Subscriptions

You will need to set up Products in your CRM that are of Subscription Type:

• Go to Inventory > Products.
• Click on New Product.
• Give the Product a Name and Part Number as you would normally.
• In the Type field, ensure that Subscription is selected.

Once you have made this choice in the Type field, you will notice that you are given a new field called Time Period – here you can select the frequency of the Subscription i.e. Hour, Day, Week, Month, Quarter or Year and enter in a value.

In the example below I am setting up an equipment hire Subscription that rolls over each month.

Just above this field we can see a check box for Is Contracted – selecting this will reveal new Contract Period fields where I can specify a time period for a contract, if applicable i.e. Hour, Day, Week, Month, Quarter or Year.

If I do not need to apply contract details to the Product, I can de-select the Is Contracted box. In this example I am going to set up a contract period of 1 year.

Note that these Products should have GL codes defined if your CRM is connected with an accounting system. You will also need to input all the standard fields that you would typically add for a Product e.g. Unit Sell Price, Cost Price, Tax Rates, Description etc.

Once you have finished inputting details you can click on Save & Close to create the new Subscription Product.

The Subscription will define how and when Invoices are generated.

• Initially the Renewal Due Date needs to be populated, and the next invoice renewal dates are automatically calculated based on the Paid Until Date.
• From this, Next Invoice Date and Due Date are calculated taking the customer payment terms into consideration.

If you have integrated your CRM with one of the payment gateway options, you will be able to use the Auto Pay feature on Subscriptions that allows you to add a payment method that can automatically be billed on the Invoice due date.

From Admin > General > Repeated Invoice Frequency you can configure which days the process will run in your database i.e. select the days you want it to run on by ticking the check-boxes.

Remember to scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Update to apply your changes.

There are a few ways to create a new Subscription:

• Go to Sales > Subscriptions and click on New Subscription.

• On a customer record (Company or Contact) use the arrows to scroll through the tabs and locate the Subscriptions tab and Add Subscription button.

When creating a new record, the following fields are mandatory for Invoices to be created from a Subscription:

• Plan – this is the product that shows on the Invoice.
• Status needs to be set to Active.
• Order Quantity – this is the amount that the customer should receive.
• Billable Quantity – may differ from Order Quantity if, for instance, providing some product for no charge.
• Price – the unit, inc. tax price.
• Period – number and units, e.g. 1 year, 6 months.
• Renewal Due Date – needs to be manually populated initially, then the system will automatically update.

The following fields are optional:

• Assigned To – User or Team assigned to the Invoice.
• Description – text to show on the Invoice. Note that there are placeholders used to get date values (see section below).
• Start Date – when subscription was created.
• End Date – the subscription will be set to Expired after this date.
• Contract End Date – Subscriptions should continue until after this date. Invoices will continue after the date. As an example, mobile phone may have two year plan and user can only cancel after two years.
• Renewing Order Quantity/Renewing Billable Quantity – if larger than 0, updates the Order Quantity/Billable Quantity at next renewal.
• Grace Period – extends the expiry date without affecting the Paid Until Date.

If you have integrated your CRM with one of the payment gateway options, you will be able to use the Auto Pay feature on Subscriptions that allows you to add a payment method that can automatically be billed on the Invoice due date.

When finished, ensure that you click on Save & Close to apply your changes.

You can use the following placeholder values to add text to an Invoice. Note that the default description text is “[Period] from [FromDay]”.

For further information, see our guide on Repeating Invoice Placeholders.