Once you have a Self-Service Portal enabled by Stax Bill Onboarding or Support, you can manage certain settings for the subscriptions your customers will see when they log in. Go to the Portals page and click on Details to see the settings for each portal.
Renewals
The Renewals section allows you to control whether your customers can renew their subscriptions directly from the SSP. Typically this is used only if your subscriptions come with expiry dates.
- Show Button = On or Off to determine if the "Renew Now" button is displayed to your users
- Button Text = defaults to say "Renew Now" - you can change the text to whatever you choose
- Monthly Delay
- Always Show = the Renew Now button is always shown for each subscription, regardless of when the expiry occurs
- Specify = You can choose the number of days before expiry that the Renew Now button appears; at all other times, it will be invisible.
- Yearly Delay has the same options as Monthly Delay but will apply to annual subscriptions.
Cancellations
The Cancellations section allows you to control whether your customers can self-cancel their subscriptions via the SSP or not. Most Stax Bill customers choose not to enable this option, instead requiring their subscribers to contact them in case of cancellation and in hopes of "saving" the account; however, you may find, especially if you are selling directly to consumers, that the volume of cancellations happening in your customer base is too large to handle manually. In this case, you can allow your customers to cancel independently.
- Show Button = On or Off to determine if you will allow this option for your users or not
- Button Text = Defaults to say "Cancel Subscription" - you can change the text to whatever you choose
- Financial = These are the same financial options you give when you cancel a subscription through the Stax Bill Admin UI. They govern whether any charges will be reversed when a subscriber cancels their subscription. Note that you must process a refund manually; the reversal will simply leave funds on deposit. See How Do I Do a Refund? for more information.
- Earn all charges = The subscription's charges will be fully earned, and no charges will be reversed for the customer. There will be no funds on deposit.
- Reverse unearned amounts of all charges = The subscription's charges will be reversed in a prorated manner based on the earning settings of each subscription product. The amount will vary depending on whether they earn daily or monthly, as configured in the catalog. See Managing Earnings for more information.
- Reverse all charges fully = All charges will be reversed in full, and the full value of the subscription will be deposited in the subscriber's account. You can then process a full refund if desired.
- Warning Message = This message appears in a pop-up when the subscriber clicks the Cancel button. You can customize it with your own text.
Migrations
The Plan Relationships section allows you to configure which migration paths you wish to make available to your subscribers via the SSP.
You will see a list of all configured Plan Relationships in the grid from your Catalog. Use the buttons on the left-hand side to select multiple relationships and click Available or Not Available to make them appear or disappear from the SSP. You can also use the individual buttons on the right-hand side to make them available or not. You can also use the filter fields at the top of the section to narrow your selections.
Once configured, your customers' SSP will present them with valid migration paths. When the migration happens, it will use all the settings configured in the Catalog to determine how the migration will happen. See Managing Relationships for more information.
Customizing Migration Settings
Click the Details button next to an available relationship to customize the look and feel of the migration "card" that appears on the SSP. The Details dialog will be displayed as shown below.
- The Scheduling option allows you to choose whether this migration path will always happen Now (when the user clicks the button) or on the Next billing period. The default is to Allow customers to choose, which then presents the user with the same two choices. Some examples of how you might use these options:
- The choice for a free trial conversion should usually be "Next billing period" since the user will want to enjoy the full benefit of their free trial period before upgrading to a paid subscription. In this case, you would choose the Next billing period in the settings.
- For an upgrade, you may want to allow your user to choose the timing of the upgrade, so you are offering a more flexible buying solution. In this case, you would leave the setting at Allow customer to choose.
- For a frequency change (e.g. moving from monthly to annual), you might always want them to do this on the next billing period so that the accounting works out nicely, especially if you are not pro-rating the charges between one and the other.
- The Force Payment Method Capture setting controls whether you require a (default) payment method to be on file in the customer's account once this migration path is complete. The default is On, meaning the customer cannot finish the migration path without providing a default payment method if one does not already exist. (Note that this setting has no impact if a default payment method is already on file.) This is particularly handy for free trial conversions where a payment method may not have been captured when the customer signed up for the free trial, but you need a credit card on file once they switch to a billable subscription. However, if all of your customers are on invoice terms, then you would not set this to On since your customers do not need a payment method on file to complete the migration path.
Customizing the Migration Card Layout
The rest of the options on this page allow you to customize the look and feel of the migration card displayed in the SSP. You will see a preview of the migration card at the right of the dialog as you change the contents.Show in Help Center
- Title Pixel Height controls the height of the top section of the migration card.
- Title Content is a rich text field that contains the text to put in the top section of the migration card. You can use the controls at the top of the box to include content items such as images, links, lists, etc.
- Description Pixel Height controls the height of the middle section of the migration card.
- Description is a rich text field that contains the text you want in the body of the migration card. You can use the controls at the top of the box to include content items such as images, links, lists, etc.
- The Button control allows you to customize the button's label for this migration card. Each migration type has its own default label, but you can customize the text for each specific relationship as required.
Migration Workflow on the SSP
Following is an example of the migration workflow on a customer's SSP.
- When the customer views their subscription(s), the list of valid migration paths will appear below the subscription's header, as shown below. In this case, the customer has already signed up for a Free Trial, and they can convert that free trial to either the "Zap Basic" or the "Zap Premium" plan.
- When the customer chooses a migration path (in this case, they chose "Zap Basic"), they can choose when they would like the new plan to be in effect - either now or on the next billing period. (For a free trial, usually, the customer would choose "next billing period" to receive the full value of their free trial.)
NOTE: You can force this setting to be one or the other (now or next billing period. - Next, the customer will be allowed to enter a payment method if they don't already have one. You can also allow them to choose "invoice me" if you don't want to force a payment capture.
NOTE: You can configure whether to force a payment method capture at this point in the migration or not.
- The customer will then be prompted to enter their payment method information. The payment types available will depend on which gateways you have configured in Stax Bill.
- Once the payment method is captured, customers can confirm their details and click Next.
- The customer will then be presented with a preview of the invoice they will receive for the new subscription and click Finish to complete the migration.
- Once completed, the customer will see that they now have a subscription to "Zap Basic." The list of valid migration paths shown at the bottom of the screen now shows whichever paths have been configured for the new plan. Customers could upgrade to Zap Premium or change to the Zap Basic annual plan if they wish.