#Jaba
rotund burrow
winged falcon
Hi 👋
This is largely a decision for you to make, based on how you want to model your products.
Are there questions or concerns that you have that I can provide guidance to that will help you in making that decision?
midnight cove
I guess i could use a hand deciding which way to go. My lessons are split up into types (price bands given lesson cohort size). On the one hand I could make a new product for every lesson instance, or have a single product for each lesson band. It'd be handy to get some experienced input on the best design strategy 😅 i.e. if there are any pitfalls going one way or the other
would there be a way to attach a lesson_id to a product at the checkout stage so I can track which transactions were for which lessons (without creating a separate product for each lesson?)
winged falcon
Most of our objects support a field called metadata where you can store data that is important to your flows that isn't relevant to Stripe's processes. You can read more about that here:
https://stripe.com/docs/api/metadata
It's hard to give guidance without knowing the full scope of your flows, that you will have the more context on. Lumping all of your classes in the same band under a single Product may be easier for creating the checkout process as you have less Products to manage, but that adds complexity to the fulfillment side of your flow as you'll need to have logic to determine exactly what class to grant access to. Conversely, using a distinct Product for each specific class adds complexity to the front-side of the flows as it increases the Product management burden, but it will make fulfillment easier as payments will be associated with specific classes already. You'll also want to think about your reporting requirements, and what kind of grouping would be beneficial there. It's always easier to provide more broad reporting from granular details than it is to provide granular reporting from broad details.
midnight cove
wow! Thanks for such a speedy and comprehensive answer! I see what you're saying. There'll be some complexity somewhere it just depends if i want it in my app or in stripe. Tbh reporting is something i've not really thought about, so thanks for bringing it up! In terms of reporting what tend to be the key pieces of information i need to report? Just wondering if that'll help steer me in terms of which way to go and whether or not should be keeping all the stripe payment data around or what are the fields i need to make sure i track
winged falcon
Reporting is something that is pretty far from our area of focus, so I'm really not sure on that. Do you have a legal advisor or accountant who can help you understand what you have to report? I'm not sure if reporting is typically driven by legal requirements, or business use-cases.
We primarily focus on helping answer questions about our API and how to use it.
midnight cove
haha yeah that's fair enough, it's a touch out of the scope. 😅 tbh my project is still very early stages and I don't think will scale to a point of needing to report for a good while (if ever) but just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be shooting myself in the foot if i went one way or the other
is there a limit to how man products you can have on stripe either live at once or total (historic and currently live)?
winged falcon
Totally understand, and personally I'm really glad you're thinking about these things early. It can be a pain to refactor later on.
Nope, there is no limit to the number of products that you can create.
midnight cove
in that a case i guess there's no harm in keeping every lesson as it's own product and just creating them with an api call when they get created on my site. That way I always have the stripe transactions to the exact lessons rather than just general "They paid for a lesson of type X".
Thanks so much for your help, and speedy responses! I'm always a little dubious about reaching out for help given it can take so long to get a response sometimes but you've restored my faith! 😅 Hope you have a great rest of your day and weekend 🙂
winged falcon
Happy to help! Thank you for the kind words, they are truly appreciated. Hope you have a great weekend as well.