Hi all,
So I’m running a web design subscription agency for small companies. We charge clients monthly for the design, development, maintenance and edits of the website. Right now we manually upload a payment batch to our bank portal, which kickstarts the monthly recurring payments for our clients. We want to get out of our bank, because the system sucks and we constantly hit our limited amount, which they don’t want or can’t increase.
So I’ve been looking into alternatives for charging recurring payments. My idea was to create a specific payment page on our subdomain which we can send to the client. There, the client pays the first month and after that they will be charged every month. I know that Stripe and others can do this, however I’m looking for some specific requirements.
**1**) Every client has another monthly price. We tailor a package towards the situation of the client. For example, client A may pay €100 per month, while client B may pay €200. We need to be able to assign a **specific price to each client/subscription.**
**2)** We need to be able to adjust the price of an existing subscription. For example, to account for inflaton we need to be able to increase the price from €100 to €110. However more importantly, we need to be able to increase the price **for one month only.** Sometimes, clients have requests that fall outside the scope of our main package. In that case, we sometimes bill a few additional hours. For example, this means that a client might have paid €100 for the last 6 months and that they will be charged €250 in month 7 (€100 standard monthly fee + €150 additional hours). The following month, the price should go back to €100. **This doesn’t have to be automatically.** If we can manually adjust the price for one month and then lower it again when the fee is paid, that will be sufficient.
**3**) Ideally, for administrative purposes, we should be able to see **how much of our revenue comes from the main monthly fee and how much comes from additional hours.** The only way I can think of to manage this is by using WooCommerce. With WooCommerce, I’ll be able to create two products which I can link to my accounting software. Every time there is a sale (aka every month), the corresponding revenue in my accounting software will be updated. However, I’m not completely sure if I can add additional hours as a seperate product to an existing subscription, and remove the product the next month. I think this third point is the main bottleneck for me at the moment.
Right now I’ve looked into WooCommerce Subscriptions. I think it can handle the first two points, but I’m not completely sure about the third point. What do you recommend? Do you know any suitable plugins that can achieve all these requirements? I’m also open to third party software; the payment page/portal may be totally seperate from our own (WordPress) website. My head hurts, please send help 🙂
I’m curious to know how you would approach this situation!
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