PayPal recurring payments/subscriptions

[Will Shaman]

Is Cubecart really incapable of handling PayPal recurring payments (subscriptions) these days? I note that versions 3 and 4 both have low-cost custom mods written for them, but I think versions 5 and 6 work in a different way and it appears nobody thinks this is a serious omission from what is otherwise a very good cart. I'm already deeply committed to building using CC6, so it seems counter-intuitive to re-build using an older version of CC.

I'm a Cubecart newbie, so I'm quite happy to believe I may have missed something that's obvious to everyone else, but I've done a lot of hunting for this feature and found nothing. Not even other people wondering why it's not an available option!

Any ideas or pointers?

Thanks in advance.

Will

[Al Brookbanks]

Recurring payments require repeat invoicing. The recurring payments is the easy bit.. the repeat invoicing much more complex. 

[Dirty Butter]

This thread might be of interest to you. I beta tested it and it did work, although I would have needed some refinements to use it on our sites.

 

[Will Shaman]

Thanks for the speedy response, Al, and apologies for my late one!

So, given that PayPal takes care of notifying the purchaser of their subscription transactions, why should invoicing from Cubecart be a problem? Surely invoicing from CC could be omitted altogether and PayPal left to do its work?

All the best,

Will

5 hours ago, Dirty Butter said:

This thread might be of interest to you. I beta tested it and it did work, although I would have needed some refinements to use it on our sites.

 

Thanks for the heads up, Dirty Butter. Could be handy. What version of CC did you use it on and did you eventually get it working well?

[Dirty Butter]

It works on 6.0.11 as far as I know - I tested it last year, so whatever was current at that time. I need to be able to set a different timing schedule for USA vs International orders, and he does not have that coded at this time. I was testing to use it to send a Review/Testimonial reminder after they had time to receive their order.

[bsmither]

"Why should invoicing from Cubecart be a problem? Surely invoicing from CC could be omitted altogether."

This attitude has merit.

On the one hand, CC is not meant to have a comprehensive (even minimally) sales analysis engine. (And CC does not "invoice" in the bookkeeping sense of the term. So I do not know from what perspective Al was coming from when he said invoicing is much more complex.)

On the other hand, if an auditor wants to compare what CC has in its database of orders/sales and compare that to any other repository of sales (Quickbooks, PayPal, etc) and comes across discrepancies between them, then you've opened up a can of hurt.

Please mention the link to the CC3/4 mods for PayPal Recurring Payments.

 

[Al Brookbanks]

12 hours ago, Will Shaman said:

Thanks for the speedy response, Al, and apologies for my late one!

So, given that PayPal takes care of notifying the purchaser of their subscription transactions, why should invoicing from Cubecart be a problem? Surely invoicing from CC could be omitted altogether and PayPal left to do its work?

All the best,

Will

Thanks for the heads up, Dirty Butter. Could be handy. What version of CC did you use it on and did you eventually get it working well?

In some territories it probably can be. Some countries will require proper tax invoices which PayPal won't do. 

[Will Shaman]

Thanks, Al, Brian and Dirty butter. I'll check out the requirements in the UK.

Assuming it is ok (tax wise) to leave it up to PayPal, I guess the simplest way to give an option to customers to pay via recurring payments (effectively in instalments) would be to embed a PayPal subscription payment button at the end of my long description. Not particularly integrated or elegant, but at least it will work. Any ideas for slicker ways to present this to customers?

[Dirty Butter]

PayPal itself provides a way for higher priced items to be paid via payments, in effect on credit. would that fit your needs?

[Will Shaman]

21 hours ago, Dirty Butter said:

PayPal itself provides a way for higher priced items to be paid via payments, in effect on credit. would that fit your needs?

Thanks for that suggestion, Dirty Butter. I'll have another look into what PayPal offers me (I'm on PayPal Standard, btw).

Is what you're referring to different from what PayPal call a "Subscription" payment? That I'm familiar with — I was just looking for a smooth way of integrating something like that into Cubecart (as Cubecart can't handle recurring payments on its own, I think).

[Dirty Butter]

I don't use it, as most of our items are low cost, but if your products warrant it, this might be worth looking into:

https://financing.paypal.com/ppfinportal

"PayPal Credit is a PayPal service that gives your customers access to No Payments and No Interest if paid in full in 6 months on purchases of $99 or more. "