Recurring Billing will allow you to have customers that want to setup daily, weekly, monthly and annual orders and allow you to bill them without having to do anything. This is nice feature if you do season tickets, groceries, magazine subscriptions, etc. You can use this virtually for any product.
Applies to Version(s): 3.7.15r2 - 3.8.2r2(or Current)
Note: You must have First Data Global Gateway e4 or Authorize.net CIM setup to use Recurring Billing at this time.
In this article you will learn
How to find and setup Recurring Billing
Setting up Recurring Billing on a Product
How to find and setup Recurring Billing
Note: Up until recently we were offering Recurring Billing for a fee, this has now changed and you will no longer have to pay for this feature. If you don't see this option in your cart, please call support so we can activate this for you.
You will want to go into your cart and locate Apps, once there you can scroll down and find the Recurring Billing feature.
Note: You will need to have Authorize.net or First Data Global Gateway e4 setup in order to use this feature
If you don't have the Payment Gateways setup that are required to use this you will see the following error in your cart:
You can click this link to sign up for those Payment Gateways if you haven't already.
If your First Data Global Gateway is setup properly you won’t see any error message and you may now proceed to your individual products where you would like to setup Recurring Billing on.
Setting Up First Data.
- Go to Settings > Payments > Add Payment. Select First Data Global Gateway e4 from the drop-down menu and enter your First Data credentials. See Setting Up First Data Global Gateway e4
Setting up Recurring Billing on a Product
Now you have setup Recurring Billing and your Payment Gateways are in place you can now proceed to a product you would like to set this up for.
Open up Recurring Billing click "Enable Recurring Billing", this will lead to multiple options on how to set this product up for this option.
In the images below you will see all the different options once you have Enabled this.
There are a multitude of options you can go with here that will allow you to customize this in anyway that you feel will suit your customers needs.
Note: You can't Bulk Import Recurring Billing on Products
Some of the features within Recurring Billing are as follows in detail:
Trial Enabled: When this feature is checked it allows your customers on a Trial Period. You can then decide how long you want to set this up for in the Trial Settings.
Basic Trial Settings:
- How Much: The amount you charge each time
- How Long: This is the time period between each charge
Custom Settings:
- How Much: Price of what to be charged each time
- Interval Between Payments: Time and length between each charge, this can be done in Months, Days, Weeks, Months, Years.
- Repeat Times: How many times you want this to happen, so let's say you want it set up for 12 months, then you would select the Interval drop down for Months and then put 12 in the Repeat Times box.
Another option you will see is Schedule Description. Each product can be different but if you don't name the Schedule Description it will automatically place the Product Name in that field once you're finished and save.
Billing Settings:
- How Much: Same as above, the amount charged each time
- How Often: This can be the same as above, but has a much more detailed break down of the billing periods, 30 days, 2 days, Tri-Weekly, etc.
- How Long: The amount of times this is done before Recurring Billing no longer is finished on this product.
Custom Billing Settings:
- How Much: Same as above, the amount charged each time
- Interval Between Payments: Time and length between each charge, this can be done in Months, Days, Weeks, Months, Years.
- Repeat Times: How many times you want this to happen, so let's say you want it set up for 12 months, then you would select the Interval drop down for Months and then put 12 in the Repeat Times box.
The settings for Custom Billing Settings is the same setup as the Trial Custom Settings.
Now there is another Feature here where you can control how the customer uses this.
- Customer can suspend/resume recurring profile?: This allows the customer to control if they want to keep using, suspend, etc.
- Customer can cancel recurring profile?: Allows the customer to cancel at any time
- Admin can adjust Billing Cycles?: This allows you as the site owner to change the prices at anytime and as we all know inflation in the economy on certain items, materials and supplies can play a role here
- Admin can adjust Trial Cycles during trial period?: If you want you can extend the trial period or change billing times, amounts, etc.
Customer Notifications:
This allows you to control how and when, and also who will be notified. Each of them is self explanatory and can be viewed in the image above.
Admin Notifications:
This allows you to control if you want certain notifications sent to you.
Real World Use Cases
Ex. You have a gaming website, and charge your customers once a year for access to the site to play these games. Up front, you plan to give it to them for free for a month, then charge $49 a year there after. You would;
Set initial Price Per Item to 0.
Set Product Type to Virtual.
Enable Trial and set trial price to 0.00 for 1 month.
You would then set Billing to 49 Annually until cancelled.
Ex. You’re selling your own software and you’d like to allow people to pay it off over a 6 month period with a down payment of $100. Monthly there after would be $60/month. Financing wouldn’t began for 1 year.
Set initial Price Per Item to 100.
Set Product Type to Digital.
Set Billing to 60 monthly 6 times.
Set Delay first payment for to 1 year(s).
Links to Related Articles.
If you didn't get your question answered, please contact the Pinnacle Cart Support Team. To submit a ticket, go to the My Account drop-down menu at the top right of the admin area and select Support.
