Maxio has compiled a list of helpful items to address during your testing phase. The list below goes above and beyond the act of creating products and signing up subscribers. We recommend using the outline below to supplement you as you test your Site’s functionality.
In addition to testing, this list of actionable items also serves as a list of things to consider offering to your subscribers as well as Site administrators to harness Advanced Billing’s full functionality.
We recommend reading through the collection objectives below in order to gain an insightful grasp on some basic Site functionality that will be useful to you as a merchant during the testing phase, and well into live mode.
Billing Portal
It’s important to give your Subscribers a way to manage their subscription. In this case, we recommend enabling the Billing Portal.
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The Billing Portal can be easily enabled through the Settings tab.
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Configure the features you would like your subscribers to access in the Billing Portal
Once you’ve enabled the Billing Portal, use your test subscriptions to view the Billing Portal for your Site. We recommend initiating cancelations, updating contact information, etc. To preview what your subscriber will experience in the Billing Portal please see our comprehensive support article here.
For more information about the Billing Portal, please see the complete documentation here.
Dunning
Use Advanced Billing’s prebuilt dunning strategies to easily collect charges from subscriptions that are in the past due state.
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Advanced Billing’s automated Dunning Strategy can easily be enabled by following the instructions here.
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Select a Dunnuing Strategy to collect past due charges. Choose from one of our 3 pre-configured options.
Testing Notes
You can force a subscription into the past due state with a few simple steps from within your test site.
- Delete the current payment profile for a subscription.
- Change the next billing date on the subscription to the current timestamp.
- Wait for the subscription to attempt to renew without a card on file. This will transition the subscription into the “past due” state and trigger the dunning process.
- Inspect the email archives for results of the dunning emails
- You will have to wait additional days to test the results of the dunning process.
Invoices
If you are going to use the invoice payment method, we recommend generating test invoices in your sandbox account before going live. Inspect the look and feel of your invoices. Also, learn how to receive payments, and add charges to your invoices.
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Learn how to enable invoice billing here.
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Understand how to receive payments for invoices via cash/check or credit card.
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Learn to toggle a subscription from the automatic-based payment method to the invoice-based payment method.
Testing Notes
If your business requires that you use invoices, we recommend the following testing as much of the invoice functionality before going live:
For more information on invoices and how they function within Advanced Billing, please see the following documentation here.
My Account
Before you exit the testing phase of your site, it’s important to set up every individual user of the Advanced Billing site with their own account. Each account can be given an individual set of restrictions to protect valuable information & restrict editing of products, etc.
Payment Gateways
As you transition your Advanced Billing site from test to live, it’s important to know the basics of troubleshooting in case of errors. We’ve compiled a small guide to help you through any issues you may encounter during the changeover.
Products
If you have reached this part of the testing guide, we assume that you understand the basics about products. Before you take your Site live, we wish to point out a few helpful articles that will bridge the gap between being a beginner Advanced Billing user and becoming an advanced user of our application.
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Learn about product price points. Advanced Billing allows you to create multiple price points for a single product. Each price point can have different pricing and frequencies. Subscriptions can then be moved between price points.
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Learn to organize your products by Product Family. Create groups of products so that you and your staff stay organized when working with the application. We recommend segmenting your product offering into clear and concisely labeled Product Familys for the benefit of all.