Logic of Upcoming Payments

We fully understand that delays and financial frustration can occur in terms of costly subscription payments during their renewal period, especially when the service provider's cancellation window is only a few days. To make this process easier by also empowering our resellers to stay on top of their subscription renewals and ensure timely payment from their end customers before the renewal period of certain costly subscriptions, we are introducing a new feature called Upcoming Payments for subscriptions. This new functionality allows BSS users to add a payment (in the form of cash, deposit, and check) for their upcoming subscription renewal (be that annual, monthly, or triennial), before the actual renewal date. However, if the subscription renewal is not paid in time, even with the help of this new feature, then resellers have the option to use the cancellation window supplied by the service provider in order to cancel the renewed subscription and thus safeguard their financial security.

Rules of Upcoming Payments

The following rules govern the function and availability of the Upcoming Payments feature in the BSS platform.

• Only the following three payment types are currently supported: Cash, Deposit, and Check.

• Only prepaid subscriptions with the billing option On subscription start are eligible.

• It is available for BSS users who have the rights/permissions to add payments (the same rights as the users who can add payments from accounts/invoices and creation permissions on the Payments module).

• It is available only once per subscription renewal for the active or suspended prepaid subscriptions.

• The auto-renewal option of the subscription must be enabled since the payment will be completed upon the renewal of the subscription (via billing service run).

• The feature is unavailable for trial subscriptions and subscriptions containing Pay Per Use (PPU) products.

• When an Account has a payment method set as “credit card”, the BSS user cannot add an upcoming payment.

• When a Subscription has an upcoming payment and a subscription is generated by an action on the Storefront, then on the invoice, the upcoming payment will be linked.

• Once an Upcoming Payment is present inside a subscription, the following actions cannot be performed:

  • Disabling the Auto-Renewal option from the subscription.

  • Canceling a subscription. An error message appears, stating the following:

    Open

    

  • Deleting a subscription. An error message appears, stating the following:

    Open

    

    The Disabling and Canceling actions also apply to the Storefront portal:

Flow of Upcoming Payments

When an invoice is generated automatically by the Billing Service or manually in BSS by clicking the Generate Invoices option from the Shortcuts menu of either the Account’s view or the Subscription’s view, the Upcoming Payment mechanism, unleashes the related Upcoming Payment statement of the specific subscription that it is linked and turns it into a Payment. Since it is now a Payment, it follows the same rules as those governing the Payments. Therefore, it can now be edited or deleted, and it is included in the total payments of the Account. All payment information remains unchanged (as they were filled in during the upcoming payment) except for the date. The payment date is the day that the upcoming payment is unleashed and becomes a payment.

Let’s further analyze the flow of the Upcoming Payments mechanism:

1. An invoice is generated either automatically by the BSS Billing service or manually via the BSS platform for the subscriptions or the account view.

2. If the invoice is linked with a subscription that includes an upcoming payment, then:

   1. The upcoming payment is considered a payment that is linked with the subscription’s invoice, meaning that it is used as a payment for that invoice*. This payment is also linked to the Account, and it is concluded inside the Payment Total statement found inside the Account statements and balance history.

3. Finally, the Upcoming Payment section is removed dynamically from the Subscription view page in BSS, while the “Upcoming Payment” Shortcut option reappears in the view page of the subscription.

*The Upcoming Payment feature follows the same rules as those governing the Payments.

Creating an Upcoming Payment

BSS users (with the proper user rights) can create an Upcoming Payment for a subscription by navigating to the subscription view page and clicking on the button called Add Upcoming Payment that is available inside the Shortcuts menu of the Subscription view page.

Once the Add Upcoming Payment option is selected, a pop-up window is displayed and contains all the relevant required information that needs to be filled in for the completion of the creation of the Upcoming Payment.

These fields are the following:

• Type (required): This drop-down field is where the BSS user selects the preferred payment type, be that cash, deposit, and check**. By default, the preselected value is Cash. No other payment option is currently available other than the aforementioned ones.

• Date (required): This date field is where the BSS user selects the date of the transaction. By default, the current date is displayed but the user can change it without restrictions.

• Amount (required): This numeric field is where the BSS user fills in the amount of the upcoming payment (up to ten decimal points). By default, the field may have as a value the expected amount of the renewal (Subscription Amount) but it is editable. The only restriction is to complete the field with values more than 0,00. Possible taxes do not affect the amount. Also, the currency symbol is retrieved from the account’s base currency, while the decimal and thousands separators are inherited from the user profile culture.

• Transaction ID: This custom field is where the BSS user can fill in (with special and alphanumeric characters) the identification of the transaction of the end customer. By default, this field is empty and since it is optional, there is no need to fill it in.

• Owner: This text field is where the BSS user can select the owner/user of the transaction. By default, the field has the currently logged-in user as a default value. This user can be changed (from the list of the active users of your organization) but in case the field is left blank, the default value will be saved.

• Send Email: This checkbox option is currently non-functional.

• Comments: This text field is where the BSS user can fill in comments about the transaction. By default, this field is empty but the content can contain simple text about the information of this specific transaction.

** If the selected payment type is Check, the pop-up window is extended and a set of extra fields is displayed containing fields that require to be filled in with the information written on the bank check:

These extra (bank check only) fields are the following:

• No. (required): This text field is where the BSS user fills in the bank check number. By default, this field is empty and can accommodate text and numbers.

• Date (required): This date field is where the BSS user selects the date written on the bank check. By default, the current date is displayed but the user can change it without restrictions.

• Pay to (required): This text field is where the BSS user fills in the name that is written on the bank check, meaning the name that will receive the amount of money written on that bank check. By default, this field is empty and can accommodate text.

• Bank (required): This drop-down field is where the BSS user must choose the bank that is issuing the check. By default, the drop-down list contains the available banks that each organization has provided on its own list.

Once all the required fields are filled in or selected, the Save button is available to be clicked, meaning that the Upcoming Payment will be linked to the Subscription and the upcoming invoice for that subscription. Also, when an Upcoming Payment is created, the respective option Add Upcoming Payment from the Shortcuts menu is removed since only one upcoming payment can be in existence for a subscription.
Moreover, a new section inside the view page of the subscription called Upcoming Payments section will be dynamically created once an upcoming payment gets created, as previously analyzed. For more information about the Upcoming Payments section please continue reading below.

Viewing & Managing the Upcoming Payments

BSS users (with the proper user rights) can view and manage an Upcoming Payment for a subscription by navigating to the subscription view page and locating the section called Upcoming Payments, which is situated after the Invoices section. This section is created dynamically only when an Upcoming Payment exists for the next renewal of the subscription.

The BSS user can, therefore, visually verify the existence of an Upcoming Payment while he can also edit or delete it. Let’s further analyze the columns and buttons that this section has to illustrate better the available information as well as the interactive options the BSS user has.

Columns

• Payment #: This column displays the value of the option field Transaction ID that is filled in during the creation of the Upcoming Payment. It may or may not contain a value.

• Date (clickable): This column displays the payment date of the upcoming payment. The BSS user can click on the date to edit the actual Upcoming Payment.

• Payment Method: This column displays the selected payment method.

• Amount: This column displays the payment amount (in the form of 2 decimals), along with the currency symbol, which is retrieved from the Account base currency.

• Source Type: This column displays the name of the user who created the record (not the responsible user/owner).

Button

• Delete: This button can be utilized by the BSS user in order to delete the Upcoming Payment. Once the Upcoming Payment gets deleted, the section is dynamically hidden from the view page of the Subscription and the option Add Upcoming Payment from the Shortcuts menu is again available.

Historic Records of Upcoming Payments

The Notifications and Updates section of the Subscription will keep the history of all the actions of the Upcoming Payments. This means that when an Upcoming Payment is created, edited, or deleted, a specific historical record will be formed to log each action.

The form of each historic log related to the Upcoming Payments will display the action as well as the user who did that action and the date that the action occurred.

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