Plans

Introduction

The billing frequency and base cost of a product or service are delineated by Plan. Every Subscription is delineated by the Plan linked to it because the Plan holds all the details about the cost, the billing periods, the billing cycle, and the trial periods of the item. Services & products are designed in ChargeMonk effectively so that you can bill your customers. In ChargeMonk, you can create plans with each of them related to a definite service/ product that your customers want to subscribe.

Example:

Assume that you are a seller of online storage service that would be used by some users for personal use and others for business users may be. Therefore, you can create a home plan that offers basic attributes including a professional plan which will be higher-priced for the advanced features. Then your customers have to register for the plan using subscriptions

Creating a Plan

To create a plan all you need to do is:

• Sign into your web interface.
• Navigate toProduct Catalog › Plans › Create a New Plan.

Submit the form of a new Plan with all the essential information and you are ready.

Basic Plan Attributes

Let's discuss some of the important components of a Plan and the attributes that are used in forming it while creating or updating a plan.

Plan name

There must be a definitive Name section for a plan. On the user interface of ChargeMonk, the name referring to the plan would be added in this section. The name should be eloquent of the features of the plan like its billing period, currency and pricing so that you can differentiate it easily from the other plans in your site.

Therefore, naming the plans as Plan A, Plan B, etc. will not be sufficient, it will be better to name them as "Hustle Quarterly AUD", "Scale Yearly USD" etc.

Invoice name

To identify the name of the plan as it will be shown to the customers, the invoice name section is used. The same name will be used for the plan in invoices, hosted checkout pages and customer portal and in quotes.

Therefore, the plan's invoice name should be such that you want your customer to link with the plan.

Plan description

For the understanding of the customer, a short description will be used for the plan, which will be displayed in the latest version of Portal and Checkout every time there will be the space available on the user interface and it allows. The Plan description will be displayed on the change subscription page in Portal v2 including the latest version.

Billing Attributes

Bill every

The Bill every  section defines the interval or period of the validity of a single cycle of the plan. Thus, this section refers to as billing period or billing interval also. In general, while registering, the first billing cycle will be paid by the customer and then again when the plan's subscription renews at the end of the billing period.

Billing cycles

The default number of times there is an automatic renewal of subscription is defined as No. of billing cycles The fixed number should include the first billing cycle.

Pricing Attributes

Currency

Select the currency which is used to bill in the plan and in case no currency list is shown, all you have to do is to enable the currency in ChargeMonk.

Note: In ChargeMonk, only one currency can be defined for a plan. You have to generate an individual plan for each currency, in case you intend to support multiple currencies for a plan.

Pricing model

As per the pricing model selected for the plan, the price of the plan will be set.

Below given are the pricing models, from which any one can be chosen:

1. Flat Fee
2. Per Unit

1. Flat fee
The Flat fee pricing model is used for those plans that have a fixed recurring charge and there is no quantity is linked. Such as, if a movie streaming service has a fixed plan of $50 a month then this plan would be a flat fee plan.

2. Per Unit
You can select to sell services whose billing is done based on registration quantity. Such as, in case you are providing a SaaS product at $29 a month per user then the quantity, in this case, will be the number of users.

The planned quantity can be specified by the customer at the time of registration via hosted pages but in case you are using API then you can use the Create Subscription API call.

Setup cost

With the help of Setup Cost (it is an optional field included to a plan), a one-time setup fee can be included that will be charged with the subscription's first invoice.

While creating/updating a subscription you can amend this fee or even make it zero.

Another method for charging a one-time fee is by using a non-recurring addon.

Free quantity

Free quantity is available only when you identify the pricing model of your plan as Per Unit.

The amount of goods you want to provide to your customers at no additional charge is known as Free quantity. The total quantity of goods can be determined by you or your customer at the time of purchase.

Example
In case a customer is registering for a special discounted plan which provides 10GB data at no charge.
Price - $2 per GB
Free Quantity - 10 GB
Subscribed Quantity - 100 GB
Quantity Chargeable - 90 GB
Charged Amount = $2 x 90 = $180
Therefore, this customer will be charged only for 90 GB storage space.

The plan is considered as a free plan in case the subscribed quantity is less than the free quantity and for subscription, the buyer will not be charged at all. Like the example above, in case the subscribed quantity was, 10 GB, then it will be a free subscription.

Free-Trials

With the help of the Free Trial section, you can set for how many days a subscription can be in trial mode. Based on the payment gateway you use, the initial charge may endure once the trial days are over. To get more info about trial periods Read more here.

Shipping Preference

Shipping preference permits you to configure if the product is a physical item and can be shipped. In such a case, you have to mention how frequent an item is shipped in a plan's single billing period.

Taxes

In case tax profile have been setup then you can select to exempt a Plan from the taxes by un-checking This plan is subject to taxes option during the creation of a plan.

Tax Profile

In case you want to keep plan taxable, select a tax profile for it. This would define at the time of invoicing what taxes are implemented to the plan's price.

Plan Actions

On the details page of any plan, you will see the actions panel placed on the right. The below given actions are available:

Edit Plan

This option allows you to amend the configuration of a plan.

Once the plan is created its Plan Id cannot be changed.

In case no subscriptions are linked to the plan, then every feature (except Plan Id ) can be changed.

In case subscriptions are linked to the plan, in this case, everything can be amended except the below given features:

• Plan Id
• Bill every
• No. of billing cycles
• Pricing model
• Currency
• Tier/step prices (for volume, tiered and stairstep addons)
• Free quantity
• Shipping preference (only if order(s) has(have) been created for the plan)

Plan Price Change

The plan's price can be changed (while the plan pricing is flat per unit).

Go to Product Catalog > [Plan name] > Edit Plan. Add the new price of the plan in the Pricing segment. Hit on Update Plan..

In this way, the new price is implemented for all new subscriptions of the plan. Current subscriptions are not influenced and persist to get renewed at the old price.

Delete

Depending on subscriptions linked to the plan, deleting and archiving can be done.

Deletion

• You can delete a plan only if there are no subscriptions associated with it. When deleted, the plan is removed from ChargeMonk completely and it will no longer appear on the list of plans.
• The name and Id of a deleted plan can be reused.

FAQ

Is it possible to change/override the plan price for a specific subscription? subscription?
Yes, here's how.