Automate Recurring Payment using Stripe

Notes: Check, request access to this feature by contacting us via support ticket.

Automate Payment Process

You can connect your stripe account and set up account to receive recurring payment (weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly) once your proposals is signed.

Set up Initial Payment Option

First step to set up recurring payment is to select right payment option when you create a proposal. 

Note: If you select % of Proposal Price, and client pays advance amount, you will not be able to set up or collect recurring payment for a given proposal. So, select this option carefully if you want to set up recurring payment.

Set up Recurring Charge Types in Fee Table

Recurring Fee Charge Type

An interesting thing about software product is knowing how it used or expected to be used. We as the software provider, intends to address the highly painful or common challenges. As the user base grows and users start exploring products for their businesses, new areas/challenges emerge. Managing, handling different use cases in a product becomes another challenge.

Different kinds of products and services are pitched through Fresh Proposals software. Accommodating different product/services pricing especially while collecting payments can get complex. We kept receiving request to build such functionality to collect varied recurring payment options.

As a step towards collecting advance payments of different kinds of recurring products/ services, we are introducing recurring fee charge types.

• Perpetual recurring fee
• Tenured recurring fee
• Tenured recurring fee with multiple quantities

• Perpetual Recurring Fee

To understand perpetual fee, you can think of your Netflix or Amazon Prime subscription. When you start a Netflix subscription, it is expected to keep renewing unless you cancel it. Same goes for Electricity/power supplies or postpaid mobile/phone plan. Similarly, when you specify any given repeating service with charge type as perpetual, you imply that the given service will keep going unless cancelled/ stopped by either party.

Until this update, Perpetual charge for the recurring fee has been the default one and the only charge type available.

• Tenured Recurring Fee

When you go for any coaching/ training or therapy, it is supposed to be limited period exercise. Your proposed recurring services like this are the right candidate for tenured charge. (limited duration like 8 weeks or 2/ 6 months, or 2 years)

It looks like this

• Tenured Recurring Fee with Multiple quantities

If you want to offer multiple quantities of limited period recurring service, this charge type is suitable for your service. e.g. 3 training sessions x 4 months)

As you change the Charge Type of the recurring fee, the fee table columns will also change to indicate the fee charge type.

Also note, recurring charge type is applicable to Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly recurring fee. Payment gateways/ processors such as Stripe do not support hourly fee as ‘recurring’ charges hence hourly recurring fee will not have such charge type in Fresh Proposals.

Client View of Recurring Fee Payment 

Recurring payment schedule as seen by client (or preview)

Taking a close look at the left panel of the popup shown above

Depending on the initial payment option you have set for the proposal, client is displayed payment amount and the estimated schedule of recurring payment.

e.g.  (a) If you set option to collect % of fixed fee only, client will be billed % of non-recurring fee only when s/he makes proposal advance payment. There will be no recurring payment collected with this option.

(b) you set option to collect First instance of monthly fee along with % of fixed fee, client will be billed for the first month along with % of non-recurring fee when s/he makes proposal advance payment.

In above two cases, as a proposer, you can confirm recurring payment schedule in Proposal Summary. 

Once client has made the advance / initial payment, you would receive email notification. You can view the proposal summary and head to update payment integration.

Don't see this button?

If you do not see this button to 'Set up Payment Schedule', it can be because of two reasons

1. Client has not made advance payment

2. Proposal status is not 'Signed' meaning proposal is not completely executed by all parties.

Let’s say, client paid advance amount in the middle of the month and you would like to schedule the recurring payment on specific date e.g. first of each month (for monthly/ yearly fee). You can schedule the billing on specific date as shown below.

Once you confirm the schedule, there are few things that Fresh Proposals software will perform in the background, such as adding product & subscription to your Stripe account.

View Confirmed Recurring Payment Schedule for a given proposal

Once you click on the View Payment Schedule button, a popup will display list of recurring payment scheduled, with fee name, its dates, amount and whether it is active or not.

Email notification – Confirmed recurring payment schedule

Once you set up and confirm the recurring payment schedule, client will be informed about it via email. This is to ensure greater transparency and avoid chargebacks for your account.

Auto-saving recurring fee to Fee library

Part of the fee information such automatically added recurring fees are non-editable because they are linked to a recurring product in Stripe which possibly has a recurring schedule associated with it.

Stripe Linked Recurring Fee in Fee Library

When you try to add a fee from Fee library to a fee table in proposal or template, you will see if it is linked to Stripe or not. If it is linked to Stripe, you will not be able edit its name or description, but you will be able to change its price, quantity, etc. This is because Stripe allows you to have same product name & id with different/multiple prices.

Updates to your Stripe account 

As you set up recurring charges in your proposal, and client agrees to pay those charges. When a recurring payment schedule is confirmed for a given proposal/ engagement letter, your Stripe account is updated to have 

1. Recurring subscription product(s)
2. Recurring payment schedule(s)

Recurring subscription product(s)

Scheduled Recurring Payment Schedule Billing

Once you confirm schedule of the recurring payment, Fresh Proposals software creates subscription with a billing schedule in your connected Stripe account.

Subscription schedule details

You can view details of the schedule of the recurring fee set up for a given client.

Chargebacks

If there is any instance of chargeback for payment processed using this Stripe integration, your account will be subjected to penalty/ charges as per the terms of services of Stripe. Please contact Stripe directly if you have questions or concerns about the chargebacks.