The Billing Portal allows your customer to perform certain actions within their account. For more information on the features of the Billing Portal, please see the Billing Portal settings here.
We’ll outline each of the features below. For reference, in each screengrab below, all Billing Portal features have been enabled. Configure the Billing Portal as needed to restrict subscription actions within the portal.
Subscription Overview
When your subscriber enters the portal, they will be presented with their current subscription. Additionally, a message from the merchant will be displayed. This can be customized under Merchant Info in the Billing Portal settings.
Overall subscription information screen.
In the example above, Gold Family in the top left refers to the product family name, while Gold 100 refers to the actual product purchased from within the product family. The subscription’s next billing date is displayed beneath the product name, and to the right is the current state of the subscription. This one is marked as active.
The billing details of the Billing Portal confirm the active payment method on file. Additionally, the billing address of the payment method on file is presented along with various options to manage the subscription depending on the features enabled for the portal. Beneath the billing details will appear any shipping address information.
Multiple Subscriptions in Advanced Billing
If your subscriber has more than one subscription within Advanced Billing, the Billing Portal can accommodate these subscriptions. The following graphic displays:
- How subscribers within the same product family are displayed
- How subscribers from other product families are displayed
All subscriptions belonging to a given customer will display for the same account.
The plan details will give the subscriber a glance at the following attributes of their subscription:
- Subscription Started: The day that the subscription was created within Advanced Billing
- Current Balance: The current amount due, or credit associated with the subscription.
- Estimated Next Billing Amount: This is the projected amount due at the next billing date.
Confirming Subscription Management
Subscribers will be asked to confirm if they’d like to manage their subscriptions in the Billing Portal if the following conditions are met:
- Billing Portal is configured to require email verification
- The customer does not accept the invitation email
- The customer requests a login link, either by going to the Billing Portal and requesting one or using the management URL to land on a page that says:
“It looks like you haven’t accepted an invitation yet! Click the link below to request a Login Link.“
The user hasn't accepted their invitation yet.
When a subscriber logs into the Billing Portal in this particular workflow, they'll be given the option to confirm which subscriptions they'd like to manage.
A subscriber can select which products/services they’d like to manage through the Billing Portal. Only the products/services they select will appear in the Billing Portal. If they do not confirm the management of the subscription, this does not affect the purchase of the product/service.
View subscriptions to confirm.
Choose subscriptions to confirm.
My Account
Subscribers can update their email address, organization name, and contact details within the Billing Portal by selecting My Account. If your subscribers would like to update this information in both Advanced Billing and the portal, they must select the checkbox “Update Contact Information”. If not selected, their Advanced Billing subscription won’t be updated. All associated subscriptions will be updated immediately if any information is changed.
For merchants based in the EU, customers can enter a VAT number to potentially be marked as tax-exempt.
Modify general account information, such as name, organization, email, or password.
Change Plan
Your subscriber has the option to move services using the “Change Plan” button within the Plan Details section. Once selected, they will be presented the following options:
Choose a product to move to.
Once your subscriber has chosen their desired new plan, they will be displayed a preview of the details of the plan change. Your subscriber will be shown the following:
Preview the new product's cost and whether any payment is due today.
This gives the user to confirm the following:
- Payment method
- Prorated credit
- Amount due
- Subscription renewal date.
Whether the subscriber is charged and when their product change occurs depends on the default settings for product changes in the Billing Portal. For more information on the different options, please see our documentation here.
Cancel Plan
Your subscriber has the option to cancel their account via the Plan Details portion of the Billing Portal. Once a user has selected the option to cancel their plan, they will be presented an option to cancel immediately or cancel at end of period. There is no undo after this step. This step is to confirm the act of canceling.
Cancel your subscription.
If you enable churn reason codes from your Billing Portal settings in the Advanced Billing application, the subscriber will also be able to see a list of reasons why they’re canceling their plan.
Select a required churn code, then cancel your subscription.
Viewing Components
If a subscriber has purchased components, they will be able to view the currently allocated amounts in the Billing Portal. In the screenshot below, Carole Salter has the “support” and “bracelets” components enabled.
View components attached to your subscription.
Editing Components
In the Advanced Billing Billing Portal, you can give a subscriber the option to edit the number of components they have purchased. This is accomplished by following the outline below:
Configure Components for Editing in the Billing Portal
When setting up components in Advanced Billing, designate whether an individual component is allowed to be edited in the Billing Portal. This is controlled via the checkbox under “User Access”. For more information, please see our components documentation on how to enable user access here.
Configure Billing Portal Settings to Allow Component Updates
In addition to allowing edits to the component itself, you must enable the option to “Allow Component Changes” in the Billing Portal settings. For more information on enabling this option, please see our documentation here.
Once these two options have been enabled, your subscriber can change their components. In the example below, only Support and IP Addresses can be edited in the Billing Portal.
Modify your allocation of components.
Editing Components - Preview
Once a subscriber has selected additional components that they would like to add to their subscription, they are presented with a preview of the charges (if any) that will be applied to the card on file.
The example below illustrates a component change request with proration. We display to the subscriber the amount of proration that is applied, and when the card on file will be charged. In the next section, we’ll discuss how to control proration in the Billing Portal.
Preview the changes to your components and whether a payment is due.
Editing Components - Proration
It’s important to note that when subscribers change associated components, the proration applied stems from your site’s default components settings. More information about the default component site settings can be located in our help documentation.
To understand the different options for proration, we encourage you to visit the components allocation portion of our documentation.
Custom Fields
If a custom field is enabled to be displayed on the Billing Portal, it will be displayed under the section Subscription Settings, or Customer Settings if the field is related to a customer. The Customer Settings section will still be displayed under the overall subscription pane.
View the custom fields on your subscription.
The subscriber is also given the option to edit the contents of the custom fields, by selecting “Change Settings”. If you do not wish for the subscriber to edit the contents of a custom field, you can simply disable the option for it to be displayed on the Billing Portal.
The subscriber can easily edit the contents of the custom field and select “Save Changes.”
Edit the custom fields on your subscription.
In the example below, we feature a subscription from the same site. However, multiple custom fields contain data associated with the subscription.
View multiple custom fields on your subscription.
We see that multiple custom fields are presented in the Billing Portal. These can be edited by the subscriber because they contain previously entered data for each custom field.
Edit multiple custom fields on your subscription.
Editing Customer Custom Fields
If a customer chooses to update a custom field that is a customer field, the change will be visible for all the subscriptions listed in that customer’s Portal that belong to their customer account.
Editing custom fields for the customer.
Customer custom fields are displayed on multiple subscriptions.
Put On Hold
In the Advanced Billing Billing Portal, you may give a user the option to put their subscription on hold so that it does not renew.
Pause the billing for your subscription.
Note that the option to select a date to automatically resume will only be displayed if you have enabled the “Allow Resuming Subscriptions” feature in the Billing Portal Settings.
Resume
In the Advanced Billing Billing Portal, you may give a user the option to resume their on-hold subscription so that it will start renewing again.
Resume the billing for your subscription.
If the subscription’s normal next renewal date has already passed, then resuming will behave like a reactivation, re-setting the billing date to “now”, charging for a full billing period, and changing the status to active.
Applying Coupons
In the Advanced Billing Billing Portal, you may give a user the option to apply coupons to their subscriptions.
Configure Billing Portal Settings to Allow Applying Coupons
To allow customers to Add Coupons via the Billing Portal you must enable the option “Allow Applying Coupons” in the Billing Portal settings. For more information on enabling this option, please see our documentation here.
Subscribers will see an option to “Apply Coupon” in the main Subscription panel:
Apply Coupon option in the main Subscription Panel
Add Coupon
Customers may now enter a coupon code that they want to apply to their subscription. The Billing Portal only allows you to enter one coupon code at a time. They can also see the already applied coupons here.
Add Coupon Code
Summary
After successfully applying a coupon, the customer will see a summary of their subscription.
Subscription summary after the coupon has been added.
Referral Codes
You can allow referral codes to be displayed in Billing Portal to your customers.
Configure Billing Portal Settings to Allow Applying Coupons
To allow displaying referral codes in Billing Portal, you must enable the option “Display Referral Codes” in the Billing Portal Settings. For more information on enabling this option, please see our documentation here.
Displaying Referral Codes for Subscription
The referral codes will be visible to customers at the bottom of the subscription displayed in the main pane:
Subscriber's unique referral code
Update Payment Method
Your subscriber has the option to update the payment method on file via the Billing Portal. Selecting “Update Payment Method” will display the following to your subscriber:
Update your payment information.
Legacy Statements and Invoices
The Billing Portal displays recent and past statements and/or invoices for your subscriber to view and save as PDF. This alleviates individual requests from subscribers to have copies of statements/invoices sent. Note that the view is for the legacy statement-based architecture. A section on the Relationship Invoicing view is below.
View statements and invoices associated with your subscription.
Statements are grouped along with invoices under this view. They can be filtered by subscription, by selecting the “Filter” option under the statement viewer.
Statements and invoices will inherit certain attributes depending on whether or not they have been paid.
- Green Checkmark: Indicates a statement that has been paid; invoices by default will have this symbol.
- Red Lightning Bolt: Indicates a statement that is past due; note that unpaid invoices will just be noted as “Unpaid” next to the date along the right
- Open Grey Circle: Indicates a statement or invoices for the current period that isn’t due yet. These are generated from mid-period charges, such as one-time charges and component allocations.
Your subscriber can elect whether they view their statement directly in the user interface, or elect to download a PDF version. Furthermore, you can decide to display or hide $0 product line items on invoices and statements in the statements settings.
For more information on statements, please view our statement documentation. Alternately, if you are interested in learning more about invoicing, please view our documentation here.. To hide $0 product line items on statements and invoices, see the invoices settings documentation.
Example Statements and Invoices
An example invoice view.
The PDF for the invoice above.
Relationship Invoicing Invoices
Our new Relationship Invoicing functionality removes the idea of statements to work solely with invoices. Rather than have a Statements tab at the top of the page next to “Subscriptions”, a Relationship Invoicing site will display “Invoices”.
A view of all invoices for the customer.
As seen above, the Billing Portal will display normal, unconsolidated invoices along with consolidated invoices and their segments. Consolidated invoices and segments are generated if the subscription is part of a group.
Only a payer subscription will be able to view consolidated invoices. Member and primary subscriptions that aren’t paying for the group will not see their grouped invoices. Any invoices that are “Open” may also be paid off using the green “Pay Invoice Online” button.
Example Relationship Invoicing Invoices
These should all look identical to the views you will see within the Advanced Billing application and from the public invoice URL.
A "normal" invoice from a non-grouped subscription.
The PDF for the invoice above.