Stripe Subscriptions

Stripe Subscriptions

Purpose

You are able to set up automated, recurring payments through Stripe known as Subscriptions. This allows you to automatically invoice and charge a certain amount of money from a customer a certain number of times, or recurrences. These are useful for long-term hires as it allows you to charge a customer a certain amount every day, week, month or year that the booking is on hire. When a subscription is applied to a booking, the payments with be automatically invoiced and processed through Stripe with almost no management required through your RCM system.

Stripe Subscriptions are available if you have a Stripe Account setup and linked to your system. if you wish to setup and use Subscription, please contact support@rentalcarmanager.com. 

Automation

There are Automation Emails in RCM specific to Stripe Subscriptions that send an email whenever there is a:
  1. Subscription created.
  2. Subscription cancelled.
  3. Subscription payment successful.
  4. Subscription payment failed.
  5. Subscription payment action required.
  6. Subscription payment error.
Please contact support@rentalcarmanager.com to set up these email automations.

Creating a Subscription

A Subscription can be applied to any booking in your system, so long as it has a rebilling token saved in Stripe. This is the rebilling token against which all the Subscription Payments will be taken. 
To add a new Subscription plan to a booking, click the "New Subscription" button on the Booking Detail page, as shown below.


This will open the window shown below, which displays the basic booking information. Select the "Create a new recurring payment plan" button.


This will open the screen shown below where you are able to add and change the information about the time period and amount that should be paid with each recurrence.
By default, this information will be set to one payment a week from the booking pickup date, till its return, with the total cost of the subscription equal to the current balance owing against the booking. You can choose to keep this setup for the subscription or change it to any other payment plan you choose. 


Each section of this is explained below:
  1. Start Date: This is the date when the first invoice will be taken, and the date that is used to calculate when all the recurring payments are due.
  2. Upfront Payment Amount: If you want the first payment to be a different amount than all the subsequent recurrences, enter the value here, and this is the amount that will be invoiced on the Start Date. If you do not want to set a different first payment, then leave this as $0.
  3. Recurring Payment Amount: This is the amount that will be invoice at each recurrence.
  4. Recurring Payment Period: This is the general time period between each recurrence. You can set this to be Day, Week, Month or Year.
  5. Recurring Payment Frequency: This allows you to specify the length of time between each recurrence, and it is based on the Recurring Payment Period. For example, if the Period is set to Weeks, this allows you set it so the customer will be invoiced once every week or once every two weeks, and so on.
  6. Number of Recurring Payments: This is the number of times the customer will be invoiced.
  7. Final Payment Amount: Similar to the Upfront Payment amount, if you wish for the final invoice to be a different value to the Recurring Payment Amount then you can set this to the desired value. If you do not want to set a different final payment, then leave this as $0.
  8. Saved card to used: This is a dropdown of any rebilling tokens saved in Stripe for this booking. You must select which rebilling token this subscription will use.
  9. Subscription summary: This is a summarised version of all the information entered above.
  10. Create Subscription: Select this button when you have entered all the required information and wish to create the subscription.
Once you have clicked "Create Subscription", this information will be saved against the booking, and it will be sent through to Stripe. If you have the Automation set up, this will send the Subscription Created email.

Viewing Subscriptions

Once a Subscription Payment has been processed through Stripe, it will appear on the booking form the same as any other Stripe Payments.


You are able to see the subscription information by clicking the "View Subscription" button seen in the image above. This will open a window with the following sections:
  1. Reservation: This contains the basic information about the booking including the Pickup and Dropoff Date and Time.
  2. Subscription Details: This contains the Subscription ID, Start Date and Status. It also has a button "Open subscription in Stripe dashboard" that will take you to the subscription record in Stripe.
  3. Latest Invoice: This contains information about the most recent invoice linked to this subscription, including the amount invoiced, paid and due. It also has a blue link that will open up Stripe's PDF version of the invoice.
  4. Payment Schedule: This displays the Payment Dates and Amount that you set up when the Subscription was created. Note that there will be one record for the recuring payments, and if you have a different Upfront or final payment amount, there will be separate records for both of these.


You are also able to view a list of all subscription recorded against bookings in the Active Payment Subscriptions report.

Cancelling and Detaching Subscriptions

There are three ways of removing Subscription from bookings in RCM and they involved using the two buttons at the bottom of the window shown in the image above: "Cancel Subscription" and "Detach Subscription".

1. Use the "Cancel Subscription" button

If you select "Cancel Subscription", the subscription will be cancelled in both RCM and Stripe and the record will be removed from the booking. This is the only method of removing a Subscription from a booking that will send the Subscription Cancelled Automation email.
This will not refund any payments that have already been made through the Subscription. If you do wish to refund the payment, you will have to do so manually using the unlinked refund feature. Please see the Stripe Unlinked Refunds article for more information. 

2. Cancel in Stripe

If you cancel the Subscription through Stripe, invoices will no longer be sent and payments will no longer be taken for this subscription, and you are able to specify whether the payments should get refunded.
However, if you do cancel it through Stripe, the Subscription will still display against the booking in RCM with a cancelled status. You will have to remove it by selecting the "Detach Subscription" button. Also, though the customer will be refunded, this payment record will not display in RCM. You can choose to show this by either deleting the original payment records or by creating a manual refund record.

3. Use the "Detach Subscription" button.

Selecting this button will remove the Subscription record from the booking the same as the "Cancel Subscription" button, but it will not cancel the Subscription in Stripe. If you do this, Stripe will still try to take payments against the customer even though it has been removed from the booking and the Subscription Payment Error automation email will be sent. To stop this, you will need to either cancel the Subscription in Stripe or update in Stripe to stop trying to charge the booking.



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