Introduction:

In order to help you grow your business with the benefits of recurring monthly and yearly revenue, CheckIn offers subscription management capabilities to help you keep track of customer subscriptions

This built in subscription management feature will assist you with the following:

• Designate any product or service as a subscription product

• Setup automated email renewal reminders & quotes

• Automatically email customer invoices (Can auto attached serial #’s to subscription products )

• Automatically bill for those subscriptions (using CheckIn’s integrated processing) with payments being automatically applied and posted to invoice.

• Dashboard to view monthly & yearly projections

• Easily manage subscriptions and quickly resolve payment issues

To access the subscription window go to the More menu and and click the button called Subscriptions and this will bring you to the main Dashboard view.

Setup

(For US customers) - PayLink setup with your existing Paygistix credit card integration is necessary for billing in our CheckIn subscription management tool and does two things:

• it automates charges

• it sends a payment link for failed charges

 1 

The first step in this process is to setup each of your desired subscription messages for renewal and billing reminder messages. To do this, go to the Setup tab and and click the + button in the section called Subscription Messages. Give your message a Subject and a Message. (You can use the provided variable key to customize your message.) And of course Activate it in order to use it.

 2 

The Next step is to Define Subscription Types in the section of the same title. The types of subscriptions you name here will be added to the subscription section of the product card as you create each new subscription product or service.

 3 

Now you have to setup your Subscription Products for each of your desired subscription service or products within CheckIn.

There are two way to do this. You can click the + button in the Subscription Products section of the setup tab in the Subscription Management window or if you have an existing product or service product card you can open each product card and go the Subscriptions tab. First step is to activate the product or service as a subscription by checking off the Is This a Subscription Product box. Then chose the Subscription Term and then select the Reminder & Invoice Messages you want to use for those automated emails.

 4 

Chose your Reminder Method and Billing Method from the drop down lists.

★ For Billing Method Auto, the invoice will be automatically created and billed. If you choose Send Invoice - an invoice will just go out but won’t be auto billed.

★ If you are selling a product like Malwarebytes or something that requires a customer to have a key code you want to first check off Track Serial Numbers for that product then check off the Auto Issue Serial Numbers check box in order for the auto invoice of this subscription to include a serial number.

★ The option called Always create a new Subscription if customer already has a subscription for existing product is just that. It will create a new subscription for a customer if they already have one instead of add the subscription to their existing one.

 5 

To setup up auto billing, you must obtain a Paylink/Paygistix API Token for each store you have. To obtain a token, you first have to create a Paylink account with a user name and password which is provided by Fortis (aka Payment Logistics)

To set the token. Go to Admin > Company Info and click on the Paylink icon and then click on “Get Paylink Api Token“ button.

Features Explained:

 If a customer has a subscription you will see this icon on any SRO, Quote, Order or Invoice this customers name appears on. You can click on this icon in order to see the active subscriptions this customer has.

The idea behind this feature is twofold:

★ To let you know what subscriptions a customer has and does not have so you can easily tell and then have a conversation about the subscription they do not have to give you an opportunity to sell them another…

★ If the icon is not present on any of these documents it’s an opportunity to sell them a subscription!

Modifying & Adding A Subscription

At anytime you can modify an existing subscription or create a new one from the subscription dashboard:

★ To modify a subscription click on the Active Subscriptions button at the top of the subscription dashboard window at the top left near the +New button. This will open a new window showing all active subscriptions and when you click on one it will show you the details of that customers subscription.

★ You can also get to a subscription by going to the subscriptions tab as well.

★ You can also add another subscription product or modify the price here as well.

★ To create a new one simply click the +New button. Typically you will be adding a new subscription via a new invoice to a customer but this option exists to give you the flexibility to add one manually if needed.

★ To fix a auto payment issue by entering a new PNRef/Transaction ID - this can be done under the Payment Tab.

★ To see the subscription history for a particular subscription just go to the History Tab.

Inactive Subscriptions Button

Clicking on the Inactive Subscription button at the top will show you a list of your inactive subscriptions:

★ This will open a new window showing all Inactive subscriptions and when you click on one it will show you the details of that customers subscription.

★ You can change the status of the subscription by clicking on the Status pulldown menu and make other changes if necessary.

Red Warning Icon & What It Means

If you see the red exclamation point icon to the right of a customer’s subscription in the subscriptions listing under the Subscriptions Tab, it means that the subscription record is missing payment information. CheckIn will not be able to charge the customer automatically. CheckIn utilizes a REPEAT sale function with the Paygistix credit card integration.

Adding A Subscription To An Invoice

The easiest way to sell a subscription is via the Invoice. This process is no different than selling any other product. Simply create a new invoice. Add the customer to the invoice and then add the subscription product to the invoice. When posting the invoice, you will be presented with a Subscription Verification window. It is here where you can verify the subscription before activating it. (see image below)

This window pops up to give you a chance to make any updates or changes to the subscription for this particular sale if need be - most of the time you will click the Customer Accepts button to accept the default setting you have in place for this particular subscription.

Once you click on Customer Accepts this will now post the invoice as intended and will take you back to the main CheckIn window.

Some FYIs

• Automated billing currently only works for US customers. Canadian customers will have this feature later in the year.

• Run Today’s Billing button needs to be clicked everyday or as you wish in order to initiate the auto billing and invoicing etc. We are making some changes due to some updated features with the CC processor which will automate this function further. Stay tuned…

• Prorating Customer Subscription This comes up IF the customer already has a subscription. It allows you to prorate the new subscription or to add it as a new one.

• Invoice will post if there is a successful payment or not.

Good Luck with growing your subscription business,
It will take some time but will be well worth the effort!