Monthly recurring expiration emails

Hello OSCommunity and OSTeam:

We have a monthly recurring subscription plan that is set for 12 payments. At that point it should expire. However, each month the monthly members get a notification that their plan is going to expire.

I know I can do custom messages in each plan. This would work but when the 12 pay periods have ended, will their be the regular expiration reminder emails sent out as with all the other plans?

I also understand the it is appropriate that MP send a message each time a transaction is made.

Am I missing something in the configuration?

FEATURE Request Edited: It would be nice to have the ability to choose a setting that to only send out the EXPIRATION reminder messages on a recurring plan at the end of the payments cycle. The regular monthly transaction messages would remain.

Thank you.
Channing

Channing,

OH MY this is freaky, as I'm in the final configuration of my MembershipPro system and now getting around to testing out my plans, email messages and lots of other things; I actually noticed / recognised this very same thing that you have posted about this morning and you have in effect saved me writing a topic about it!

We have 1, 2 & 3 Year contract plans, whereby each will have a 12, 24 or 36 monthly recurring fee but as you say, subscriber receives an expiry notification as set out in the respective plans expiry reminder choices section, such as;

Send First Reminder
X days before subscription expired
Send second Reminder
X days before subscription expired
Send Third Reminder
X days before subscription expired. If you enter a negative value (for example -5), the reminder will be sent AFTER subscription expired

This doesn't quite fit for recurring subscriptions for what you outline and what we are seeing also. As my GoCardless Direct Debit payment plugin and Stripe payment plugin will keep calling the monthly recurring payment each month, unless they cancel their 1, 2 or 3 year plan; as you say, we need to have the expiry notifications that are raised from within MembershipPro and sent to members / clients given the option to only send and respect the timing outlined in any given plans ' X days before subscription expired'.

To me this will make much more sense to both membership admins but also our respective clients / members?

How do you feel on the above Tuan and also about Channing's virtually same issue?

Are there other users who have encountered the same and would like to see if Tuan can urgently introduce this?

Regards,

Hi Tuan and Team:
I believe this is an important feature if recurring memberships or plans are a part of any of your components. Please consider implementing soon. Our client likes many of the features of MP not offered by other systems but thinks this is an important feature as other online membership systems offer this.

Thanks, as always, your consideration and work.

Regards,
Channing

Hi Channing

Actually, If I understand your requirement correctly, this feature is already supported . In each subscription plan, there is a setting called Send Third Reminder Email

If you enter a negative value, for example -5, the reminder will be sent 5 days after subscription expired (instead of before as normal reminder emails)

I think you can use this feature?

Tuan

I think what Channing maybe saying (That I agree with in this instance) is that the renewal notification settings of;

Send First Reminder
X days before subscription expried
Send second Reminder
X days before subscription expried
Send Third Reminder
Xdays before subscription expried. If you enter a negative value (for example -5), the reminder will be sent AFTER subscription expired

Doesn't quite fit the architecture of a recurring subscription based service if monthly and only when it reaches the very last month would this make complete sense but having a specific term / contract length, of which Channing seems to have a 12 month (12 monthly) payments and I also have the same.

However, in our scenario reminders are sent as per the above settings but this notifies that the actual subscription is due to expire at the end of that specific months time. When in fact, in reality it can actually expire many months down the line from the very moment in time that it is sent / received by the end user and thus, there's quite possibly a need for 'Your Subscription has been Delivered' email notification (In email & messages and per plan too) to counter this; much similar for e.g. to the way Skype do the same, each month you get a notification to state that you have been automatically charged the monthly recurring subscription fee and your service is still live but isn't anything to do with expiry as it's a recurring subscription in the true sense of the word.

IMHO, the only time that a renewal / expiry notice should be fired in our type of multiple recurring months / years subscription length, would be as it approaches for e.g. the last month of a 12 month (X payments) and then the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Reminder could rightly kick in.

I'm unsure but maybe you can clarify, if there a limit of how many X days can be entered into the 3 reminder fields Tuan? I'm wondering if for e.g. my recurring subscription plan is 12months = 365 days, then could we enter in 1st Reminder 335 days and it actually work correctly with the associated plan?

Then, they would still need to receive a monthly invoice fired to them from the membership pro system, possibly similar to my mention above of an additional email & messages / per plan 'Your Order has been Delivered' or something to that effect, which would last the duration of the plans 'Number of payments' and the 1,2 and 3 expiry reminders would kick in on the 12th payment in the above examples given?

I look forward to your though, as I'm sure Channing may do too.

Regards,

Hi Tuan:

Thanks for getting back to me. PhoenixUK and I are on the same page. Currently, a monthly member receives a notice at the end of each month saying their plan is expiring. The way we think it should work is:
1. monthly plans would still have a message that the transaction was completed, and thank you, at the end of each month.
2. at the end of the payment period of 6 payments, 12 payments, whatever the membership requires, the expiration message is sent.
3. Might even be nice to allow the use of the custom messages with this too

The custom messages for each plan can be used but I think the customer will not get a true expiration message at the end of the payment length.

Regards,
Channing

Tuan,

Do you have any further thoughts on my last reply above and Channing's please? The reason that I ask, is that I have a test subscription in my site still live while testing it all out and it's just renewed today (correct in the sense that it's a monthly recurring subscription but for as outlined above X number of months) but the email that has been sent is in effect making it sound like a brand new subscription and after the first subscription month is paid for and subscribed to, up until the end of the subscription contract period (whatever any of us set in our systems) then it's only a 'we've delivered your order' or something, whilst the system is still taking the relevant payment and an invoice should still be raised, it just seems that it's not 100% smooth and could VERY easily confuse end users.

Due to this confusion and lack of clarity in this aspect, I'm not going to be able to launch my site until we can collectively find a solution

Is there anything you can add or do to alleviate this actually rather huge issue some of us are clearly facing please, I'm actually really worried that this wasn't apparent till recently, as you know I've only just managed to get my own tests working correctly, hence this issue didn't show up for me personally earlier.

I look forward to your continued thoughts and hopefully a thought on a resolution.

Regards,

Hi OSTeam:

I believe this is an important issue that we need to address. Can we help by describing the expectation of our users more clearly? We thank you for you assistance.

Channing

Tuan Pham Ngoc wrote: Hi Channing

Actually, If I understand your requirement correctly, this feature is already supported . In each subscription plan, there is a setting called Send Third Reminder Email

If you enter a negative value, for example -5, the reminder will be sent 5 days after subscription expired (instead of before as normal reminder emails)

I think you can use this feature?

Tuan

Tuan,

This is critically urgent for my site's future, as I cannot launch without some form of resolution being found to the issues outlined in this topic, especially the additional information provided by myself and Channing since your last post... can you help please, I'm seriously worried right now.

Regards,

ALL OTHER MembershipPro users

Out of Interest, do you not see the above issue within your own membership / subscription structures that you've built?

Just trying to gauge how much of an issue it could be, or even how you have got around the issue in some way?