Internal recurring billing

[Mashenka]

Automatic process of creating new separate recurring invoices with notifications to admin and to user.

[sekanderb]

Hello @Mashenka Did you mean to be able to create recurring invoicing feature without selecting a payment gateway?

I take most of my clients payment offline. This is the only thing that is stopping me from using this plugin :(

[Mashenka]

Hello @codeshah

Not sure what do you mean. Recurring invoice on first step looks like default invoice with ability to choose payment gateway if admin set up such option. Then when user paid invoice he is subscribing for particular amount of payments(depends on billing cycles you have set up) and money withdraw automatically during the subscription.

The idea of this task is that - to create separate invoices each payment period and automatically send it to the user. User will have ability to choose payment gateway each time.

[htrex]

I've installed wp-invoice today so I'm not sure if it already does this feature or not. I'm evaluating if this plugin is suitable for a customer of mine which manages a small private school and receives recurring monthly payments mostly by bank wire transfers. Is it possible to set an automatic monthly billing for X months for each student, with automatic monthly bill delivery by email? Is it possible to manage the payments offline once they recognize each wire transfer, having also a report facility for overdue payments both for the administration and each single student?

[andypotanin]

@htrex we've been wanting to release a dedicated feature that handles the process you are describing, but every time we get into the planning phase we always encounter a bunch of questions we don't know the answer to, so perhaps I can get some information out of you right now:

• What happens if a student does not pay on due date?
• If somebody goes past their due date and are unresponsive for X amount of time, what happens then?
• How do you plan on creating these "subscriptions" - will somebody create them manually or does there need to be some sort of "checkout" that starts a subscription?
• Where does your client plan on storing the sensitive billing information for their students if they plan on running wire transfers? Or do the student just need to be reminded at the end of each billing cycle to go your site and pay via whatever gateways you have enabled?

To be clear, when I ask "what happens" above I am actually asking "what do you (and your client) expect WP-Invoice to do automatically to manage this workflow?".

• Managing payments offline has always been possible, any invoice may have the balance increased/decreased manually.

@codeshah I get the offline payments. But so are you basically looking for a tool where you can define all of your clients/subscriptions and essentially remind you when to bill them?

[andypotanin]

@Mashenka is there a UserVoice for this? If so, can you grab some bullet-points from there and add them to this Issue. If we can get 4-5 "business workflow" related questions answered we could put this into the pipeline.

[sekanderb]

Hey @andypotanin, Thanks for replying! It would be nice if we can have recurring invoices without having to select a payment gateway.

I mean, now you are managing recurring billing as a subscription via payment gateways. But when I don't need a payment gateway and taking payments in hard cash, then the system should create duplicate invoices each month.

If you are still not clear about my feature request, please mention in reply. I will write the case with more details :)

I appreciate your dedication.

[Mashenka]

@andypotanin no, we do not have.

@codeshah you can just answer Andy's first 4 questions, that will help us. Also please clarify what admin options you expect in this new feature

[htrex]

@andypotanin Thanks for your interest, here follows a detailed reply, I hope my exposition is clear enough :

What happens if a student does not pay on due date? Nothing terrific at the beginning. The school has a certain degree of tolerance for overdue payments. After a certain amount of days the school administration and the student should both get an automatic customized alert e-mail and the alert should be repeated every N days until the total due amount is payed.

If somebody goes past their due date and are unresponsive for X amount of time, what happens then? Any student may resign their subscription with the school on a monthly basis, but until they resign officially they should pay their subscription, if they don't I guess that the access to the school physical lessons may be disrupted and the due amount passed to attorneys for debt collection. The relevance for the software is that the administrator should be able to cancel the remaining scheduled recurring payments for any student at any time.

How do you plan on creating these "subscriptions" - will somebody create them manually or does there need to be some sort of "checkout" that starts a subscription? Yes, these subscriptions are mostly created manually as signing a contract with the school is not as short and simple as filling a single form. Each student must sign a paper contract, produce and deliver a number of documents, such as previous certificates of studyng and degrees, fiscal data, privacy agreements, etc. (WP-CRM seems nice to keep track of this documents using some user profile metadata and a few checkboxes).

Where does your client plan on storing the sensitive billing information for their students if they plan on running wire transfers? Or do the student just need to be reminded at the end of each billing cycle to go your site and pay via whatever gateways you have enabled? There's of course some sensitive information on the system itself but nothing high risk AFAIK. I'm not sure if bank wire transfer is the right word for what I mean (sorry, I'm not English mother tongue)... I mean a money transfer where the debtor to pay a due amount orders to it's own bank, electronically or physically, to transfer some funds to the bank account of the creditor using a recipient bank account coordinates (in Europe we call this unique number IBAN). In any case, it would be really nice to have the students reminded to pay the due amount reminding them the accepted payment methods, such as the IBAN number for the bank wire transfer and/or eventually a link to pay the same amount with a credit card gateway.

[Mashenka]

@htrex if you are creating invoices manually, the only custom thing which you need is reminders about due date. This is other feature which we planned to do in future.

[htrex]

@Mashenka is it already possible to create recurring billing without using a credit card payment gateway? My understanding is that's not an option at the moment. Automatic invoice generation would be a great addition anyway.

[sekanderb]

• What happens if a client does not pay on due date? I can notify him via phone call. The system should show those invoices as due for faster access. Those can be coloured as yellow.
• If somebody goes past their due date and are unresponsive for X amount of time, what happens then? Overdue invoices can be listed separately and marked as red.
• How do you plan on creating these "subscriptions" - will somebody create them manually or does there need to be some sort of "checkout" that starts a subscription? In my case, as I am doing everything offline, I do not need any checkout feature. I will be creating the first invoices manually for each customer.
• Where does your client plan on storing the sensitive billing information for their students if they plan on running wire transfers? Or do the student just need to be reminded at the end of each billing cycle to go your site and pay via whatever gateways you have enabled? For my case, I do not need any payment gateway or to store any bank information

[Mashenka]

@htrex @codeshah Thank you for your notes. We will use them while creating this new feature.

[htrex]

@Mashenka thank you for considering the feedback. I'm seeing that this issue is marked as Milestone 4.1 which has been released already. Can you please update us if there's a plan to implement it in the near future, or otherwise it's working has yet to be decided?

[Mashenka]

Hello, @htrex

No this idea wasn't implemented yet. We have plans to do it, but we have limited resources to implement all ideas, so we do not have particular estimate when it will be done.

Thanks for contributing.

[Mashenka]

Done.