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Include Free Months in Annual Subscription

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This topic contains 21 replies, has 2 voices. Last updated by  Cristián Lávaque 4 years, 7 months ago.

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Posted: Thursday May 10th, 2012 at 8:21 pm #13165

As part of a promotional I’m giving 6 Free months to select annual subscribers. How do I set their auto-renew date to include those additional 6 months?

I know I can configure the Pro Forms generator to offer 6 months FREE then annual billing at specified price, but am unsure if this will work as I want. I essentially want the billing to be done immediately and extend the billing term by 6 months for a total initial term of 18 months, then recur annual billing thereafter.

Thanks in advance!

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Posted: Friday May 11th, 2012 at 6:26 am #13190

Hi Lovell.

s2Member can control the initial/trial term for this, but if you want to modify a subscription that’s already going, you’ll need to see if PayPal lets you. I’m not sure how it’s done, you’ll need to ask them. :/

Posted: Friday May 11th, 2012 at 5:37 pm #13222

I’m familiar with how s2Member can be configured to offer a trial — but I don’t want to offer a trial. I simply want to offer the following:

An initial billing term of 18 months (6 months free) or 13 months (1 month free) depending on subscriber eligibility
– total months are inclusive in the subscription price for the first year
– there is no trial
– subscription is billed immediately
– subsequent billing terms are on an annual basis
– subscription cancellation results in the cancellation of auto-renewal for current subscription, but does not trigger a refund

Posted: Friday May 11th, 2012 at 8:11 pm #13242

Got it.

I said trial/initial term, because that field can be either one, depending on whether you charge for it or not. In your case, you’d have the initial term be the months you give for the first year, and the coming years would be the regular term.

I hope that helps. :)

Posted: Saturday May 12th, 2012 at 12:30 am #13270

Thanks for your reply Cristián.

In that setup, is the customer charged upon subscribing or at the end of the initial term?

Thanks!

Posted: Saturday May 12th, 2012 at 12:36 am #13272

When the term has an amount (i.e. is not free) it’s charged immediately. Then, when the initial term is over, the first regular term is charged in advanced.

Posted: Monday May 14th, 2012 at 9:06 am #13394

I find your answer more than a bit confusing.

How do I configure a payment option for 18 months (6 months free) where the customer is billed immediately upon subscribing, then billed each year (12 month period) thereafter after the initial 18 months are complete?

Posted: Tuesday May 15th, 2012 at 12:00 am #13437

Generate a shortcode for your button and then update these values for these attributes:

[hilite mono]ta="10.00" tp="18" tt="M" ra="10.00" rp="1" rt="Y"[/hilite]

[hilite mono]ta[/hilite] and [hilite mono]ra[/hilite] are the amounts to charge for the trial/initial term and the regular terms. I entered $10 as an example, change it to what you charge. [hilite mono]tp[/hilite] and [hilite mono]tt[/hilite] say how long the trial/initial period is, while [hilite mono]rp[/hilite] and [hilite mono]rt[/hilite] are for the regular terms. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Buttons -› Shortcode Attributes (Explained)[/hilite]

I hope that helps. :)

Posted: Tuesday May 15th, 2012 at 2:03 am #13451

Ah yes — I get it now. I was stuck on breaking up the initial term into the free and paid portions instead of combining them to a single continuous term.

Thank you!

Posted: Tuesday May 15th, 2012 at 2:23 am #13455

Oops! When I tried to generate the short code attributes I was limited to an initial/trial term of 12 months. In other words, the generator would not accept an 18 month term as I specified and suggested I select a term option of years. I then tried to enter 1.5 years, but that was interpreted by the generator as 15 years.

Is this simply a limitation of the generator and I can manually edit as you described without issue?

EDIT: I configured the shortcode manually and it triggered the following error on my payment form:

“Invalid form configuration. Invalid “tt, tp” attributes. The “tt” ( Trial Term ) attribute is “M”, and “tp” ( Trial Period ) > 12.”

Here’s the relevant portion of my shortcode config:

ta=”60″ tp=”18″ tt=”M” ra=”79″ rp=”1″ rt=”Y” rr=”1″

Posted: Tuesday May 15th, 2012 at 3:33 am #13466

I see. Thanks for reporting it. I emailed Jason to take a look at this.

You can generate a button over at PayPal too. I tried it earlier and it didn’t give me an error for that initial term, so they probably changed the limits at some point after Jason created the shortcode generator.

This article tells you how to create a PayPal button that integrates with s2Member: Knowledge Base » Using PayPal created buttons

I hope that helps!

Posted: Tuesday May 15th, 2012 at 5:02 am #13481

If there is no issue with Paypal accepting a monthly term length beyond 12 months, then I should be able to hack s2Member to accept my configuration and not trigger an error – right? If so, can you provide some insight on what portions of code require modification to remove that limitation?

Of course, an official update would be more suitable.

Thanks.

Posted: Tuesday May 15th, 2012 at 5:13 am #13484

Jason is looking into this to udpate it if needed. For now, you can create a button over at PayPal, it only takes a couple of minutes and you won’t have to wait for the maintainance release. :)

Posted: Tuesday May 15th, 2012 at 6:02 am #13488

Got this from Jason:

Buttons have new limitations, these were updated by PayPal awhile back, and I’ve updated the maintenance release to support these larger allowable values.

Days, instead of 7, now we allow up to 90.
Weeks, remains at a 52 week limit.
Months, up from 12, to 24 now.
Years, up from 1, now allows 5 max.

See also: https://merchant.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_html_Appx_websitestandard_htmlvariables#id08A6HI00JQU

Posted: Tuesday May 15th, 2012 at 11:22 am #13527

Thanks for the information!

Using a Paypal button changes my user experience and site design. I’d much rather prefer to modify the code instead.

Posted: Tuesday May 15th, 2012 at 4:06 pm #13544

OK, so I see s2member was just updated and included an expansion of subscription term limits. I hurriedly updated, but am still getting the same error:

“Invalid form configuration. Invalid “tt, tp” attributes. The “tt” ( Trial Term ) attribute is “M”, and “tp” ( Trial Period ) > 12.”

What gives?

Posted: Tuesday May 15th, 2012 at 4:27 pm #13545

You are using the buttons, right? This change didn’t apply to pro-forms.

I just tried an 18 months trial for a button and didn’t get an error.

Posted: Tuesday May 15th, 2012 at 10:01 pm #13592

I’m using the pro-forms. I re-read the changelog and see that the PRO forms still have these restrictions in place???… GRRR!!!

There are reasons I paid for s2memberPro — one of which was to have the ability to better manage my user’s site experience. The use of Paypal buttons is NOT a preferred solution, especially now that I’ll need to spend the time to figure out how to rework my current solution to account for this limitation. I’m not at all happy about having to do that.

I guess I’ll be forced to use a Paypal button to avoid further confusion. I launched our membership program earlier today and have received a couple of signups that I’ll need to modify to add the additional months. Do you know how to manually do this via Paypal?

Also, since I’m forced to use Paypal’s buttons — how do I go about modifying my Membership options page to allow for existing users to purchase a membership plan?

Thanks.

Posted: Wednesday May 16th, 2012 at 12:15 am #13607

I’m really sorry, Lovell. It’s not that we didn’t change the pro-form limitation because we didn’t want to, but because we couldn’t. This is a limitation in PayPal’s API, there’s really nothing we can do about it.

For some reason they keep their different services very inconsistently between them. They have different rules and features that one would think are the same in their products, since it’s the same company, but it’s not the case. :(

I don’t know if the new PayFlow service, which can now be integrated to s2Member’s pro-forms, supports the 18 months initial term. I googled it but can’t find any docs on it from PayPal. I’ll ask Jason about it.

how do I go about modifying my Membership options page to allow for existing users to purchase a membership plan?

The user would have to be logged in to his account, so it’s better to have the button in the Login Welcome page or any page protected at Level 0 (which requires him to be logged in).

Posted: Wednesday May 16th, 2012 at 1:40 am #13624

Thanks Christián for your patience and consideration. I’m just a little upset about having to rework something that I’ve already spent significant time on — especially when I have a boatload of other pressing tasks to complete.

I appreciate your suggestion, but that option alienates visitors who may just want to browse possible membership options/benefits without signing up. I’ll have to think of a more suitable workaround.

Thanks.

Posted: Wednesday May 16th, 2012 at 4:12 am #13636

Of course you’d be upset, I understand.

it does seem a little odd that the limitation exists for one service and not another.

This is only one example. :/

I appreciate your suggestion, but that option alienates visitors who may just want to browse possible membership options/benefits without signing up. I’ll have to think up something.

You can have one button in the Membership Options page for those who aren’t registered yet. But it is needed to have registered members login before upgrading, or the account won’t be upgraded.

And when the user is logged in, you’ll be able to tell if he is a free member or a paid one, and show the proper message based on that. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Simple/Shortcode Conditionals[/hilite]

Posted: Thursday May 17th, 2012 at 11:51 pm #13836

Lovell, great news! Jason was looking at some changes made by PayPal and found how to remove the trial/initial term limitations for the pro-forms since today’s release.

(s2Member Pro) PayPal® Pro Forms. This release removes all limitations on the maximum length of an initial trial/period. It is now possible to offer any number of days/weeks/months/years for free, or at a different initial rate.

I hope this makes it easier for you. :)

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