Payment Plans
What are Payment Plans?
A Payment Plan helps to define the mechanism for receiving payment for a large purchase over a period of time. Sessions can be configured to allow Payment Plans and Members can then choose whether to use a Payment Plan when purchasing said Sessions.
How do Payment Plans work?
When a Member elects to use a Payment Plan when purchasing one or more Sessions, how and when the Member pays for their purchase changes. Without a Payment Plan, the Member is required to pay for their entire purchase immediately at checkout. With a Payment Plan, the amount due and when is updated according to the definition of the Payment Plan.
A Payment Plan can be configured with a discount incentive. In such cases, the applicable Sessions in the Member's cart are reduced in price based on the Payment Plan's discount value. For example, if a Session's value were to be $1,000 and the Payment Plan included a 5% discount, the updated value of the Session would be $950.
Additionally, Payment Plans also include the ability to choose the number of payments the Member must make and the frequency of those payments. For example, if a Session's value were to be $1,000 and the Payment Plan was configured for 4 equal quarterly payments, the Member would be required to pay $250 every 3 months, 4 times. A Payment Plan can be configured with only 1 payment. This is common for scenarios where the Organization wishes to incentivize Members to purchase an entire Session using a discount.
Furthermore, Payment Plans enable an up-front payment configuration. Specifically, a Payment Plan can be configured to require a certain percentage of the total value at time of checkout. For example, if a Session's value were to be $1,000 and the Payment Plan was configured for a 10% up-front payment, the Member would be required to pay $100 at checkout and the remainder of $900 based on the configured payment schedule.
Once a Payment Plan has been selected and a purchase completed, a payment subscription is created to match the configured payment schedule. For example, if a monthly payment schedule was created with 10 equal payments, then a payment subscription would be created to automatically retrieve payment from the Member each month. It is important to note that payments are retrieved on the first day of the matching month. It is also important to note that subscription payments are retrieved from the same credit card that was used for the initial purchase.
While a Payment Plan can be configured for a certain number of payments (intervals), the Season timeframe is important. Specifically, a Payment Plan must conclude at or before the completion of a Season. For example, assume a Session is purchased with a Payment Plan that requires 10 monthly payments, but there are only 6 months left in the Season. In this scenario, the payments would still be monthly, but the number of payments (intervals) would be based on the remaining time.
If the corresponding Session was configured with taxation, the subscription amount will be taxed on each interval.
Cancellation
In the event that a Session is cancelled, the corresponding payment subscription will also be cancelled. No funds are returned to the Member; the subscription simply ceases. Specifically, there is no proration on the cancellation. For example, if the cancellation occurs in the middle of a billing period, the Member is not returned funds for the remaining portion.
Archiving
Payment Plans cannot be deleted. This is to ensure integrity of captured data. As a result, Payment Plans may only be archived. Once archived, a Payment Plan will no longer be usable or visible in any user interface unless archived Payment Plans are explicitly chosen.
Permissions
The "payment plan reader" Role is required to view Payment Plan details. The "payment plan contributor" Role is required to modify Payment Plan details.
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