Enable And Process Buyout/Purchase of Subscription Products

If you have a rental model that allows subscription products to be bought in the middle of the subscription period or at the end of the subscription period, you can tackle the operations associated with the purchase of the subscription product (such as charging the remaining product amount via a one-time transaction, sending an invoice for the charge, stopping recurring payments etc.) in your circuly operations backend.

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There are two ways to initiate a product buyout

1. From the Customer Self-Service Portal by the customer itself - once you’ve enabled the setting, the feature will be available to your customers in the Customer Self Service Portal. If everything runs smoothly (that is if the payment is successfully charged) no manual input is required from your side. 
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2. From the circuly Operations backend by a you or by a user - the buyout process is initiated by you or a circuly user from the circuly Operations Backend. 

The difference between the two options 

The difference between the two is the process itself. If you want to offer a custom price without influencing the price of all the other products of the same type, then the best way to proceed is to initiate the buyout manually from the circuly Operations Backend. 

However if you do not plan on offering custom prices, then the buyout can be initiated by the customer from the Customer Self-Service Portal. Before getting started with this just make sure that you’ve checked the retail prices of all products and edited them if there are and errors. You’ll learn more about editing the retail price of this product in this article. 

If you do wish to offer custom product prices when a customer request to buy the product, you can check out this article on initiating the buyout process manually from the circuly Operations Backend. 

To learn more about the buyout process initiated by the customer from the Customer Self-Service Portal, continue reading this article.

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Getting started:

1. Check the retail price of the subscription product.
2. Enable the buyout feature in the Customer Self-Service Settings.
3. Go through the additional settings options.
4. Accessing the buyout option in the Customer Self Service Portal.
5. The buyout process for your customers.

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Video Guide
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1. Check the retail price of your subscription product

Before you enable the product buyout feature and make it available to your customers in the Customer Self-Service Portal, double check the retail price of all your products. To do that:

• In your circuly Operations Backend > Go to the Products Tab > Select the Product you want to change the retail price of by clicking on the checkbox.
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• Click on the EDIT RETAIL PRICES button.
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• Type your desired value in the given input field and click on the SAVE CHANGES button.

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2. Enable the buyout feature in the customer login settings.

• In your circuly Operations Backend > Go to the Settings Tab > Customer Login > FEATURES > Enable the switch for Allow subscription buyout > Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click on the SAVE CHANGES button. 

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3. Additional buyout settings

There are additional settings options available that enable you to customise certain aspects of the buyout process from the Self-Service Portal.
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• ‍Two step buyout process - if you want your customers to accept additional terms and conditions when they request a buyout from the Self-Service Portal, you can enable the switch for Two step buyout process.

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See the image below to see how the terms and conditions appear to your customer.

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Your customer then sees a second page where they have to check the box for the terms and conditions set by you.

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IMPORTANT: The additional terms and conditions are hard coded in your Self-Service Portal. To define the additional terms and conditions for the two step buyout process, get in touch with our customer success team by raising a ticket.

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• ‍Discount payments for buyout calculation - this setting enables you to define the percentage value that will be deducted from the retail price to arrive at the buyout price. The default value in the "Discount payments for buyout calculation" input value is 100 - this means that 100% of already made payments will be subtracted from the retail price to calculate the buyout price.
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However if you have operational costs or any other costs that you would like to take into account while calculating the buyout price then you can define a percentage value in this input field and this amount will be subtracted from the retail price.

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Example

Retail price = 200

Initial payment already made = 20

Recurring payments already made = 10

Discount payments for buyout calculation = 80

In this case only 80% of the initial payment and recurring payment will be taken into consideration as payment made (that is 16€ and 8€ respectively instead of 20€ and 10€) and deducted from the retail price. The buyout price will then be 176 euros.

However if Discount payment for buyout calculation = 100 then 100% of the initial payment and recurring payment will be taken into consideration as payment made (that is 20 and 10 respectively) and deducted from the retail price. The buyout price will then be 170 euros.

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4. Accessing the buyout option in the Customer Self Service Portal

• Once the subscription buyout setting is "enabled", your customers can see and access the option to buy their subscription product by clicking on the dropdown menu for a product under Your Subscriptions. See image below for reference.
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5. The buyout process for your customers

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• When your customers click on the buy product option from the dropdown menu and confirm, a new window slides-in from the right with details about the product, the subscription and the price of the product.
  

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• The calculation shows the Retail price and the Buyout price of the product after subtracting any payments already made by the customer such as the Initial payment and the monthly subscription payments. 

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Important: The buyout price may vary based on your settings. Read information under point 2 and 3.

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• In case the payments already made by the customer is more than the retail price of the product, a symbolic buyout price of €1 is charged. The reason for doing so is also already given and explained to the customer. 
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• The customer can then click on the CONFIRM AND PAY button.

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IMPORTANT: If you've enabled the Two step buyout process setting then the button will say CONTINUE. Read information under point 2 and 3.

• Once the process is through, a confirmation box appears on the screen with more information about the buyout.
  
  

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• The status of the Subscription goes to pending buyout until the payment goes through (see explanation box above). 

• All dropdown menu options under the selected subscription disappear except the option to Report an issue. This is done in order to make sure that the customer does not request another buyout for the same product and also does not cancel the subscription while the product attached to the subscription is under the pending buyout process.
  
  

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• The customer additionally receives an invoice as confirmation for requesting a buyout.
  

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• The customer receives the "Buyout Order Confirmation" email first from the email templates to confirm the subscription buyout.

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• After the "Buyout Order Confirmation" email is sent, a one time transaction is triggered with the amount in the Buyout Price input field. The amount is charged immediately using the customers’s stored payment method.

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• Once the payment is successfully charged, an invoice is generated for the one time payment (the email template "One time transaction" is used to generate an invoice) and sent to the customers (the email template "Payment was successful" is used to send the invoice to the customer that the payment was successful)

Note: Buyout payments can take some time to process when SEPA is chosen. This should be mentioned in the email communication with the customer. Example text that you can include in your buyout email: "Thank you for your order. You will receive an order confirmation by e-mail shortly. Depending on the payment method, it may take several days to process your payment. As soon as the payment has been successful, your subscription will be changed to "{statusBoughtOut}" and you will receive an email with your purchase invoice. If your payment cannot be processed, we will also notify you by email.

• When the payment is successful, the status of the subscription goes from pending buyout to bought out.
  

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• The same is reflected in your circuly operations backend as the status of the subscription goes to bought out.

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Good to know

• Identify whether a failed payment is due to a failed recurring payment or a failed product buyout payment - If you want to add specific information for failed buyout payments, you can use the variable {is transaction-buyout} in the Payment has failed email template (e.g. that the subscription is set back to active due to the failed payment).

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• Add buyout link to the Subscription almost over email - when your customers get the Subscription almost over email you can encourage your customers to instead buy their subscription product. You can additionally make the customer journey easier by adding the redirect link for the buyout in the email body itself. The variable for that is {css buyout_link}.

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