Tracked Items and Fractional Quantity Included
I've read through the Tracked Items docs, including section 6.2 Fractions, but there's a particular use case I can't find documentation on.
I need to accumulate "points" during the subscription membership, and then redeem them at a later date as credits towards other services.
As a simple example let's say I have a gym membership paid monthly. But I want to give a free personal trainer session every 2 months, normally $50/session.
If I setup "Personal Trainer" at 0.5 units per billing period (1 month), overage $50, does that accomplish what I need?
In the interface summary, tracked items with a fractional quantity < 1 are described as "not included"
e.g. - "Personal Trainer not included. 50.00 per month each."
This is confusing, and not quite accurate. Will it appear on the payment page when they're deciding which pricing plan to go with?
Also the "50.00 per month each" ... since it's a per-session charge, not a per month charge
If they have paid for only one month of the membership, and have 0.5 "training credits" and then use 2 hours of training, I'd want to bill them
2 x $50 - credit if 0.5 x $50 = $75
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1 Posted by Drew Songer on 21 Jan, 2016 04:54 PM
Hi Michael,
This actually seems to be a relatively complicated model based on the nuances, but let me see if I can decipher it correctly and give you a good solution.
Your model:
Questions:
If this tracked item is intended to provide a credit, you would want the overage to be a negative value. With that said, I don't think this is what you want because it will apply a $25 credit when they have .5 units after one month. I suppose you could configure it like this. 1 included | -$50 overage after one month increase the quantity to 1 -> no discount applies. After 2 months the quantity is now 2 -> the $50 credit is applied. The only problem here is that you will need a way to reset this quantity every 2 months. Our system either resets a tracked every billing period or does not reset it at all.
As far as I can tell thus far, there is only one pricing plan described here. You would want the description of this plan to say something like "$50 per session billed monthly."
Potential Solution:
Any way you slice it, if you would like a credit to be applied automatically, I think you will need to make use of our web hooks system to perform some logic that will either create a custom credit after two months or reset the credit quantity after two months.
Example Configuration and implementation
Plan A-> $0 recurring value
Sessions-> 0 included | $50 overage | reset
Monthly Credits -> 1 included( just so credit is applied after 2 months) | -$50 overage | no reset
You would want your hook listener for the transaction hook to perform logic like : if Monthly Credits >= 2 then reset to 0.
Alternatively, if you want your to have to redeem the credits inside an application interface, you may be able to bypass the use of the web hook. Customer accrues 1 credit per month. They log into the application, redeem two credits for a free session. When they redeem use API to decrement the total credits by two and add a custom credit to the invoice.
Does this make sense to you? Let me know if you have any other questions.
Best,
Drew
2 Posted by Michael Wells on 21 Jan, 2016 10:28 PM
Hi Drew,
Actually, I think the model I’m describing is much simpler than that, and doesn’t involve credits at all.
Think of the simple case of a gym-
· The customer subscribes to a gym membership, and pays $100/month.
· As part of their paid membership, we want to provide personal training (PT) sessions, at a rate of 1 session every 2 months.
o These sessions can accumulate, so if they have been a member for a year, but never used a PT session, they would have accrued 6 sessions
· Normally these sessions would cost $200/ea, for people who want additional sessions.
I couldn’t get the fractional amounts to work yesterday, they kept getting changed to 0. I think the UX might have been interpreting “0.25” as “0”, but is ok with “.25”. Today it seems to be ok-
I just need to verify that I understand how this works-
· Each 2 months, the customer accumulates enough credit for a coaching session
· If they purchase additional sessions, they would be billed the added amount to their card on that billing cycle
· If they have partial credits on their account, those would be subtracted. E.g. after the first month, I have 0.5 credits. If I book a PT session, I would be billed $100 for the difference
Thanks!
Michael Wells
BROJO / Essential Life Skills for Men
021-238-5096
<http://www.brojo.co.nz> www.brojo.co.nz
logo
3 Posted by Drew Songer on 22 Jan, 2016 08:03 PM
In either case, it seems like you only would want credits to be redeemed for PT sessions. Therefore, you need a way to track the number of credits accumulated and only apply them when they purchase a PT session. The included value is defined on the plan level not per customer and is not typically. Updating the included value every month will change the structure of the plan.
Your configuration above means that the plan includes .5 of a PT session with Dan and every unit over .5 costs NSD 200.
4 Posted by Michael Wells on 23 Jan, 2016 03:44 AM
Hi Drew, I’m getting even more confused- I understood that this is precisely what tracked items are meant for?
I’d better pursue this through to make sure I’m not designing our sales and billing processes incorrectly-
Yes the included value is plan-specific, that’s what we want, but it’s usage-tracked at the customer level is that correct?
So if the plan accumulates 0.5 PT sessions per month, and Bob has been a subscriber for 3 months. Then he now has 1.5 available PT sessions. If he now uses one, he has 0.5 remaining, and is not billed anything.
If he immediately uses a second session, then he is now at MINUS 0.5, and he is billed ½ of a session. Is this correct?
We would not want to change the included value really ever, but we do need to track the value used by each customer, as it’s used.
Initially this usage tracking will be manual, so I am assuming we need to go to that customer’s record, and record that another PT session has been used. Am I misunderstanding anything?
Thanks for your clarifications
Michael Wells
BROJO / Essential Life Skills for Men
021-238-5096
<http://www.brojo.co.nz> www.brojo.co.nz
logo
5 Posted by Drew Songer on 23 Jan, 2016 07:35 PM
It seems like your understanding of how overage is calculated is all correct, but the point I am trying to make refers to the way in which the overage credit amount is applied.
If there is any overage, the dollar value associated with the overage quantity will be applied to the pending invoice regardless of whether or not you customers have scheduled PT session or not. Correct me if I am wrong, but I assume client are signing up for PT sessions. Therefore, the credits need to be applied only when there is a PT session scheduled, rather than as soon as they are accrued.
Does this make more sense?
Drew Songer closed this discussion on 22 Feb, 2016 03:12 PM.