing for new customers. Their are countless advantages to this method.
When you import existing customers using the customers/import API method, you can set the
subscription[initialBillDate].As Dean suggested earlier, I think you should use a pricing plan with 0.00 flat recurring and use tracked items exclusively for your charges. Think of the flat recurring amount as a membership fee that includes some level of service and think of tracked items as things the member chooses to add to their subscription.
As far as I can tell, your model doesn't include a membership fee to access the system in general but rather you charge for access to specific items within your system.
Pricing plan item config is done manually within the admin GUI.
The API is used to set quantity of an item for an individual customer. You can set item quantities when creating a new customer (note the
customers/newlist in the post data). Or, you can set quantity for an individual item for an existing customer.36 Posted by jayasree on 29 Jan, 2013 05:23 AM
Hello,
I have gone through the links provided by you. You have asked me to use the tracked item, but in the API it is mentioned that we need to provide only tracked item code, quantity. But how to create a tracked item code with overage amount, can it be done using API?. Even using admin GUI I was able to add an tracked item, but not overage amount. Then how to set the overage amount,included,reset of tracked item? What exactly is the use of included, reset of tracked item.
Thanks and Regards
Jayasree
37 Posted by Dean on 29 Jan, 2013 02:17 PM
Hi Jayasree,
Pricing plan config cannot be done via the API. All plan configuration needs to be done in the app GUI.
When editing your Movie Free plan (https://cheddargetter.com/admin/plans/edit/id/3944f0ae-4b36-11e2-9d...), you can add tracked items near the bottom of the page including overage amount. We may have had a bug that was preventing you from adding it, but it's fixed now so give it a try.
The 'Included' parameter is referring to 'how much' of the item comes with the plan for free. This is useful when granting free trials or promotional items, but in your case I think you want to set it to 0. Customers are not charged for included items.
The 'reset' of a tracked item simply refers to the customers' item quantity. When a customer signs up, they have an item quantity of '0' for each tracked item. Checking the 'reset' parameter will reset the customer quantity to '0' for each billing period.
Please let me know if my explanation isn't helping. I understand these tracked items are a bit tricky to deal with at times.
Cheers,
Dean
38 Posted by jayasree on 30 Jan, 2013 12:05 PM
Hello,
I could create tracked items with overage amount. I have created a customer with a tracked item ,charge of 1.99 which I wish to charge the customer now, and also I have set the subscription bill date to 13-02-01 , so that he will be charged tracked item overage amount on 13-021-01, but the customer has not been charged 1.99 charge. Why so. Will the charge of 1.99 also will be added to the tracked item of 14.99 as recurring amont ?. But what I need is I want to charge(prorated price) the customer today and set a different amount as recurring amount . Can't I do both while creating a customer?.
Thanks and Regards
Jayasree
39 Posted by Dean on 31 Jan, 2013 01:47 PM
Hi Jayasree,
Are you wanting to prorate the first bill for every customer? Is this because you're looking to bill on the 1st of the month? While this is possible to do for your existing customers, we didn't design CheddarGetter to handle this sort of billing. If you do have a hard business requirement for this, can you please explain it for us? I must recommend that we let CG handle rolling billing like it is supposed to, and avoid prorating the first bill. Plus that's a lot of calculations you need to do for every bill! Let me know what you think.
Cheers,
Dean
40 Posted by jayasree on 01 Feb, 2013 03:25 AM
Hello,
The same process we are doing from last 5 years, we cannot change it now. Already we have caluculation process , that is not a tedious job.
Thanks and Regard
Jayasree.
Support Staff 41 Posted by Marc Guyer on 01 Feb, 2013 03:31 PM
Hi Jayasree -- I understand that you've been doing it that way for 5 years. That alone is not a hard business requirement. I'm suggesting that you change the way you have been doing it for future accounts (it's ok to continue billing existing customers on the 1st). I think you will greatly benefit by the change. I am recommending this for a reason. I am trying to help. I understand that you plan to have a high volume of customers. Do you think Netflix bills all of their customers on the same day each month? If they did, they would have an unimaginable load on their systems, their staff, their phone support, etc, all on one day. They would have to have 30x the resources available just for one day of the month. This is why we do not officially support billing all customers on the same day of the month unless their is a hard business requirement. It's not sustainable for CheddarGetter and it's not sustainable for our merchants.
42 Posted by Dean on 04 Feb, 2013 01:51 PM
Hi Jayasree,
Did you have a moment to consider Marc's comment? Would it be possible to do rolling billing for your customers? Let me know if we can be of any more help.
Dean
43 Posted by jayasree on 05 Feb, 2013 03:06 AM
Hello,
Presently changing the process is not possible.
Thanks and Regards
Jayasree
Support Staff 44 Posted by Marc Guyer on 05 Feb, 2013 11:52 PM
I see. I can't stress enough that this should be reconsidered.
Do you still have questions about prorating item charges and changing the bill date or have you figured that out?
See
items[<user-defined>]andcharges[<user-defined>]in thecustomers/newAPI method. You can set the item quantities and the corresponding credits for the prorated amounts for a new customer.Once the customer is created, use the
changeBillDateof thecustomers/edit-subscriptionAPI method to set the date of the next bill to the 1st of the next month.Support Staff 45 Posted by Marc Guyer on 20 Feb, 2013 04:01 PM
Hi Jayasree -- Have you evaluated my suggestions for how you can do the prorating as you indicated?
46 Posted by Yashu Tyagi on 21 May, 2013 05:11 PM
Marc i have tried this call with both java api and hosted page. It works as expected with api call but does not work with hosted page. I sent these 2 parametes as hidden element in form. . I have same requirement as that of jaysree and some thread of yours have helped me a lot. . Do u have idea about this one . . U can find these parameter in each of my customer added during last 4,5 days. My hosted page is testfc.chargevault.com and product code PPC. I am using these parameter to charge management fee for our product
Jess Pendley closed this discussion on 21 Nov, 2013 07:40 PM.