Subscription Manager

Subscription Manager 

New to Helcim, our revamped subscription manager! 

Create Plan

To create a brand new plan, click on All Tools, then Subscription Management, and Create New Plan.

You can start by naming your plan and adding a description, as well as deciding if you want to offer a free trial period. 

Free trials can be offered in a period of either Days or Weeks. 

Next, set your plan’s price and billing period. You can bill Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly or a Custom amount. 

You can also add a one-time setup fee for your plan.. The setup fee amount will be added to the plan’s first billing cycle.

Select a Billing Schedule for your plan, either the day of sign up or on a set date. 

• “On sign up” plans will bill the subscriber on their activation day, and then use this day to determine all future billings based on the selected billing period. 

  • For example, if your customer’s activation day is the 4th day of the month, for a monthly plan, they will be billed on the 4th of each month. 

• “Pick a day” plans will be billed based on the day that works best for your business. 

  • For example, if we want to be paid the 1st of each month for a monthly plan, select the 1st from the calendar.

Select how long you want customers to be billed.  Plans can run until they are canceled or for a set number of billing cycles defined by the customer’s subscription.

In the 'More Options' drop down you can select which payment types you want to accept for your plan. Either Credit Card, ACH or both. ACH will only be available if your business can accept ACH payments. For more information on ACH, click here. 

You can also decide the tax settings for the plan. You have the option to base the tax on your customer's location, on your location, or have no tax added to the plan. 

Tax will not show in the summary portion until a subscriber is added to the plan, based on the option selected above. Once a subscriber is added, you will see the tax amount in the Subscription Summary.

You can also adjust the notification settings. You can select to receive a transaction receipt for each transaction processed on the plan. You can also choose if you want to send this to customers. 

Selecting the Recurring Queue notification will send you a email logging all the payments on this plan on a given day. 

A summary of the plan will be displayed on the right hand side and will update as you make changes. Once you are happy with your plan and have entered all the necessary information, hit save and you’ll be ready to add subscribers! 

Add Subscribers

Once you have created your plan you can now add subscribers to it!

After your plan has been saved you will see the option to ‘Add Subscribers’.

You can also add subscribers to your plan by navigating to ‘All Tools’ and then selecting ‘Subscription Management’. Opening up the selected plan will provide the options to add subscribers.

If you select ‘Add a subscriber’ you will need to select which customer you want to add. If you don’t have a customer already in your database, you will need to add one in the Customer section of your Helcim account. For more information on adding customers, click here.

Once you have added a customer, you can select the applicable plan, subscription term length, and the activation date. 

A term length can only be selected for plans that expire. “Forever” plans will have this field disabled and you continue to run until canceled.

The subscriber's activation date can be today or a day in the future. If you have the plan set to bill on a specific date you can set the activation date to determine when this will be. 

• For example, if you add a subscriber  on the 12th February for a plan that bills on the 1st of every month but you don’t want the subscription to start until April you would set the activation date to April 1st. This would then be the first day of the subscription.

Next, select how you want the subscriber to pay by selecting Credit Card or Bank Payment. If the customer you add to the plan has payment information saved, the card or banking information will be autofilled.  If not, you will need to add their payment information in the Customers Section. 

Once a customer is added, if they have payment information saved, this will automatically populate.

Once you have filled out all the customer information, select ‘Save’! You will now have the option to add another subscriber if needed. 

Creating Add-Ons

You can create ‘add-on’ for your subscription plans from the Subscription Manager tool by selecting the Add-on option on the left hand side of your screen.

Create your add-on name, and description. You also have the option to allow your customers to select a quantity for your add-on.

Set pricing, and choose whether the add-on is a one time price, or added to the recurring total each cycle. One-time add ons will be added to the next payment only, while recurring add-ons will be added to all future payments.

The Summary on the right hand side will update with your selections. The next screen will allow you to link the add-on to a specific plan, or create a new add-on.

For add-ons to be available for subscribers, you must link the addon to the desired plan. To link the add-on to a plan, select a plan from the Subscription Manager, and click on the tab for Add-ons. Click on “Link add-ons”.

Select the add-on from your created list, or click the ‘create’ option at the bottom of the pop out window to create a new add-on.

Your add-on will be linked to the plan as shown below.

Create subscriptions with add-ons by selecting a plan with add-ons linked and selecting “Choose Add-on”

Select the add-ons for the subscription from the list of add-ons linked to that plan. Where an add-on has quantity enabled, a stepper will appear to make this selection.

View the timeline to confirm that the add-ons, one-time and recurring, are going to be billed as you expect, then add the subscriber.

View Subscriptions

You can view your list of subscriptions by going to ‘All Tools’, ‘Subscription Management', 'Subscriptions’. 

From here you can filter the list via plan or status of subscriptions. 

Clicking on a Subscription will open up the overview and billing history of the particular subscription.  

If you wanted to set a custom price per subscription you can edit this in this drawer. Click the pencil icon next to the amount. 

Selecting the 3 dots in the top right will open the action menu where you can edit, delete, cancel or pause the subscription.

Billing history will display all payments made towards the plan. 

If a customer misses a payment or the payment is declined for any reason, the status of the subscription will change to due.

Clicking into the subscription, you will see an option to 'retry' the declined payment or mark it as paid if you have collected alternative payment.

View or Edit Plans

All Tools, Subscription Manager, Plans will open up your list of plans. Selecting one will open up the plan overview as well as upcoming billing. 

You can edit the plan name and description by clicking on the pencil icons next to each field. The 3 dots in the top right will allow you to delete or deactivate the plan. You can also view the upcoming billing for your plan. 

Using Payment Links to have Customers Self-Subscribe

Payment Links (a.k.a. Recurring Payment Links) provide your customers the ability to create their own subscriptions, or add themselves to a subscription, without your manual assistance. 

There are two options for this:

1. You can create a payment link using our setup wizard, specifying what information you want to collect and which plans are available for customers to subscribe.

2. Or, customers complete the form themselves and provide payment information (card or ACH) that will be billed by the subscription.

   
   

How to use Payment Links

• On the Plan Overview screen, select Payment Link from the left hand side

• From this screen you can view previously sent links, or click on the button on the top right to create a New Payment Link

• • Default links are automatically created when a plan is created.

  • The default links have default theme and form fields; including contact name, email, and billing address (only if the plan is taxable based on customer location).

  • You can copy the default link directly from the overview screen, without needing to change these settings. The payment link is visible on the Payment Link list as plan name + (default)

• When creating a new link,  you can select up to three plans for customers to choose between.

• Next, you can build custom a Payment Link using the form builder to change the look, feel, and information presented. Actions that can be done here include:

  • Pick a theme colour

  • Add a logo

  • Edit the page description

  • Add new fields (only name and email are required by default, unless the plan is taxed based on the customer's location, then billing address is required)

  • Drag-and-drop to arrange fields in the desired order

  • Make fields required

  • Edit the call-to-action button

  • Preview page

  • Save as draft

  • And finally, publish the link

• Share your payment link by copying the link! The link can be copied from the payment link table, the detail drawer or, for default links, directly from the plan overview.

• If you are adding a customer manually, you can open the link as a customer to select a plan, and fill in the required fields.

• Then, enter the payment information into the pop up and create the subscription. This will add them to the plan.

Using Customer Portal

Customer Portal allows your customers to manage their own subscriptions.

Customer Portal can be enabled for subscriptions using the Customer Portal Settings in the Subscription Manager tool:

To enable this:

1. Click on Customers (either on the left hand side of your screen, or through clicking All Tools > Customers)

2. Select the gear icon in the top right corner of the Customer overview page

3. Click on Customer Portal settings

4. Navigate to Subscriptions within the settings options, and enable subscriptions

   

5. Choose which plans you would like to allow customers to subscribe to by selecting "Allow Subscribing”

6. If you want customers to have the ability to unsubscribe to subscriptions, select "Allow Cancelling" for those plans.

By enabling any plans to be subscribed to in the customer portal, the Subscriptions menu will automatically appear in the Customer Portal.

Creating Plan Add-On for Customer Portal

To allow for a plan to include Add-On options, after creating your Add-On you will need to link the individual Add-On to your plan.

Within Customer Portal settings, select ‘Allow managing add-ons’.

Next, when your customer selects the plan within the Customer Portal, they will be able to see the available Add-Ons when joining the plan.

A customer can edit add-ons for a plan where "allow manage add-ons" is enabled in the Subscription Manager Customer Portal setting as well.