king_subscription-once | Stripe Developers | Page 1

remote gyroBOT Jun 10, 2024, 4:17 PM

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rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 4:21 PM

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@severe basin A Subscription is for recurring payments. If you take only one payment and never charge again it's not really a Subscription. In that case it's really a "one-time payment" so you should write code that accepts a payment, no Subscription involved: https://docs.stripe.com/payments/accept-a-payment

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king_subscription-once

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 4:25 PM

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the reason we have to create a subscription instead of a one time payment is because we can not offer our customers a 30 day trial as we want to do in the one time paymeny, therefore we need a subscription i assume, but the subscription can also be charged first month for the base fee, because the next months forward, it will be a base fee + performance fee and we would have to create that invoice manual since we do not know before the month end how much actually need to be charged. What solutions do we have?

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 4:25 PM

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Sorry I read this twice but don't really get what that means. This seems like a completely different question to me now and I'm a bit lost with what you are asking.

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 4:26 PM

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please clarify what you are unsure about

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 4:28 PM

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The whole thing you wrote. You mentioned a trial with no context, you also mentioned custom pricing and the first question was about just taking one payment. It feels like multiple separate questions and I don't get your pricing model at all.
If you could clearly explain an exact playment flow of when the customer pay what, I should be able to explain a flow that works on Stripe. It'd help if you also explain how you integrate today as there are dozens of ways to integrate our product!

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 4:30 PM

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i will, few minutes please

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 4:30 PM

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sure thing!

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 4:36 PM

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we have no flow set up today, we are new to stripe.

there are 2 options I found.

1, offer a one time payment where we save the customers card on file so we later can charge a custom priced invoice, in this option, we need a solution for how to add trial to one time payments in checkout page so its being displayed and working correctly, it should be 30 days trial after the customer have paid in checkout.

or option 2
offer a subscription in stripe where the subscription get canceled after first time charge and then we keep invoicing with manual charges on ”autocharge” with the customers card on file. with this method we can add a trial but have no solution for how to automatically cancel the subscription for each customer once its charged first time.

requirements:

we need to offer a trial before they actually pay, (they have to enter their card details though)
we need it to only be charged once, the product catalog fee we set up, that is the starter fee, all other months moving forward it will be a custom price for each unique customer.

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 4:38 PM

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Okay let's take this one bit at a time.

it should be 30 days trial after the customer have paid in checkout.
I don't understand what that could mean and it's likely because we use the vocabulary differently. In Stripe a "trial" is a temporary period at the beginning of the Subscription where you don't pay for the recurring price.
If you have a $10/month Price with a trial of 10 days then on June 10 you are subscribed and pay $0 and on June 20 the trial ends and you pay $10 and then on July 20 and August 20, etc. until you cancel the Subscription.

Can you please clarify what you are talking about if there's a trial of 30 days but a payment upfront and no payment later?

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 4:42 PM

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let’s follow your example, on June 10 they start the trial, if they don’t cancel they get charged when the trial ends 10 days later on June 20, but here, the subscription should end and they should be billed manually in the next coming months forever, because we have a static subscription in stripe, and the amount they owe us in July may be $366, in August maybe $72, in September maybe $192, therefore we need to do manual invoicing after first charge

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 4:47 PM

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Okay so they pay nothing upfront?

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 4:49 PM

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it should be free trial and the first charge should be after that trial with the price we have in product catalog

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 4:51 PM

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Okay so as far as I can tell you seem to really just be starting a normal Subscription except you charge a variable price each billing cycle right?

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 4:52 PM

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yes for each customer, a variable/unique price on the second month and forward

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 4:56 PM

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This sounds like https://docs.stripe.com/products-prices/pricing-models#variable-pricing to me
So really you never want to cancel the Subscription. You want to write code that decides each month how much your customer should be billed right?

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 4:57 PM

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yes but no experience with code, no money to outsource this

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 4:59 PM

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How do you plan to do this without any code but also without doing it by hand in the Dashboard?

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:00 PM

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i could do it by hand in dashboard, but no experience with code

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 5:01 PM

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Yeah I'm confused because you said

we have too many customers to do this manually and ending the subscription each time a customer got charged will require too much time
in your original question

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But yeah honestly you need to build this, yourself, or pay someone to, or use a third-party billing system on top of Stripe that might fit your needs.

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:04 PM

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severe basin we have no flow set up today, we are new to stripe. there are 2 options I foun...

yes ending a subscription and manually charging is different, it would be double time. .

so none of those options above work? code is required you say?

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 5:04 PM

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I don't think there's any need to cancel at all. Each month, you will manually change the Subscription to go to a different Price to charge for a different amount, that seems to "just work"

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:07 PM

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the price will not be same for all, its performance based for each person we work with, means that some person may be charged product catalog fee + performance fee of $55 and another product catalog fee + performance fee of $80

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 5:10 PM

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How do you create the Subscription in the first place without code?

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:11 PM

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in product catalog > recurring payment

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 5:12 PM

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Okay so you do everything in the Dashboard? How do you collect their card details?

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:13 PM

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let me show

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here, save payment details for future use

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 5:17 PM

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Okay so you create a PaymentLink and that will save card details for future payments and start a Subscription that will renew automatically and then in the Dashboard you plan to manually go and change their Price each month?

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:18 PM

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plan to manually go and invoice each month, because we do not know how much should be charged before the month has ended and that’s the same day the subscription would be auto charged

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 5:19 PM

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I see, so there's no Subscription at all in your world. You will just decide when to charge their card based on what you calculate is right and it might not be on a set schedule because you might be away on a specific day or it's a Sunday and you will charge them the next day manually?

remote gyroBOT Jun 10, 2024, 5:20 PM

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severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:21 PM

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we have spreadsheet that is showing what day they should be charged, not really we are very serious and it will happen on the same day but things can always happen and get late, and that would screw everything up if they already got auto charged for wrong amount

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 5:23 PM

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Okay so honestly I don't think this is possible on Stripe unfortunately. Not without writing any code

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:24 PM

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no zapier automation or webhook that could manage this?

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 5:24 PM

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not that I can think of, at least nothing reasonable that wouldn't risk charging the customer incorrectly

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:25 PM

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i mean an automation to cancel the subscription each time it got charged first time per customer

rugged cairn Jun 10, 2024, 5:26 PM

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no I can't think of a reliable way to do this today sorry

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:26 PM

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if we delete the trial we could do the one time payment and then save card details for later payments, could we then charge the card later every 30 days by manual invoicing?

and how would the customer remove their card or cancel since it was a one time payment and we collected their card on file?

full sun Jun 10, 2024, 5:30 PM

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Hello! I'm taking over and catching up...

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You could do that, sure, but you also mentioned you had too many customers to do this manually, so I'm not sure how practical it is.

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:31 PM

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that was tailored towards canceling each subscription manually if we would go that route

full sun Jun 10, 2024, 5:31 PM

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The customers would either need to contact you so you could handle changes like removing their card manually or canceling, unless you were doing things supported by the Customer Portal, in which case you could create a Customer Portal session for them to use to manage things.

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:33 PM

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is there a fee if you try to create a manual invoice on autocharge and it doesn’t go through? if so how much fee?

full sun Jun 10, 2024, 5:34 PM

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We can't help with fees here; have a look at https://stripe.com/pricing for details.

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:35 PM

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okay, i know you just entered the chat and may not have all information since the start but we would really appreciate your help

full sun Jun 10, 2024, 5:38 PM

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I'm happy to help however I can, but there are some things we can't help with on Discord, such as pricing and fees. Our Discord server is designed for developers building Stripe integrations, and we usually focus on code, the API, webhooks, and that kind of thing.

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Based on the thread and what you've said so far you've really got two options: do everything manually in the Dashboard, or write custom code to automate it. There's not really any other approach.

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:39 PM

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the option ”do it in dashboard” didn’t really work he said koopajah

full sun Jun 10, 2024, 5:41 PM

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Yeah, because you said you have too many customers to make that practical.

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:42 PM

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yes we could do the invoicing manually but also canceling all subscriptions that already been charged once, i dont know about that, is there a filter for that in stripe? going into each transaction would be too time consuming

full sun Jun 10, 2024, 5:43 PM

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You would need to do them one at a time.

severe basin Jun 10, 2024, 5:43 PM

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oh

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thank you

#king_subscription-once