Product Dependancy

[WinterRG]

Hey folks, been trying to work this out for awhile with no luck....

 

I want to offer a fixed price package/bundle, that consists of one service product and one hosting product.

 

The service product is a fixed price, one-time item at $500.00

I want to offer a Free 3 month hosting Product if this product is purchased

 

After the Free 3 months, I want the user to have to purchase an annual subscription for the same hosting product

 

So, I have setup the Service Product in a Group with a cost of $500, the Hosting Product in another group as 90 day termination at a one-time cost of $0.00, and a "Bundle Product" to include both of these.

 

I only show the bundle product on the order form.

 

I then setup the same hosting package in another group, but this time with an annual cost of $50.00, and set this as an upgrade product to the Free hosting package.

 

 

Is this the best way to do this? So when the 90day/3month free hosting expires, the user has to select the upgrade hosting package or the account is terminated?

 

Thanks a lot for your assistance...

[brian!]

I don't know if it's the best way, but it's one way - especially if after 3 months, you want to make them choose to upgrade.

 

another way, but is only really applicable if you don't need them to make a choice after 3 months, would be to use a promotion code - http://docs.whmcs.com/Promotions

 

that way, you could setup the bundle with the service product and the paid hosting product, but the promotion code would discount the hosting to free for the first 3 months, and then from that point on, invoice annually at normal price.

 

that might be worth playing with if, at some later point, you decide that you just want the user to make a choice at purchase and then let WHMCS handle discounting the first three months for you.

[WinterRG]

Thanks for the great response and alternative idea, I will have a tinker with it to see how it may workout logically, but I don't think I want prospects to have to enter promotion-codes on ordering.

 

As a new user of WHMCS I am finding some of the logic a little difficult to get my head around, especially as most products expiry are future dates, I struggling to work out how to test if what I am setting up will work as I think in the future. For example: I appreciate the user of this Bundle will get the invoice and welcome email, but after the 90days hosting, I assume they will also get emails before expiry that will tell them they need to do something to continue with this Packaged Bundle.

[brian!]

Thanks for the great response and alternative idea, I will have a tinker with it to see how it may workout logically, but I don't think I want prospects to have to enter promotion-codes on ordering.

to avoid them having to enter the code, you can add promotion codes directly to your links...

 

http://docs.whmcs.com/Promotions#Promotion_Links

 

if you want the links generated in the cart to have the code added, you'd need to modify the template to add it - an example of doing that is shown below...

 

http://forum.whmcs.com/showthread.php?87986-Promotion-code-coupon-code-with-link&p=371094#post371094

 

exactly how will depend on which order-form template you're using - but if you try this and run into issues, just post back here.

 

As a new user of WHMCS I am finding some of the logic a little difficult to get my head around, especially as most products expiry are future dates, I struggling to work out how to test if what I am setting up will work as I think in the future.

in general, the important date to remember is the Next Due Date - this is the date used by the cron to trigger automated events, whether that be invoicing, reminders, suspension etc... although, of course, termination products won't necessarily have a next due date.

 

if you don't want to play with this on your live site, you can always contact support to obtain a free developers license - that would allow you to have a second installation, which you can only run for testing purposes, and would allow you to test your settings without impacting on your clients.

 

For example: I appreciate the user of this Bundle will get the invoice and welcome email, but after the 90days hosting, I assume they will also get emails before expiry that will tell them they need to do something to continue with this Packaged Bundle.

http://docs.whmcs.com/Products_and_Services#Pricing_Tab

 

they willl only receive an email, if setup in the product settings, at the termination of the account, e.g on day 90.

 

if you want to send them reminders before then, you could use the Email Marketer to send an email x days after the order date.

 

http://docs.whmcs.com/Email_Marketer

[WinterRG]

WOW, thanks for all your time, really appreciate it... Heaps to look at and work on there...

 

I haven't gone live live at all yet, so I am currently only working on the DevLic on the internal Dev Machine, I've just had a (good) habit of making heaps of backups of the database before I add/play with somehting new, so I can revert back if needed.