Recurring Billing/Auto ship module

Hi,

We have looked at the FAQ and forums and folks have asked about recurring module or autoship several times in the past, around 2007. Please let us know if there are any modules available today to integrate an autoship or recurring billing with customers.

Here is what we are looking for:
Allow customer to pick Products and a predefined schedule (15 days, 30, 90, 180) and ship these products to them. The order should appear in the admin order screen at customer selected intervals, to facilitate fulfillment to the customer. All the customer is doing here is "subscribing" to the selected product set. There are APIs available with Authorize.net and perhaps Paypal as well to store the credit card and do the billing, but we are trying to see if there is any module available that already does this that we can install to Zen cart. Thanks for your response.

I'm interested in this too. Looks like it doesn't exist though.

I know this is a pretty old thread, but wanted to post because I know a number of people have been looking for this.

I have a module that I built and is complete (but is currently being updated to include multiple payment systems) and it does exactly what you are looking for. It is in use on a demo site of mine and is a 'true' auto-ship system with full zen cart integration (meaning the orders actually appear in the zen cart admin as they recur (so you can ship them via the standard zen cart processes) and they are auto billed (charged to the customer account using the payment system they used to place the order originally.)

The timeframe for reorder is fully controlled and customizable from within the zen cart admin (by the store admin) and the recurring orders can be managed by the customer from within their "My Account" section (allowing them to cancel a recurring order if desired directly from their account.)

The other benefit is that the system does NOT store any credit cards on your server (keeping with PCI compliance needs).

I have never released the code as a plugin, but will am planning on doing that in the next several months after my current re-write / update.

If there are enough interested parties for this I'll try to complete it sooner and get it out for everyone.

Hey Eric,
I'm interested, and can pitch in funds to speed things up.

Hi Eric,
I'm interested too. I think more people will come on board once the word is out.
By looking at previous threads, it looks like many people have/are looking for this payment feature but have given up because there was no solution for years.
Keep me updated
Thanks

econcepts:

I know this is a pretty old thread, but wanted to post because I know a number of people have been looking for this.

I have a module that I built and is complete (but is currently being updated to include multiple payment systems) and it does exactly what you are looking for. It is in use on a demo site of mine and is a 'true' auto-ship system with full zen cart integration (meaning the orders actually appear in the zen cart admin as they recur (so you can ship them via the standard zen cart processes) and they are auto billed (charged to the customer account using the payment system they used to place the order originally.)

The timeframe for reorder is fully controlled and customizable from within the zen cart admin (by the store admin) and the recurring orders can be managed by the customer from within their "My Account" section (allowing them to cancel a recurring order if desired directly from their account.)

The other benefit is that the system does NOT store any credit cards on your server (keeping with PCI compliance needs).

I have never released the code as a plugin, but will am planning on doing that in the next several months after my current re-write / update.

If there are enough interested parties for this I'll try to complete it sooner and get it out for everyone.

I would be 100% interested in this module. Could it be set up so it just emails the customer to let them know it's time to reorder? If no, is there any module available that does that? I want to do it for specific products.

Add me to the interested list also. Let's get this going.

You can add me to list of interested people. Can also chip in some funds if desired.

Eric did reply to my PM yesterday, so this is still alive. I'd be perfectly happy to roll with this just as a Paypal option. As others have said, if you need some funds to make this worth your time, we're ready.

Very interested in such a module - specifically for subscription services rather than shipping.

It'd be a shame if this faded, but it may already be too late for me. It's a church client on a small budget who would like to have recurring monthly donations, mostly through Paypal.

This should be at the core of any eCommerce business that wants to survive long term.

Imagine having a guaranteed income from consumable products that are automatically billed to the customer (If they opt in) and added to your orders to fulfill.

I would like to have recurring billing working for the Securepay payment module and PayPal and compatible with guest checkout plugins like Fast and Easy Checkout, COWAA or COWOA.

I don't know why there is not more interest in this.

One Pac:

This should be at the core of any eCommerce business that wants to survive long term.

Imagine having a guaranteed income from consumable products that are automatically billed to the customer (If they opt in) and added to your orders to fulfill.

I would like to have recurring billing working for the Securepay payment module and PayPal and compatible with guest checkout plugins like Fast and Easy Checkout, COWAA or COWOA.

I don't know why there is not more interest in this.

i guess because people do not believe your statement, that this should be the core of any eCommerce business.

in addition, i'm not sure having a recurring billing option with a customer who checks out WITHOUT an account is a good idea.

I guess its ok for people to believe what they want to, I'm merely supporting the idea. Just means they have to start from 0 sales every month.

They could easily phone or email to have you remove the recurring billing option or there could be a link on the monthly order confirmation email to opt out, something built in to the module.

Sorry for bumping an old thread but I have a client looking to add this functionality to her site.

Have any of you found a solution that will add the ability to auto ship and auto bill on a recurring basis?

Ideally the recurring interval would be client defined in some way.

Thanks for any help or insight anyone can offer.

econcepts has a working module.

Anything new on this? I have set up a more or less working system for my customers through Paypal's subscription service, but it's not integrated into Zencart in any way. I just provide a pathway to Paypal from my Zencart product pages. My Paypal mobile app alerts me any time someone places an order, and we keep track of subscriptions manually as well. But it's a temporary and hokey solution. It should be a core part of Zencart.

@HeleneWallis,
While I do not have a direct answer/solution for Zen, I did ultimately find a solution for my client.

After months of searching, reading, and going back and forth with different programmers looking at solutions for this, in the end the client and I decided they were better off moving to a different platform. I like Zen but this was a functionality this client really needed and every solution I found either did not meet their needs or was poorly maintained causing compatibility and potential maintenance issues.

I am a programmer so we did explore creating a plugin to add the needed functionalities but the time investment in creating the plugin and then supporting it long-term was outweighed by the time investment to migrate to a new platform that had ready support for the needed functionalities.

All that said, it has been a couple of years since I looked into a solution for this for Zen. There may be something more viable now but I doubt it. Based on everything I found it seemed to me at the time that there simply was not enough desire for this functionality in the Zen community to support the time required to create and maintain a plugin for this functionality.

If you have any interest in the specifics of what I did for this client feel free to PM me and we can go from there.

Thanks. I've looked at moving to a different platform, but as aggravating as Zencart can be sometimes, it does allow me to make changes. I'm a long time programmer, though my skill with PHP is only at a beginner's level. Looks like I'm going to have to improve that. I will PM you though.

I did find a merchant online whose website says he's using Zencart, and a look at the source shows that he is using the responsive classic template. He is providing autoshipping and I've emailed him to ask for details. If you're interested in looking at the site or asking the owner about it, it's at https://inteligentvitaminc.com/

I haven't heard back from him yet. I suspect he may be storing credit card info in his system, and I don't want to do that. So his solution may not work for me anyway.

I made this work on a client site several years ago. IIRC it was based on the authorize.net arb plugin. It's still working on 1.5.7b. I can try and root out what it took to make it work if it will help.