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Sell plans and collect recurring payments
Sell plans and collect recurring payments
Sharon Brakha avatar
Written by Sharon Brakha
Updated over a week ago

About

With Blackbell you can easily collect recurring payments. 

How to 

1 - Create a plan

Path: E-commerce > Manage > Plans

You can add as many plans as you'd like.
A plan is made of a name, an amount and a period.
For example, you can create a plan to charge for premium assistance and it will cost your customers $99 / month.

⚠️ Important: You cannot edit a plan once created. So if you need to make a change, simply create a new one

2 - Associate a service to a plan

You can associate a plan to an existing service (already created) or during the initial setup of a service. 

Path: [Service] > Setup > Linked plan 

Pricing
If you set a price under "Pricing", this will be the upfront fee of the service.
You can also add paid options under "Booking steps".
Customer will be instantly charged  the price you set under Pricing + the paid options he selected as soon as the order is confirmed. 

Start date of recurring billing

  • If you don't add any calendar, recurring will start as soon as the order is confirmed

  • If you add a calendar, start date will be the date the customer chooses

Billing
Recurring subscriptions work with online billing only. So make sure you set billing to online billing or it won't work

⚠️ Important: You cannot edit a service (content / pricing) once there is an active subscription linked to it

3 - Receive orders linked to a plan 

When you receive an order, you will clearly see if there is a linked plan to it. 

Process the order as usual. 

4 - Track subscriptions

The moment an order linked to a plan is confirmed , it creates a "Subscription".
All subscriptions can be found under "Subscriptions" (Orders > Subscriptions)

You can filter by: 

  • Active: All live subscriptions

  • Scheduled in future: The subscription has not started yet

  • Past due: This means payment failed

  • Inactive: This groups both cancelled and stopped subscriptions

From the subscription page, you can change the associated plan (let's say a customer upgrades to a more premium plan) or cancel the subscription.
You can also track all payments collected to date. 

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About failed payments 

If a payment fails, Blackbell will automatically try to charge customer back according to the following schedule:

  • 3 days after the first attempt

  • 5 days after the previous attempt

  • 7 days after the previous attempt

The customer will be notified by email. He can contact his bank or modify the payment method registered on Blackbell.

If no attempt is successful, the subscription is automatically canceled.

5 - Cancel a subscription

There is a no way to add an end date to a subscription yet.
So customer will have to ask you to cancel his subscription. You can do it from the subscription page.

6 - Blackbell fees

On recurring payments, the following fees apply: 

  • Blackbell fees: according to your plan

  • Stripe transaction fees: 3.9% + 30cts 

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