Instant Transactions
So what I've read is that for one time transactions, you want to use the custom add system to increase the amount billed the next transaction period. So if you're doing a monthly subscription, and you also want to buy a book, it gets added to your monthly subscription bill which gets paid in 30 days or less.
But what I'd like to do is have it paid for immediately. We'll be offering yearly subscriptions as one of our options, and we don't want to wait until the end of that year for them to get charged for the extra item they purchased. How would this be doable with CheddarGetter?
I suppose one option is to ask for their CC info again, create a new customer, and charge them for a product with only a setup cost, no recurring cost, is that correct? Or alternatively, create the extra one time purchase customer when the customer signs up for a subscription for the first time so they don't have to enter their CC info again, though that would tend to increase the monthly cost of using CheddarGetter.
What would you recommend? Your subscription setup seems to work well with how we want to do our standard subscription cost, but we're not sure how best to integrate it with the instant, one time purchases our site needs to make available which are separate from subscriptions.
Also, if you did do it the other way, adding a custom cost to the next bill, what would happen if they purchase an item, but then cancel their subscription? Would they still get billed for that extra cost?
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Support Staff 1 Posted by Marc Guyer on 29 Jan, 2010 02:51 PM
This isn't currently possible. The workaround you suggest might work but it's probably not worth the trouble. We have "one-time" invoice capability on our todo list but I can't give you a firm date. Do you have a hard timeline for when you need this functionality?
One other workaround is to generate the one-time transaction yourself directly with Authorize.Net. We return the "gatewayToken" for the customer and subscription in the XML which corresponds to the customerProfileId and customerPaymentProfileId in the Auth.net CIM. You can use these values to run a transaction against the customer's stored credit card. This probably doesn't sound appealing but it's an option.
We are in the final stages of completing a service upgrade that leads up to answering this question. We will soon be able to manage "in advance" billing along with plan change prorating. This is especially useful with quarterly or longer billing cycles. Once that is complete, we will soon begin work on tracked item overage prorating, custom charge billing on plan change and "last bill" settlement on subscription cancellation.
2 Posted by scott on 29 Jan, 2010 03:11 PM
Well, the setup of these one-time transactions is basically the next thing I'm working on. It's part of a major payment overhaul we're trying out, so I'm going to need a solution ASAP. I considered doing Authorize.Net. I guess my main concern is that'll take up a substantial amount more time to set up, but if the credit card data is already back there and available through the information passed back from CheddarGetter (each time I say that I want to say Better Cheddars instead), then it sounds like it won't be too much effort to set that up...
Speaking of what's handed back in API calls, the API page doesn't include what the calls return in detail, it seems, just the POST params. It would be pretty helpful to have that in the document, so I can better understand what the API is capable of and how it works. Or is more detailed API documentation somewhere I haven't seen?
Support Staff 3 Posted by Marc Guyer on 29 Jan, 2010 03:33 PM
You're correct. There isn't currently any example return xml in the
docs. You can go to the same URL on the web and see the standard
return xml, however:
http://cheddargetter.com/xml/customers/get
Marc Guyer closed this discussion on 18 May, 2010 01:31 PM.