New to the community? Start here

Membership 2 Pro: payment option with expiring soon message

Hi,

I’ve set up a message to go to subscribers to my site to alert them when their membership is due. This is going out 7 days before the payment due date – I have used payment date as the trigger, rather than the subscription expiry, though they should be the same.

If they have subscribed via PayPal standard gateway, their payment should be made automatically by PayPal and the data passed via the IPN URL should log this fact. So the alert is letting them know that this will happen and to update their payment method if need be.

However, some people pay off site and I want to prompt them to subscribe via the PayPal gateway. These people have a “paid” invoice that triggers the payment due email. They also have a “new” invoice for when they are due to pay. From my test, the “new” invoice is being used in the email.

My question is, when I go to the /account page for my test account, there is no link for subscribing. There is a link to an invoice, but this is the “paid” invoice and opening it does not give a subscribe link either. Presumably the “new” invoice will appear on the account page on the payment date. Is it better to wait until then to send the alert? If people can only pay on the payment date or after, why send a reminder in advance?

Is there a manual anywhere explaining how to use these features that you can direct me to? If not, can you explain what I need to do to give people a payment option?

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 17:14:21
  • Michael Bissett
    • Recruit

    Hey @Mike, hope you’re doing well today! :slight_smile:

    Is it better to wait until then to send the alert?

    You could send it earlier, to give your users a heads up that they’ll need to switch over to a PayPal subscription at that point in time.

    If people can only pay on the payment date or after, why send a reminder in advance?

    You could use it to let them know that there’s an upcoming payment (so that they’re aware of the charge in advance, and if they decide to cancel), though it does seem possible for folks to pay sooner (if given the direct link to the “New” invoice)… let me ask the developer for his feedback on the matter, just in case there’s something else going on here. :slight_smile:

    Kind Regards,

    Michael

  • Mike
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    Hi Michael,

    I’ve had a look at editing the “account” page to see if I can add the “New” invoice, for the upcoming payment, but it is not controlled there. There is only the shortcode [ms-membership-account].

    However, I’ve noticed the email includes the shortcode %ms-invoice% – this has included the “New” invoice in my test email, which gives the payment due date of 31 August 2015 (which is correct). I’ve clicked on the link to the invoice and it opens in the browser with the “subscribe” button. So far, so good. However, when I click on the “subscribe” button, the date passed to PayPal for the subscription is today’s date (24 August), not the date when the payment is due. This is not very satisfactory as there is still a week to run on the subscription plan.

    Is there any way to ensure the “payment due” date is sent to PayPal?

  • Michael Bissett
    • Recruit

    Hey @Mike, thanks a bunch for your patience here! :slight_smile:

    I’ve had a look at editing the “account” page to see if I can add the “New” invoice, for the upcoming payment, but it is not controlled there. There is only the shortcode [ms-membership-account].

    Correct, the output of the content is rendered via shortcode. :slight_smile:

    I’ve sent off another note to the developer on this (developers tend to have a lot on their hands), to get his feedback on the matter of those “New” invoices.

    On this though:

    However, when I click on the “subscribe” button, the date passed to PayPal for the subscription is today’s date (24 August), not the date when the payment is due. This is not very satisfactory as there is still a week to run on the subscription plan.

    Is there any way to ensure the “payment due” date is sent to PayPal?

    I would think it could be done with custom development, the reason PayPal’s doing this though is that it creates a plan based on the payment date (the only exception being trials, since there’s a trial period that takes place, after which, the payment gets charged).

    You’d definitely be welcome to open a feature request for this over here:

    https://wpmudev.com/forums/forum/feature-suggestions#question

    Kind Regards,

    Michael