Administering Payment Plan Instances
A payment plan instance can be updated at any time. This can be useful when a customer wants to add additional users, activations, or make some other change to an existing license on a payment plan that would result in a change to the installment price or other payment plan fields. If the change occurs in the middle of the billing period, you may need to perform a separate one-time charge for the additions being made to the license since the updated installment price will only apply to the upcoming periods. Contact us if you have any questions about updating a payment plan instance.
To administer a payment plan instance, either search for the customer associated with the instance or for a license or invoice associated with the instance. Scroll down to the Payment Plans section of the page and click the payment plan name to view details on the instance. Along the top, there will be several options:
- Edit
- This is only available if for users with edit payment plan instance permission. Click this to edit the details of the instance.
- Disable
- This is only available for users with edit payment plan instance permission and when the current status is Active. Click this to disable the instance. You will be prompted to confirm the action as well as given the option of entering notes regarding the reasons for disabling the instance. Disabling the instance will set the status to Inactive, send any users with Notify Final Payment Plan Declines permission an email notification of the cancellation, and set the Disabled By and Disabled Date fields on the instance.
- Enable
- This is only available if for users with edit payment plan instance permission and when the current status is Inactive. Click this to enable the instance. You will be prompted to confirm the action as well as given the option of setting the next payment date and stored payment, as well as entering notes regarding the reasons for enabling the instance. Additionally, users with edit licenses permission will also be prompted whether to re-enable any licenses associated with the payment plan instance which are currently at a non-OK status.
- History
- Click to view the entire payment history for the payment plan instance. A listing of all billing attempts (both successful and declined) will be displayed, with links back to the invoice for each successful payment. If more than 15 billing attempts have been made, this list will be displayed in pages of 15 records - use the arrows at the top and bottom to move through the history.
When viewing/editing the instance, the following fields are available:
- Name
- The name of the payment plan. This is not editable.
- Recurrence Type
- There are currently 2 options here as follows:
- Scheduled - The payment plan bills the customer on a set schedule determined by the Frequency, Frequency Interval, and Days Until Start fields below it.
- Day Of Month - The payment plan bills the customer on the specified day of each month defined by the Day Of Month field below it.
- Frequency
- Only available for Scheduled Recurrence Type. The number of Days, Weeks, Months, or Years (specified by Frequency Interval) between billing attempts.
- Frequency Interval
- Only available for Scheduled Recurrence Type. The interval (Days, Weeks, Months, or Years) to use with the Frequency.
- Days Until Start
- Only available for Scheduled Recurrence Type. The number of days after the initial purchase to set as the first billing date.
- Day Of Month
- Only available for Day of Month Recurrence Type. This is the day of the month the customer will be billed on. During initial purchase, the first billing date will be set to the next occurrence of this day of month.
- Number of Payments
- The number of times the customer will be billed. If this is set to -1, the customer will be continually billed at the given schedule, with no stopping point until they or an administrator disables the payment plan.
- Installment Price
- The price the customer will be charged at each billing.
- Installment Surcharge
- An optional surcharge to be added to each installment, on top of the Installment Price.
- Installment Product Option
- The product option to be placed on the installment invoice. Note that the price defined for the installment product option will be ignored when processing, and the payment plan Installment Price will be used instead.
- Email Customer On Installment
- If checked, the customer will be emailed an invoice after each installment is charged to them, or, in the case the credit card is declined, a decline notification.
- Number of Retries
- The number of times to retry charging the customer if they are declined when processing installment payments.
- Declined Action
- The action to take if the Number of Retries is exceeded for a customer when processing installments. Currently, there are 2 options:
- Notify Admin - An email notification will be sent to an administrator.
- Disable License - Any licenses associated with the payment plan will be disabled, and an email notification will be sent to an administrator.
- Status
- The payment plan instance status:
- Active - The instance is active and billing is enabled.
- Inactive - The instance is inactive and no billing is enabled.
- Fulfilled - The instance is fulfilled and no billing is enabled. This status is set automatically when the number of payments is not -1 (indefinite) and the specified number of payments are successfully processed.
- Re-enable Disabled Licenses
- If one or more licenses associated with the payment plan instance have a non-OK status and the user account has edit licenses permission, this option will be displayed when editing or enabling the instance. Check this box to reset any licenses associated with the payment plan which have a non-OK status back to an OK status. This is only available to users with edit licenses permission - users without this permission will see a warning message regarding the license status.
- Start Date
- The date of the first scheduled billing attempt. This is only editable for instances which have not yet had a billing attempt.
- Next Payment Date
- The date of the next billing attempt. This is required when the status is Active.
- Stored Payment
- The stored payment used for billing. This will either be a Credit Card or a Reference transaction, depending on the merchant account configuration. For more details, see Stored Payments.
- Distributor
- The distributor associated with the instance.
- Discount Type
- The discount type of any persistent discount applied to each billing attempt - either a percentage or a flat amount off of the total. This is set to the priority code discount type if a priority code was applied to the initial purchase and the payment plan has Persist Discount Information set true.
- Discount Name
- The discount name of the discount. This is set to the priority code name if a priority code was applied to the initial purchase and the payment plan has Persist Discount Information set true. Available only when a discount type is selected.
- Discount Value
- The discount value. This is set to the priority code discount value if a priority code was applied to the initial purchase and the payment plan has Persist Discount Information set true. Available only when a discount type is selected.
- Discount Expiration Date
- The discount expiration date. This is set to the priority code discount expiration date if a priority code was applied to the initial purchase and the payment plan has Persist Discount Information set true. Available only when a discount type is selected.
- Increment License Expiration
- If checked, upon each successful payment, the expiration date of the original license will be incremented by the value of License Expiration Increment Days.
- License Expiration Increment Days
- Available only if Increment License Expiration is checked. The number of days the expiration date of the original license will be incremented after a successful payment plan payment.
- Notes
- Any notes associated with the instance.