Recurring Billing - Almost

[ducttapeluthier]

Please help me decide if/how ZenCart will do this. I want to wholesale services.

Imagine I clean cars, and the car dealerships hire me to go to their customers to clean the customer's car.

From what I read, I could set up the dealerships as using the 1x Membership Mod, so only "qualified" (meaning they've paid) dealers could buy the "product".

They could then buy the cleaning service by providing a customer name and address and payment, BUT there would be a time limit, say 1 year. I assume that the name/address can be handled, maybe as a shipping address?

I would not need to have an automatic re-bill, but could notify them that they need to go and buy the product again, however, this would need to be easy and they would need to be able to, for example, go in an "buy" the subscriptions again that would then add a year to the subscription even if it hadn't expired. They would need rapid access to "products" that they have bought before, including the information they provided for the products - the name and address.

Any thoughts? Any hope?

Thanks.

[easytouch2]

Bookmarking this thread, as I need the same thing.
Simple examples would be:
- Hosting Services (monthly renewal)
- Domain Names (yearly renewal)

This leads me to the general question: Howto handle Customers already purchased assets or contracts. Maybe I go the route to integrate an existing CRM System based on Drupal with zencart. (Single Login or not) But I also want that
the customers are in full control of what they already have (Customer self service).

Also the possibility to create an order for the customer from the admin side would be nice. Like correcting or filling his shopping cart, and then sending him an email with the link to the order. (Maybe this way the recurring subcriptions could be handled, with some help from the shop administrator)

[ducttapeluthier]

Bookmarking this thread, as I need the same thing.
Simple examples would be:
- Hosting Services (monthly renewal)
- Domain Names (yearly renewal)

Yes, this is the model I have in mind - especially the idea of Domain Registration. There's a similar thread here:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73464

The one problem with true recurring billing is handling the "sensitive" customer information. In particular, handling credit card information is a problem (security and making sure that it's current, not expired, etc.) It would be enough for me that the customer gets a reminder to go and buy more, and then re-enters the CC information. For monthly renewal, this might not be OK.

This leads me to the general question: Howto handle Customers already purchased assets or contracts. Maybe I go the route to integrate an existing CRM System based on Drupal with zencart. (Single Login or not) But I also want that
the customers are in full control of what they already have (Customer self service).

Also the possibility to create an order for the customer from the admin side would be nice. Like correcting or filling his shopping cart, and then sending him an email with the link to the order. (Maybe this way the recurring subcriptions could be handled, with some help from the shop administrator)

I think that both self service and admin modifications are required.

[easytouch2]

Thanks for your quick reply.

I understand that you want something automatic for the monthly recurring billing.
In another post I have found the warning, that if the recurring payment is handled by the payment clearing gateway (Paypal, others, or direct Credit Card payments) there is the risk that the subscription payment could be revoked by the customer even after a few months backwards (the whole subscription).

But before we get things complicated, I want just explain to you one thing that I have tried out right now. And for the first step I like to have more control from the admin side. Not only for recurring tasks, nut also for my beloved customer base to help them, if I alredy prepare and prefill the shopping cart for them.

I used the 'Encrypted Master Password' Contribution
http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?ma...roducts_id=190

It changes just one file in the includes/pages/login folder.

Afterwards you can simply Login on the Storefront with the customers eMail address as username and your first created admin account's password.

Now you are logged into the system, jsut like the customer, without the need to know hos actual password.

I now fill up the shopping cart with the domain names, setting the details like attributes (new domain, or renewal, domainname per product and additional infos into attribute text fields on the single product level).

Afterwards, I send my customer a friendly and personal reminder email, and tell him: "Please go to examplea.com/shop, and see the offer we have prepared for you").

As a benefit you could send him with this reminder email a coupon code that is valid only one time (contributions exist for this thing).

The customer will be happy about two things:
- You have prepared the hard work for him (looking at the current running subscriptions and preparing the cart for him)
- you have taken care of him
- You are contacting him personally (Reminder can be sent from your personal email address instead of the general shop address)
- and he is motivated by using the coupon code, which would clearly be only
valid, if he uses the shopping cart system (which saves you again some time)

The time you save by having a happy customer, who is going through the 'self service' renewal in the shop, could save you more time than the time you used for setting up his cart and sending the email reminder.

Please update me here which decision you have taken, if you go the more automated route.

[easytouch2]

In addition to prefill the customers shopping cart, I will now try this contribution:

SaveCart - customer can store multiple saved shopping carts
"http://www.unevolution.com/miscellany/downloads.php"

With this one I can prepare theshopping cart for each month that comes in the future,andfill it with the customers current assets that need a renewal...

UPDATE: *hmm* Products attributes are not supported by this module...

[swguy]

Paypal released the recurring payments API a while back ... it shouldn't be too long before someone tackles this.

Software developers looking for a project might look at
https://www.paypal.com/IntegrationCe...gpayments.html

Good luck,
Scott

[hippostarz]

I reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally need something like this. I would be willing to pitch in some money if others did the same to get this developed. Is anyone working on it now? Do they need some help? This is a huge deal. I've read that around 20% of all eCommerce uses some form of subscription billing. That's a lot of potential users.

[ducttapeluthier]

We have two issues/features in this thread that should probably be separated.

1) Custom carts and products.
This means the ability for each customer to see unique products. In the domain name example, the product has attributes which are the domain name. We need this (in our case it's a service name and address, but the same idea). We also need the customer to create this record. Since the customer has the information, it's too expensive and complicated for the customer to provide that to us, we enter it, and then tell the customer it's been entered. Much easier that they enter/edit the information.

2) Repeated/Recurring Billing

In the case of domains and long term (say 1 year) contract, we don't need true recurring billing - the customer just needs a reminder to go back and pay again.

In the case of short term subscriptions, 1 month or less, it should be automatic if you want to keep your customers. True recurring billing. But it seems that if the payment companies are in charge of this, it may not be as difficult as first imagined.

As far as getting paid for the work, for that you have to subscribe to the "Commercial Help Wanted"

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=137

It seems that easytouch2 is onto some good suggestions and ideas, at least for category 1.