Allow admin to record membership recurring payment starting from next renewal period
This may be specific to auth.net which we use. If one wishes to start recurring payments the apricot/auth.net process requires the initial payment to be made at the time the recurring payments are launched. We have run across multiple instances where we wish to start recurring payments at some point in the future but not credit the member's cards now. For instance we just had a case where someone had recently paid to join via check but for future payments wished to pay by credit card; Our alternatives are for the member or ourselves to remember to set up recurring payments at the renewal date (which means either we or the member need to remember and if we do it then we have to hold onto their credit card info - a potential security breach waiting to happen) or to launch the recurring payment process now and then refund or cancel the now duplicated payment. Neither present option makes much sense.
thevideomd
shared this idea
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Evgeny Zaritovskiy
commented
I'm not sure how your comment is related to the topic. Can you please elaborate?
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faizan123
commented
Since switching to WA 4 months ago, there has been some attrition of members because more and more, people are seeking better SEO placement through membership organization websites. Their biggest motivation in joining is for the public to be able to find them. ____________________
aliii
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Evgeny Zaritovskiy
commented
Moved to Wishlist and renamed to better reflect the requests - I see that key scenario here is that "older members wants to delegate all complicated online payment stuff to admins". Let's see for more comments form other people.
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Alain
commented
Wild Apricot does not retain any credit card information for members - as you know all credit card entries are done on a secure payment gateway provided by the payment system, not in Wild Apricot. In order for a recurring profile to be created, the member must pay the recurring invoice when it is generated using their credit card information - which is then relayed to the payment processor, so unfortunately the scenario you've presented cannot be carried out as easy as it may seem.
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thevideomd
commented
In our situation our members (probably mid sixties on average) typically give us their credit card information and expect us to set up the payments for them. In this scenario we would need to hold onto their credit card information till the next renewal period. The much better solution would be for apricot to create the functionality so that we could start recurring payments at a future date while providing the credit card information now :) Not sure why this is so difficult to do; it probably comes down to who is holding the credit card information when recurring payments are initiated using auth.net If auth.net is holding the information then we should be able to see the recurring profile when we log onto auth.net but that information does not exist in the auth.net system. If apricot is holding the information and sends the request for payment periodically on the renewal dates then setting a start date in the future would not seem to be an insurmountable problem.
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Evgeny Zaritovskiy
commented
1) We have Instalment Payment thread - http://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/8825830-installments-payment-plans-for-events-and-member - which might be about this problem as well
2) In your particular case, when you receive a check for the first period, you can actually do the following:
- create a member manually in your database, set required membership level (with recurring payment option enabled) and set renewal due date to the next period
- system will suggest to generate invoice; do it and them record a manual payment (check) for it - this will create financial history for this contact for his first check payment
- in next year (or whatever period is), automatic renewal emails will be sent to the member, reminding him to renew; when member will follow the process and renew, he will be asked to pay with credit card and as soon as he does, he will be billed recurrently after this
