Product that bills every X months


	Product that bills every X months
	Last Edited - 07/9/2013 3:02pm PDT
	Category Path - Shopping Cart Software Components > Administration Area > Modules > Subscription Products > FAQs & Tutorials

product with automated recurring billing

I need to charge my customers on a recurring basis of 6 months. How would I configure a product to do this?

This can be done by using the Subscription Rules options that are available in the Product Editor. A product's Subscription Rules will determine if it will automatically generate future orders for the customer after it is purchased.

reference

Products can be assigned Subscription Rules that control how they would bill on a recurring basis. If you're not yet familiar with how a product's Subscription Rules work, see the tutorial titled Introduction to Subscription Products.

Following are the specific settings that can be used in the Subscription Rules section of the Product Editor to create a product that automatically rebills of every six months on the first day of the month.

Example 1: A product with a 180-day billing cycle

This approach is simpler to configure, but it sets the product's billing term to be every 180 days (roughly six months) instead of exactly every six months.

1. In the Product Editor, locate Subscription Rules section.
2. For the Subscription Schedule option, locate the menu titled Product's Subscription Term. In this menu, select Every X Days....
3. Selecting this option will display another field in which to enter the specified number of days. In this example, enter 180 in this field.
4. In the setting titled Rescheduling Options, enter the following values:

First, this product will use its Subscription Schedule to reschedule subscriptions for this product 0 time(s).
Then after rebilling as itself 0 times, it will do the following: Restart the subscription to itself. (A never-ending subscription.)
(Setting the Rescheduling Options to these values will cause the customer's subscription to the product to continue indefinitely.)

If a customer purchases this product today, then the store will automatically place another order containing this product for them 180 days from today. Orders will continue to be placed every 180 days until stopped by either the customer or a store administrator.

Example 2: A product with a six-month billing cycle

This approach is a little more complex, but it provides more control over the billing cycle that the subscription will create for the product.

1. Open the desired product in the Product Editor. In the editor, locate the section titled Subscription Rules.
2. For the Subscription Schedule, locate the menu titled Product's Subscription Term. In this menu, select X Day of Week/Month/Year.
3. Selecting this option from the menu will display several more options. Set that section of options to:

Future orders are processed on the:
1st day of every 6 month(s)

That's almost perfect, but what if a customer places an order for the product on the 30th of the previous month? Are the desired results that they would be billed again the next day? Probably not.

To accommodate this possibility, the second option in this section can be used to add a "buffer" or "grace period" that will allow orders placed within X days of the target bill date to skip over to the next bill date. In this example, this grace period will be set to 15 days.

4. Orders placed less than 15 days(s) before the next bill date will be pushed to the next billing period.

5. Then, just like in Example 1, in the setting titled Rescheduling Options, enter the following values:

If a customer purchases this product between 1st and 14th day of this month, then the next order in their subscription would be placed on the first day of next month.

If a customer purchases this product between 15st and last day of this month, then the next order in their subscription would be placed on the first day of the month after next.

Then, the store will continue automatically placing orders containing this product for them every six months, on the first day of that month. Orders will continue to be placed every 180 days until stopped by either the customer or a store administrator.