Subscription or Payment Plan?

I had so many questions when i first started out with Infusionsoft, trying to work out the best way to go. Infusionsoft subscriptions or payment plans?

One is good for invoicing, the other good for affiliates.  When should i use it?

Which one is it?  Which one is going to be best for you, and best for your customer?

Watch now for the reasons why you would each, the problems with each, 

So you don't make the big mistakes I made with them when i was starting out.

_{Hey folks, Jason Buckner here from Automation Made Easy.}

_{Today I want to follow on a little bit from last week and talk to you about Infusionsoft subscriptions or payment plans.... And when you should use either one, and what are the benefits for each one.}

_{Let's dive on into Infusion soft and have a look at the best scenarios for using Infusionsoft subscriptions or payment plans.}

_{When should we use a subscription or when should we use a payment plan? That’s what we need to determine. There are a couple of different ways of doing things between subscriptions and payment plans and let’s go through the options.}

_{A subscription is individual payments, so whether it be weekly, whether it be monthly, whether it be yearly. A subscription is an individual payment and an individual invoice that goes on with the payment. They’re grouped together in the respect that they are individual payments for something a greater good or a greater goal.}

_{Their individual transactions and with an individual transaction that means you get an individual invoice, okay? Individual invoices. Now a payment plan is based on one payment for one product. It’s just split in two a few different payments. It’s split over many smaller payments to make it easier for the purchase out, for example, a subscription might be a monthly membership to a gym. Whereas a payment plan might be purchasing one product - $3000 product split over three payments to make it easier for you.}

_{We have one invoice when it comes to a payment plan, so you have an invoice. It lists that all of the payments that are due on the invoice and it also lists each payment on there as each payment comes through it sends an updated invoice.}

_{For a subscription you have an invoice for every payment - two very separate things there. It incorporates interest, if you've got a product - $3000 for a pay in full – and you were going to do a  payment plan of their  and  you’re adding $500 of interest, for example, you’re add in the interest component. And then the payment plan will automatically calculate out what the payments will be over that period for you. Whereas, the subscription, is a regular installment of a fixed amount.}

_{Comparison between the two a subscription we would use for a monthly recurring membership or something like that. Something where someone is going to continue on it might be a monthly recurring for 12 months, 12 weeks, something along the lines of that. Whereas for a payment plan we would use a full product like you’re buy something all at once and you’re just slitting that into a few payments. That's where I would generally use the two or I would use a payment plan when I wanted to show the whole purchase as one invoice. That’s one of the most important reasons why I do it that way or if I wanted to show like last week's lesson. If I wanted to show both of them on one order form – pay in full and the payment plan – on one order form.}

_{Now, we just need to make some special attention here for the payment plans and subscriptions in the referral programs in the Infusion Soft referral program there’s two different ways they dealt with. Subscriptions are dealt with basically when each payment comes through because their individual payments or towards group towards a common good.} 

_{When each payment comes through, or each invoice is paid the affiliate or referral partner is allocated the income. With a payment plan however, that a little bit different because it one product all grouped together just split into a few payments. Either when one payment is made or when the whole thing is paid  that’s when we pay our affiliates, so it would be when the first payment comes through or when the last payment comes through that's when the affiliate gets paid in the referral partner tracking.}

_{Important to know that if you're running a referral program. Traditionally what you would do is use a subscription for anything that are you paying affiliate on, or referrals partners on because it gets paid every single or allocated every single time a payment comes through. Whereas the payment plan only allocates when either the order is started, or the order is completed in all the payments come through.}

_{Let's have a quick look in infusion Soft and how we set each one of those up.  Hover over the Infusion Soft logo and  go to E-commerce setup. I always go in this way rather than from the short links at the top. And then we go to products first. Let's add a product in here we'll go through the whole process and we'll go Automation Made Easy we’ll say and we’ll save that product.}

_{Let's just give it a new name actually just so that it doesn’t sit there and I’m not sure which one’s the right one when it comes to using my product later. Let’s say for this particular one we're going to have a full payment price of $2,997 and then we can save that particular product. Now we can add a subscription plan in for this product as well. This might be 12 months worth of membership in here. A subscription plan we could bill every 30 days, and it could go for 12 cycles, and the price might be 497 per cycle or something like that.}

_{That's how we would set up the subscription and in fact, we can just have a subscription on a product we don't need to have a pay in full plan on the product as well. 12 at 497 is this particular one and that's how we would set up the subscription. And to put it onto an order form, we go back to our ecommerce setup, and we go to our order forms, we create an order form, and then we choose that product. Automation Made Easy-- just want to get the right one Subs test-- there we go. We’ll prop that one in.}

_{You can see here, we can either choose this as a one-time-only product, so that would be the pay in full price, or we can choose this subscription. This one were going to choose this subscription at the product and then click on save.}

_{Now, if we go to preview this on the order form you can see here it details it's $497 per 30 days for 360 days. Now, of course, instead of 30 days I could have done this per month and done up  for 12 months in here would have made a little bit more sense in there. But you can see it’s the only option I have here is to buy on subscription.}

_{Let's take a look at payment plan. If we were doing a payment plan say on the original product which was the $2,997 product-- where is the product? There we go $2,997.  We would go to ecommerce set up, and then we go down payment plans over here. Sorry payment plans down here, and we would add a payment plan in.}

_{In here, we’ve got a finance charge. This is the key difference between the subscription and the payment plan. In here, we can add in a finance charge so say 2,997 and we wanted to have a say $300 finance charge for someone to pay over 3 months for example. Number of payments is 3 days between payments is 30 days and we’re going to start this straight away. We click on save.}

_{This has setup. The payment plan for this particular product is setup. The payment plan for any product that we allocate it to, but now we need to allocate to the product. So we go product quantity criteria—down the bottom here and we choose Automation Made Easy tests – Subs test - and minimum quantity is one in this case, and maximum quantity only want people to buy one at a time, so we can choose save there.}

_{If one product is purchased of Automation Made Easy tests which is the products that we created without paying full price earlier. It's going to have a $300 finance charge and it’s going to split the payments over 30 days by three payments. Let’s have a look at that in an order form, so we'll go and put that one in an order form, ecommerce setup, and then order forms. And then we’ll go in here payment plan test just so that  I know which one’s for our recording and which one’s not.}

_{And then we’re going to put that product in so subs Automation Made Easy Subs test. This time we’re just going to choose the sales one-time product only, and then click on save, and if we have a look at the preview here we can see here that there’s the a test the single payment of $2,997 in this case, or the three payments of 1,099. It’s automatically calculated those and you can see here today's payment would be 1,099, then next month's 1,099, the final one 1,099, and includes the finance charge details on there.}

_{This would be a payment plan whereas a subscription we would just have the regular recurring payments until the end of the subscription. And wouldn't get those details on here of the payment plan}

_{Thanks guys see you all next week.}