FAQ

SubscriptionBoss uses PayPal terminology for the billing parameters: billing period, billing frequency and billing cycles. Billing cycles is clear enough but the use of billing period and frequency has led to some confusion.

For example one user set up a billing period of “month” and billing frequency of 12 thinking that this would result in 12 monthly bills: however this is interpreted by PayPal as one bill every 12 months.

The actual period between bills is calculated by multiplying the billing period by the billing frequency

Here are some common billing schedules:

• Billing Period = Month; Billing Frequency = 1; means every month
• Billing Period = Month; Billing Frequency = 3; means every 3 months or quarterly
• Billing Period = Month; Billing Frequency = 12; means every 12 months or annually
• Billing Period = Annual; Billing Frequency = 1; means every 1 year or annually
• Billing Period = Week; Billing Frequency = 2; means every 2 weeks or fortnightly

Can I change The Billing Frequency On A Live PayPal Agreement If It Was Set Up Incorrectly Initially?

For existing orders/agreements then you cannot change the billing frequency say from 12 to 1, as from the PayPal buyer perspective the effective price would be going up by a factor of twelve. Some small modifications (generally reductions) are possible but not increases of large scale.

So you would need to cancel the existing agreement on PayPal and ask the buyer to sign up again.

When you go into PayPal and cancel the agreement, the SubscriptionBoss plugin will be notified of the cancellation and run the Infusionsoft cancellation action set you may have set up for that subscription. You need to check the content of this to make sure any messages/emails that it sends out are appropriate since you may have created this action set with the presumption that it was the member would be making the cancellation.

I would therefore suggest telephoning or emailing the member first and explain there had been an ‘administrative error’ and that they had been placed on a annual rather than monthly billing cycle by mistake – and that you would cancel the existing PayPal agreement and ask them to sign up again – obviously giving them some bonus offer would smooth the path. With this approach you can tell them that they can happily ignore the cancellation emails.

Or if you do not want the user to receive any cancellation email then put a ‘rule’ on the cancellation action set that makes the action set not run for that specific contact.

The short answer is that for most businesses there is a relatively straightforward solution – but the details depends on your tax jurisdiction and type of product you sell – specifically whether it is physical or digital, and also if the product is always sold to a business (“a business product”), or sold to an individual (“a personal product”), or can be sold to either businesses or individuals (“an ambiguous product”)

US Taxes

As I understand it, in the USA, sales tax is charged for physical products when the buyer is in the same state but not when the buyer is out of state. The rate of tax is determined by the state. Most states do not charge tax for digital purchases.

EU Zone Taxes

• Personal products attract seller based taxes – the tax rate is based on the seller’s tax jurisdiction
• Business products attract buyer based taxes – the tax rate is based on the buyer’s tax jurisdiction

If the buyer and seller are in the same country then sales tax is charged at the country rate. However, if the business buyer and seller are in different countries then tax is handled through a ‘reverse charge’ mechanism where no tax is actually charged on the purchase and the buyer must account for the sales tax. See Reverse Charging Mechanism

PayPal Tax Tables

If you have a “personal” product (seller based taxes) or a business product (buyer based tax) then PayPal allows you to set up Tax Tables however PayPal tax tables are ignored when using Express Checkout so they are not of any use to us.

SubscriptionBoss

SubscriptionBoss supports 3 tax options: “no tax”, “seller based tax” and “destination based tax”.

Most US businesses selling B2B (business to business) will use the “no tax” option.

Typically you will use seller-based tax if you are selling B2C (business to customer).

Most EU businesses selling B2B will use “destination based tax” and specify a tax rate only for their own country. For example, a UK Business will specify “GB 20%” in the Country Tax Table to indicate that Value Added Sales Tax is 20%.

Ambiguous Products

What is difficult to handle is the scenario where the product could be either for business or personal use.

I have not dealt with this case in practice but what I would do is have a order form that forces the buyer to enter a VAT code/Company Number and tick a checkbox to verify it is a business sale. Then based on their buyer selection either sell them a “personal product” with seller based tax or a “business product” with country based tax. So for a UK business selling a product which could be used for personal or business to an American citizen then the tax would be 20% in the former case and 0% in the latter.

The easiest way to do this is using a URL shortening service as most of these have a tracking capability. Of course if you are trying to track clicks on a website you can use Google Analytics, using the onclick event facility on the link. However, URL shortening services tracking can be used in locations outside of your site.

Maybe you may want to track because you have different leads sources: for example, different websites, Facebook Fan Pages, email campaigns, tweets; or because you have different affiliates that are sending the traffic.

The URL shortening will be able to give you statistics on how many people clicked the link but not whether or not they completed the sale: right now SubscriptionBoss does nothing with any affiliate or tracking codes you pass through in the URL querystring.

Next Release of SubscriptionBoss

In the next release we will pass both the affiliate code and the tracking code through to Infusionsoft on the webform so Infusionsoft can assign the sale to the affiliate and also apply a tracking code that can be used to identify which campaign led to the sale.

Furthermore if you set your order form to use the same URL shortening service for the order thank you page, then you should be able to get all your tracking statistics from one place.

When the plugin is updated to include this tracking feature we will also include a video tutorial of how to set it all up.

Yes. In fact we do all our initial testing in the PayPal sandbox. But once this has completed successfully we then test by buying our own products and then cancelling. This allows us to test both the ordering and the cancellation process.

To use the PayPal Sandbox then on the SubscriptionBoss Setting page click the “use Sandbox” checkbox and then enter the PayPal API username, password and signature for your PayPal sandbox account.