PayPal Subscriptions Confusion

[samjl]

I am trying to set up WHMCS so that my clients can be automatically billed via PayPal (not just sent an invoice, but an actual transaction)

 

I looked at the wiki and tried to do the following:

 

Unless disabled in the PayPal gateway config, when a user views an invoice for a recurring product or service they will be shown a PayPal Subscribe button. This allows the user to subscribe so that their payment for that product or service is sent to you automatically each month and automatically applied to the invoices. There are two conditions that must be met before the PayPal subscribe button will appear:

The invoice's Due Date must be in the future.
The products in the invoice must be recurring (ie. domains and billable items won't generate subscriptions).

 

- I have PayPal set up as the active gateway

- I created a John Doe client

- I created a Recurring Product (Monthly Shared Hosting)

- I created a Recurring Billable Item, selecting Monthly Shared Hosting for John Doe (so now theres technically two recurring instances - does this mean John Doe will get 2 charges per recurrance?)

- I Invoiced the Recurring Billable Item

 

The invoice generated only has one button, the regular PayPal button, no subscription button

 

I notice that the last step on the wiki says that billable items wont generate subscriptions -- how else do I invoice a recurring item if its not via Billable Items?

 

And doesn't subscription support have to be bought from PayPal? How does WHMCS know if my account supports subscriptions or not? Would I need to enter the API information (even though it says its only for refunds)?

[WHMCS John]

PayPal don't charge extra for subscriptions, I believe you only need a free business account.

 

How did you generate the invoice for the product? The subscription option only appears for product invoices on or before the Due Date.

[samjl]

Oh ok, I wasn't going via the Products page

I do see the subscription button now

 

Thanks