I have an App in the Shopify App store that uses a recurring application charge. No problems there.
Sometimes, one of my users will make a suggestion to improve the app. I would like to reward them with a free month of using the app without being charged.
Based on the Shopify API, The only thing I can think of is to cancel the current recurring application charge, create a new charge for $0, then a month later cancel that charge and create new one for the original price. This is far from ideal. I believe that the user would need to accept every new charge that is created.
Is there a better way? Any suggestions?
Agreed that that sounds pretty far from ideal.
If you create a new recurring app charge with a 30 day trial period, Shopify will change the customer over to this new charge while respecting the trial period. The customer will still see a prorated charge for the partial payment cycle before you “upgraded their plan” after the trial is up, but this will effectively do what you want.
As of 2017 there is now an API for granting credits to merchants using your app:
https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/using-the-shopify-api-to-credit-merchants-for-app-charges
https://help.shopify.com/api/reference/applicationcredit
Related
In the case when the shop has the RecurringApplicationCharge for example with a 30-day recurring charge. The RecurringApplicationCharge was created on for example August 01, and the application was removed on August 15.
As I understood from Shopify documentation, Shopify platform will automatically remove the RecurringApplicationCharge, but what happened with the refund? Does the Shopify automatically refund for the not used days? Or this part is the responsibility of the application owner?
Any information will be helpful I'm trying to find some clear description/documentation what exactly happens after the application was uninstalled.
Application using the latest Shopify REST API (https://shopify.dev/docs/admin-api/rest/reference/billing/recurringapplicationcharge?api[version]=2020-07).
Uninstalling apps with recurring charges
Make sure that you consider app billing cycles when you plan to uninstall an app. Recurring app charges are generated the first time an app charge is approved, and then on the first day of an app's billing cycle. Because of this, a charge will appear on your bill even if you uninstall an app only a day or two after you install it.
Shopify themselves will not refund the amount. There is no procedure for the same. Me being an APP creater has faced the same issue. The only way here is the App creator pays the amount back to the merchant if they decide to Uninstall the App.
Here are few documentations that may help you understand better:
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/your-account/manage-billing/your-invoice/apps
https://shopify.dev/tutorials/charging-for-your-app-with-rest-admin-api-concepts
I have my app in production working great! Now a feature that I would like to add is to extend a user's free trial period depending on if they take a specific action. Is there a way to do this manually? How about programmatically? Thanks, Lucas.
You won't be able to modify a charge but you have two options (both through the API):
If the trial has not ended then you could create another charge with a new trial period and ask the merchant to accept that. Once the new charge is activated it will replace the old charge.
If the trial ended then you could give the merchant an application credit in lieu of a longer trial.
I want to add some unit tests for our billing system which is using braintree but I don't know how to change the subscription period from 1 month (minimum in braintree for now) to 1 day. I cannot wait 1 month to execute my test. is there any solution to do that?
I recently asked Braintree support a similar question and here is the advice I was given:-
The sandbox environment is setup to mimic the production environment exactly. Unfortunately, this leaves us at the mercy of real time as well. However you can definitely test the subscription_charged_unsuccessfully and subscription_went_past_due webhooks in the sandbox by creating a past due subscription using the steps below:
Create a plan with a 1 day trial and $2000 price (a test amount that will automatically simulate a decline)
Create a customer with a credit card
Create a new subscription using the plan and customer
The first charge attempt will be after 1 day (when the trial expires) and will fail
The automatic retries will be at +10 and +20 days of the subscription going past due – this timeline can be changed by updating the recurring billing retry logic in your Control Panel
You could also test the subscription_charged_successfully webhook using the same basic principles – simply create a plan with a 1 day trial and a price less than $2000.
I hope that helps.
I work at Braintree. Feel free to reach out to support#braintreepayments.com with any further questions.
You can't modify the subscription billing period to shorter then a month. Sandbox is designed to mimic production for end-to-end testing and since Braintree doesn't offer subscription billing in smaller increments then a month we have decided to not offer a shorter billing period in sandbox.
I'm looking for a way to allow our clients to do recurring payments to discount these payments based on the credit in their account which can be earned or deposited in many ways. For example, if they need to pay $20 and have $5 in credit, I would like to only bill the remaining $15 automatically without any need for additional website visits.
Looking at the documentation for PayPal's REST APIs, I don't see any clear way to do this. Is the only way to do this to send them a refund automatically? Or is there a way to get approved to bill clients up to X amount per month but allow us to bill under that amount. I thought billing agreements would allow for this, but after reading the documentation, I'm unable to figure out a way to do it. If it's possible, could someone walk me through what API calls would be needed to do this?
Thanks for any help you can offer.
There are a couple of different ways you could do this sort of thing, but I would avoid the REST API for now. It's still too new and doesn't provide as much functionality and features as the classic API.
Within the classic API, you can use either use Preapproved Payments, which consists of Preapproval and Pay APIs, or you could just use Express Checkout and/or Payments Pro with Reference Transactions.
Either way you'd basically be building your own recurring payments system where you'd setup a billing agreement and then your app would trigger the variable amount payments accordingly.
I've written a subscription based web app that I want to charge (by credit card) a monthly fee. There are 3 different plans and once they sign up, they should be billed that amount, automatically, every month until they cancel. Is there an easy way to set this up (some sort of online service maybe?).
You can use Paypal's merchant service to provide reoccurring charges for a subscription.
Pretty easy to implement, they provide plenty of examples and even a sandbox to get you up and running.
There are now some service providers that take care of your billing and subscription needs. You use their API and they handle billing and subscriptions for you. Their services work with payment systems like PayPal and Authorize.Net.
Take a look at the following sites:
Chargify
Spreedly
Cheddargetter
I would suggest not using Paypal or Authorize's recurring payments directly. Their APIs are brutal, and the functionality is very rudimentary. It may work fine for when you're just starting out, but if you ever want to change anything down the line, you'll be in trouble.
I work for CheddarGetter, so I'm biased, but you should check us out.
Our competitors are not as robust or flexible, but they are definitely better than using Paypal or Authorize.net directly.