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FAQ

Here are the most common questions that we get asked of SubscriptionBoss. If your question isn't listed here, or if you want to speak with either Liz or Russell, please visit the contact page and request a Skype call to get your questions answered.

What happens on a PayPal Payment Failure?

August 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Question: If a PayPal payment fails due to any reasons like credit card decline, is the profile cancelled immediately or will it retry? If it will retry, what is the period between the retry attempts?

Answer: There is no cancellation on payment failure. After the initial failure PayPal will try to take payment again after 5 days. If that also fails that PayPal will try a third and final time after a further 5 days.

When you can set up the original PayPal Profile you have two options for dealing with failed charges. This is found in the Recurring Charges section for the subscription on SubscriptionBoss:

Auto Billing of Outstanding Amount

For this setting you have a choice of NoAutoBill or AddToNextBilling

This option allows you to decide whether you want to try and collected missed payments automatically by always trying to collect the outstanding amount. The default setting is the first option.

Your choice will be based on how long you want to give your non-paying subscribers to pay up. If you are willing give them more than one billing period then it probably makes sense to go for the second option. So, for example, if the subscription is $99 per month and there are 3 failures that month, then PayPal will try to collect $198 the following month.

Notification of Payment Failure

SubscriptionBoss receives notification of each payment failure by a PayPal IPN and can activate an action set defined in the Payment Event Actions section on SubscriptionBoss.

This action set might simply tag the subscriber with a tag that is an entry point to a “Subscription Payment Failure Campaign”. The campaign can track them through first, second and third payment failure and decide what emails to send the subscriber at each stage, whether or not to reduce or pause access to the service/membership site and also to decide if and when the subscription should be cancelled.

Notification of Payment Success

SubscriptionBoss receives notification of each payment success and can activate an action set defined in the Payment Event Actions section on SubscriptionBoss.

This action set needs to set a tag that is another entry point in “Subscription Payment Failure Campaign” that takes the contact out of “payment failure” and may need to renew the subscriber’s access to services if they had been reduced earlier and finally takes the contact out of that campaign.

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When Does The Subscription Cancellation Action Set Run?

August 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Question: If the user cancels the subscription from PayPal, does the cancellation actionset run immediately or at end of billing cycle?

Answer: The action set runs immediately.

You can ‘handle’ cancellation in 3 ways:

  1. Cancel immediately with no pro-rating
  2. Cancel immediately with pro-rating
  3. Cancel at then end of the billing period

No Prorating of Charges

State in the terms and conditions that cancellation is immediate and there is no pro-rating of charges – this places the onus on the subscriber to cancel at the end of the billing period. This is by far the easiest solution.

Prorating of Charges And Manual Refunds

State in the terms and conditions that cancellation is immediate and enable pro-rating of charges on Infusionsoft. It would then be manual procedure to examine the Infusionsoft invoice then go in to PayPal and do a partial refund – this would be a real pain to manage.

Cancel At the End Of The Billing Period

Run the cancellation at then end of the billing period. The cancellation action set run by SubscriptionBoss would just set a ‘CancelSubscriptionBeforeNextBill’ tag, as well as email the subscriber to confirm the cancellation. There would also be a follow-up sequence that would need to run the day before billing which can check the tag and if necessary cancel the subscription and remove access to the service/membership site.

Having a follow up sequence run before billing may be a good idea in any case, especially if you are billing less frequently then monthly. You can use the sequence to send out a reminder to the subscriber that billing will take place in the next few days and also takes the opportunity to remind the subscriber of the benefits the will accrus by continuing the subscription.

Cancellation Action Set

The process needs to:

  • cancel the order
  • withdraw access to the membership service
  • send an email to the subscriber to confirm the subscription has been cancelled

You will probably want to use the Campaign Builder for the subscription cancellation process. In this case, all the Action set called by SubscriptionBoss will do is set a tag that is an entry point for “Subscription Cancellation Campaign”.

Filed Under: FAQ Tagged With:

Integrating PayPal Subscriptions with Kajabi Using SubscriptionBoss

May 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Yes, you can integrate SubscriptionBoss with Kajabi in several ways. You can use this approach for sales of PayPal subscriptions and single and multi-stage payment plans for products.

Kajabi lets you to create private content portals and sell access to them. It manages the whole soup-to-nuts process through sales, ordering and delivery of content.

I am aware of some clients using Kajabi though I did not get closely involved in the integration. At that time, only the first two approaches below were possible, now there is a third possible method of integration. No custom coding is required it is just a matter of inserting SubscriptionBoss into the sales funnel either on the sales page or on an order form.

Approach A: Simple PayPal Button On Sales Page

Here the buyer makes a decision on the Sales Page to either buy by Credit Card on PayPal.

If the user clicks the PayPal button that links to SubscriptionBoss then

User Flow is: Sales Page -> PP -> Thank You Page

System Flow is

Kajabi Sales Page -> SB PayPal Button -> SB -> PP -> SB -> Infusionsoft Order via API -> Kajabi Thank You Page

Key: SB=SubscriptionBoss; IS = Infusionsoft; PP = PayPal

The user is signed up to the subscription using their PayPal name and email address

Approach B: PayPal Option On Sales Page Leading To Order Form on WordPress

Here the buyer makes a decision on the Sales Page to either buy by Credit Card or PayPal.

If the user clicks the PayPal link they are taken to an Order Form hosted on the WordPress site where the Buy button sends the form to SubscriptionBoss.

User Flow is: Sales Page -> WordPresss Order Form -> PayPal -> Thank You Page

System Flow is

Kajabi Sales Page -> WordPresss Order Form -> SB PayPal Button -> SB -> PP -> SB -> Infusionsoft Order via API -> Kajabi Thank You Page

The user is signed up to the subscription with the details from the Order Form

Approach C: PayPal Option On Infusionsoft Order Form

Here the buyer makes a decision on the Order Page to either buy by Credit Card on PayPal.

With the latest release you can put the PayPal option on the IS hosted order form – you probably want to use this approach if you want to allow the buyer to enter contact details that may be different from the the name and email address associated with their PayPal account as it is a lot less work than building an order form on WordPress

User Flow is : Sales Page -> Is Order Form PayPal -> Thank You Page

System Flow is

Kajabi Sales Page -> IS Order Form PayPal -> SB PayPal Button -> SB -> PP -> SB -> Infusionsoft Order via API -> Kajabi Thank You Page

The user is signed up to the subscription using the name and email address that they gave on the order form (unless you decide to hide this information in which case the PayPal details are used instead).

Deciding what information SubscriptionBoss passes through to the contact record on Infusionsoft is now made simpler by checkboxes in the Extra Order Information Section on SubscriptionBoss rather than having the list out all the fields individually.

Filed Under: FAQ Tagged With:

Date Diff Server Error

May 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

If you upgrade to SubscriptionBoss 1.14 but have not performed the mandatory upgrade to PHP 5.3 or 5.4 then your buyers will encounter an error during the payment process for subscriptions with immediate payment after they the click the “Agree and Pay” on PayPal but before payment is actually taken. Any purchases involving products or subscriptions that have a “billing delay” are not affected.

The error that is displayed will depend on the configuration of PHP error reporting on your site. This can vary according to your server settings and the WordPress settings.

Some users will see the error:

Call to undefined function date_diff() in /home/?????/public_html/??????/wp-content/plugins/subscriptionboss/subb-functions.php on line 256

For others there will be a more general server error:

Screenshot of server error

Whichever error is displayed the solution is to upgrade you server to a stable version of PHP, either 5.3.13 or 5.4.3 as found on the PHP download page

I am sorry for any inconvenience that this has caused.

In the next release of SubscriptionBoss I have included a PHP version checker so it will be explicit what version of PHP is a pre-requisite for each new release of SubscriptionBoss.

Filed Under: FAQ

Paypal returns 400 Bad Request notice?

April 30, 2012 by 1 Comment

When testing SubscriptionBoss you may connect to PayPal and get the following error:

Paypal returns 400 Bad Request notice: Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand. Size of a request header field exceeds server limit.

This is a cookie issue and can be resolved by clearing your cookies.

We think it happens because you have an existing cookie laid down by a previous visit to PayPal maybe using a different PayPal account or where you have just been logged in to PayPal Sandbox.

In any case just clear your cookies and normal service will be resumed.

Note that your customers are very unlikely to run into this problem – unless they are PayPal developers – in which case they probably know what to do as this issue frequently comes up when testing applications that use the PayPal API

Filed Under: FAQ

Can SubscriptionBoss Handle Single Payments?

April 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Yes. Once you install the plugin you can use it for immediate single payments and delayed single payments.

You can also use SubscriptionBoss for payment plans and for recurring payments (subscriptions). There is further information on how to set up various types of payment plans.

Filed Under: FAQ

How Do PayPal Refunds Work On SubscriptionBoss?

December 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

There are two type of refunds and they work in different ways.

Product Refunds – Fully Automatic

In the case where the buyer is refunded for a product purchase then a payment credit is added to the invoice automatically by plugin.

When viewing the invoice on Infusionsoft you will see two entries: one for amount X of type “PayPal” and another of amount -X of type “Credit”.

The amount outstanding will show as the full value of the invoice.

It depends on how the individual affiliate is set up as to whether a commission clawback is generated. (e.g commission payable on order or on customer payment)

Subscription Refunds – Configurable

In the case where a subscription payment is refunded then you can set up for an action set to be called. This allows you to have the action set ‘decide’ what to do.

Future Capabilities

I am open to ideas and suggestions as to whether or not the plugin should do more or less automatic processing of refunds.

Filed Under: FAQ

How Do I Update SubscriptionBoss To The Latest Version?

November 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Please follow these steps if you have already installed SubscriptionBoss on your site, but your installed version is out of date.

Just click the Update Automatically Link on the Plugins page

Sometimes due to caching, available updates do not show up immediately. In this case, you can visit the membership site to update to the latest plugin.

Step 1

Log into the membership site at http://www.subscriptionboss.com/members/. This will take you to your dashboard page.

Step 2

If your plugin is out of date, your dashboard page will look something like this – an “update version” button will be displayed.
SubscriptionBoss Dashboard

Step 3

Click the update button. This generates a new version of the SubscriptionBoss plugin that is specifically for your domain.

Step 4

Next go to your WordPress dashboard and click on the update button, and the plugin will update automatically from there.

Filed Under: FAQ

Is ionCube Required For SubscriptionBoss?

October 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Yes. Your server must be running the ionCube Loader which is available from ionCube as free software and can be downloaded here.

For the latest version of SubscriptionBoss you must be running at least ionCube Loader V4.4 although you ideally should run the latest version v4.7 .

Most hosts will already have ionCube installed.

Some of our customers who use GoDaddy Hosting have had problems getting the ionCube Loader installed. Some Godaddy support staff will tow the company line and say it is outside normal support terms while other will go the extra mile and do the install for you.

The installation involves-

  • Downloading the IonCube Loader Wizard and installing it in the ioncube folder
  • Running the wizard which tells you which loader is right for your server
  • Adding one extra line to the php.ini or php5.ini file to instruct PHP to install the IonCube Loader
  • Running the wizard again which should tell you that IOnCube has been installed successfully
  • Removing the wizard and other files no longer required

Special Instructions

Some hosts require you to place the php.ini file in multiple locations: Bluehost is an example of this.

You will need to do this is IonCube is installed correctly but the plugin still reports a fatal error when you try to activate it.

Let’s say WordPress is installed in the folder public_html then the locations to place the the same php.ini (or php5.ini) file are:

  • public_html
  • public_html/wp-admin
  • public_html/wp-content/plugins/subscriptionboss

The first location handles normal plugin operation, the second covers activation and plugin administration functions and the third covers PayPal IPN processing.

Filed Under: FAQ

Subscriptions and Recurring Payments Terminology

September 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

This article deals with subscription terminology; that used by PayPal, by Infusionsoft and by the SubscriptionBoss plugin.

PayPal Terminology

PayPal “recurring payment agreements” allow you to take recurring payments for an fixed or open ended number of payments

PayPal “cart” items allow you to take immediate one-time payments

PayPal “Subscriptions” are handled by SubscriptionBoss only if you enable the Payment Driven Orders feature. These subscription agreements are set up directly on PayPal using buttons. However SubscriptionBoss can process the PayPal Instant Payment Notifications (IPNs) to process the payments and matches them against invoices.

Infusionsoft Terminology

Infusionsoft “subscription orders” that allow create periodic invoices for an open ended number of payments

Infusionsoft “product orders” items allow you to create am immediate invoices for fixed cost items with or without a payment plan

SubscriptionBoss Subscriptions

In SubscriptionBoss a “subscription” is identified by a unique subscription ID and provides the glue between the product and/or subscription on Infusionsoft and the product purchase and/or recurring payment profile on PayPal

Filed Under: FAQ
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