Problems with PayPal subscriptions

[ffeingol]

We starting to have a big issue with PayPal subscriptions and I'd like to know if anyone is running into this (and how you are dealing with it). As some background, we bill all clients monthly (i.e. all invoices are due on the 1st) and issue the invoices 7 days before month end. Some of the clients, however, forget that they have a PayPal subscription and pay the invoice when it's issued. The invoice payment is (of course) recorded in WHMCS as income and gets recorded in tblaccounts. A few days later the PayPal subscription comes through and this "second" payment goes onto their account as a credit. The credit is not recorded in tblaccounts and does not go onto the income report. I don't believe that this is the proper accounting handling of this (this should at least be deferred revenue).

 

My first "simple" solution was to request a variable that we can test in the invoice template to suppress the PayPal link if they have an active PayPal subscription. This prob. would not work however as each package can have a different payment method and they "could" have some packages setup with PayPal and some with PayPal subscriptions.

 

I'm leaning towards just disabling PayPal subscriptions but I'm wondering how everyone else is dealing with this.

 

TIA,

 

Frank

[uberhost]

The first line of defense is educating your clients, but of course this will still happen on occasion. We handle by advising the customer that they have made a payment even though there is an active subscription, and that they now have a credit in their account. To use the credit, they must cancel their subscription, let the credit pay the next invoice, then on the next month's billing they can create a new subscription.

 

In terms of a fix, perhaps Matt could have a separate email template for subscribers. Of course you could also add some verbiage to your current billing template that warns the customer not to take any action if they have a subscription active.

 

Regarding the income report, I know I don't care because I use QuickBooks, but I can see how it would disturb those not using an accounting program.

[ffeingol]

uberhost,

 

We don't use WHMCS for accounting, we have an accounting package for that Getting a bit off topic, but how to you extra info from WHMCS and get it into your accounting package?

[ethical]

yes this is a problem.

 

the problem with informing them in the invoice that that may have a subscription is most people don't know if they do or not! I already do that and still get people paying twice. We really have to make things as simple and foolproof as possible and right now its not.

 

Matt, would be great if you could add a code that can be added to an invoice email that tells the user if they have a suscription setup and/or disable the payment link as ffeingol has suggested.

[ffeingol]

This is not as easy as it seems as different products that the client has may be under different payment methods.

 

Frank

[ethical]

i would think a simple if statment (if there is a value for subscription id for a product) then print on the invoice you have a subscription setup so DO NOT PAY. If there are 2 products due on the same day and one has a subscription and the other doesn't then they should be created as separate invoices.

[ur]

DO NOT PAY could be confusing to some. I'd try some other wording before that.

Ethical's idea of separating invoices is probably the best approach and would make PayPal Subscriptions and payments discernible from each other.

[ffeingol]

I think our clients would go nuts with multiple invoices. They pretty much insist on all the products / services for a month be on one invoice.

[othellotech]

IThey pretty much insist on all the products / services for a month be on one invoice.

Then dont offer "subscriptions" as a payment method as its not compatible with that methodology.

[chickendippers]

If statements in emails will be available in version 3.7.0