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Collecting payment information for a plan without a recurring fee

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dan

09 Jul, 2012 03:47 PM

Hey folks,

After the numerous headaches we've experienced with our last subscription management service surrounding the fine-tuning of account pricing, we've decided that we'd like to handle all account pricing on our end, and simply issue a series of one-time charges to customers' accounts via the API. I have two questions about this:

1. Are one-time charges processed immediately, or simply appended to their current "invoice" to be processed on their next assessment date?
2. If a plan doesn't have a recurring monthly price, the hosted payment page doesn't seem to allow the collection of payment information. Is there any way around this?

Thanks,
Dan Hooper
Marcato Digital Solutions

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Marc Guyer on 09 Jul, 2012 04:31 PM

   

   Are one-time charges processed immediately, or simply appended to their current "invoice" to be processed on their next assessment date?

   There's really no such thing as "one-time charges" in CG. I suppose it's just semantics. We like to use the following vocabulary:

   • Custom charges: Line items added to a subscribers current invoice - settled on next bill date.
   • One-time invoices: an invoices that does not interfere with the normal subscription cycle. In other words, a set of charges (or one) that is transacted immediately in every case.

   So, to answer your question, yes and no. You can do it either way. You can add custom charges to the "current" invoice, then use the changeBillDate param when you want to execute the invoice. Or, just leave the current invoice alone and simple execute one-time invoices as needed.

   If a plan doesn't have a recurring monthly price, the hosted payment page doesn't seem to allow the collection of payment information. Is there any way around this?

   I was going to test this out on your account but I don't think you have any plans without a recurring charge. I think you can pass in &method=cc to force acceptance of a payment method on a 'free' plan. You can also trick CG into thinking a 'free' plan isn't free by adding a placeholder tracked item. More on "free" plans here: http://support.cheddargetter.com/kb/pricing-plans/free-pricing-plans

   • Edit

2. 2 Posted by dan on 09 Jul, 2012 05:04 PM

   

   Thanks, Marc. Custom charges were indeed what I meant, and it's good to know that both options exist. Oddly, forcing the collection of payment info didn't work when I included a $0.01 tracked item, but did after I jacked it up to $10 -- at any rate, it looks like we're on track now.

   Cheers,
   Dan

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3. dan closed this discussion on 09 Jul, 2012 05:04 PM.