Getting started with Recurring Payments

Overview

Helcim’s Recurring Payments is a tool that helps small and medium-sized businesses automate and manage recurring payments with ease. This guide will walk you through how to set up customized billing cycles, automate payments, and offer a variety of payment options like ACH to support subscriptions, memberships, and service plans.

By the end of this guide, you'll have everything you need to create predictable revenue streams without the complexity of enterprise solutions, ensuring your costs remain both predictable and transparent

Key features of Helcim Recurring Payments

Helcim's Recurring Payments offers a range of features designed to simplify your subscription management while maintaining predictable costs and a smooth customer experience:

Customizable billing cycles: Set up tailored plans with flexible billing options, such as monthly or yearly payments.

Automated payment processing: Easily collect payments through ACH or credit cards, saving time and effort.

Dunning management (aka Payment recovery): Automatically retry failed payments to ensure smooth revenue recovery.

Add-ons & one-time setup payments: Offer additional services or charge onboarding fees for new subscribers.

Payment links for easy sign-ups: Share simple links with customers to allow self-sign-up, making onboarding a breeze.

Subscriber management: Easily manage and adjust subscriptions, including pausing or canceling plans as needed.

Transparent pricing: Unlike other providers, Helcim’s Recurring Payments keeps things simple with no monthly fees or hidden costs—merchants only pay +0.40% on top of their standard online credit card and ACH transaction rates.

How to create a plan

• To create a plan, on your Helcim dashboard start by navigating to All Tools > Recurring > Create New Plan

• Next, add the basic information for your plan, including the name, description, price, and optional free trial (in days or weeks).

• Then, set the amount and the billing frequency. You can choose between Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, or Custom—and, if desired, add a one-time setup fee for the first billing cycle or upon sign-up. This information will be visible to your customers.

  

• Once done, scroll down to set the billing schedule and plan duration:

  • Billing Schedule:

    • On sign-up: Customers are billed when added to the plan.

    • Pick a day: Select a specific day for billing (e.g., 15th of the month).

  • Duration:

    • Forever: Plan continues until canceled.

    • Expire: Set a specific number of billing cycles

• If the plan is set to Pick a day, then the subscription will be billed a prorated amount between the activation date and the official billing date.

Prorated bill example

If the plan is set to bill on the 1st of the month, but the subscriber becomes active on the 21st, they will be billed for the number of days remaining in the month.

• To configure payment methods, tax settings, terminal selection, and notification preferences, click on More Options.

  • Payment method: Choose between credit card, ACH payments or both.

  • Tax settings: Decide if tax is based on the customer’s location, your location, or is tax-free.

  • Terminal selection: Choose the terminal you want the plan to process on. (Canadian merchants: this means you can select a USD terminal for the plan.)

  • Notification Settings: Choose to receive transaction receipts and recurring payment logs via email.

• Once you’re happy with your set-up, check the summary on the right as you make changes then click Save to finalize the plan and start adding subscribers!

NOTE: Tax will appear in the Subscription Summary once a subscriber is added to the plan.

How to add subscribers

• Great! You made a plan. Now it’s time to add your subscribers! You can do this by simply clicking on the Add Subscribers button on the right side after you successfully created a plan to add a subscriber to that specific plan. Or, if you want to add subscribers to a different plan, you can do this by navigating to Recurring> Subscriptions > Add New Subscriber.

  

• Then click on Add Customer and choose an existing customer from your customer list. If the customer isn’t in the database yet, add them in the Customer section of your Helcim account.

• Next, configure the Pricing for this subscriber.

  • Select a Plan Name from the dropdown

  • Select a preset Plan Price, or Custom to enter a custom amount

  • Under Setup fee the default fee will be filled. You can also enter a custom amount for this as well.

• After that, configure the Subscription Schedule for the subscriber

  • Term length: Available only for plans set to expire. “Forever” plans will run until canceled.

  • Activation date: Set to today or a future date. For plans with a specific billing date, the activation date determines when billing begins (e.g., setting an April 1st activation for a plan that bills on the 1st).

• Lastly, choose a Payment method: Credit Card or Bank Payment. If the customer already has payment information saved, it will autofill. Otherwise, add their payment details in the Customers section of your Helcim account

• After entering the subscriber’s details, click Add Subscriber. You can then add additional subscribers if needed.

• To let customers self-subscribe through a hosted page, go to Payment Links in your Recurring tool, select the plan, and copy the link provided.

How to create add-ons or link add-ons to plans

Add-ons are additional products or services that can be included with a subscription plan. For example, if a gym offers memberships, add-ons could include extras like shake powder, personal training sessions, or access to premium classes.

How to view or manage plans

To view or edit plans:

• Go to All Tools > Recurring > Plans

• Click a plan to see its overview and upcoming billing.

• Edit the plan name or description using the pencil icon.

• To manage this plan, use the three dots to delete or deactivate the plan.

To view subscriptions:

• Go to All Tools > Recurring > Subscriptions

• Use filters to sort subscriptions by plan or status.

• Click on a subscription to see its overview and billing history.

• To set a custom price, click the pencil icon next to the amount.

• To manage a specific subscription, use the three dots in the top right for actions like edit, delete, cancel, or pause.

Note: Customers may cancel their subscription but only merchants can pause a customer’s subscription.

Manage payments within recurring:

• The Billing history tab will show all payments for that subscription.

• If a payment fails, the status will change to due. Click Retry or mark it as paid if you’ve received alternative payment.

How to configure your Payment Links

A payment link is a customizable hosted page where customers can self-subscribe to your plans.

Accessing Payment Links

• On your Recurring tool, navigate to Payment Links

• View existing links or click New Payment Link to create a new one.

Note: A default payment link is created with each plan, including fields like name, email, and billing address (if taxable). Copy it from the overview or customize it under the Payment Links tab.

Customizing Payment Links

• You can create a payment link for a single plan or, select up to three plans for your customers to choose from.

• Use the form builder to customize appearance and information, such as:

  • Theme color, logo, and page description.

  • Add or rearrange fields (e.g., name, email).

  • Edit the call-to-action button.

• Save as a draft, preview, or publish the link.

Adding a custom redirect after payment

After your customer uses your payment link to subscribe to a plan, you can send them to a custom URL of your choice.

To set up a custom redirect:

• In the Recurring tool, select the Gear icon in the top-right corner

• Select the Payment links tab along the top of the screen

• Enter your URL of choice in the Payment confirmation URL field

• Click Save to confirm

If you don’t fill this in, the customer will remain on the same page after they hit Subscribe.

How to configure your Customer Portal

The customer portal lets customers manage their own subscriptions and view their invoices to use this with your subscriptions and plans.

• To access your customer portal, click the gear icon on the top right corner of your Recurring tool, then select Customer Portal.

• Here, you can select which plans customers can subscribe to by checking Allow Subscribing, or unsubscribe from by checking Allow Canceling. You can also enable Allow Managing Add-Ons so customers can view and manage available add-ons when choosing a plan.

  

How to configure your dunning management settings

Dunning management helps manage subscription payments by updating expiring cards, requesting new payment information for failed transactions, and retrying declined payments for cards and ACH.

Accessing dunning management settings

• Go to All Tools > Recurring. Click the gear icon in the top-right corner then select Dunning Management from the menu.

Prevent failed payments

Toggle this setting on to send reminder emails before subscription renewals, request updated card details, or set follow-up actions for overdue payments.

• Send reminder emails:

  • You can set up automatic emails to notify customers a few days before their subscription renews. Click Edit Template to customize the email message.

• Request updated card details:

  • Automatically ask customers for updated card info 30 days before their card expires.  Click Edit Template to customize the email message

  

Request new payment information

Toggle this setting on to request updated payment information from customers when their original payment didn’t push through.

Adjust the settings to specify how many days past the due date to wait before taking action.

If payment isn’t received by the set time, you can automatically change the subscription or invoice status to Due, Paused, or Canceled. This ensures that subscriptions are paused if payments are missed for a specified period.

Retry failed payments

Toggle this setting on to retry payments for credit card payments and ACH payments. You can also specify the status (e.g., Canceled) if retries fail and send customers an email before each retry attempt.

When toggled on, there are three configuration routes for automatic retries whenever failed transactions occur. You can choose from:

• Speed: Retries at 3, 5, and 7 days after the due date.

• Success: Retries at 7, 14, and 21 days after the due date.

• Custom: Set your own retry intervals.

Note: ACH plans retries occur only if a failure is due to insufficient funds, with a single retry 7 days after the original failure. Other issues won’t trigger retries.