Sending Out Bills

It is up to you to manually run a file from your browser. There is no time driven event in VP-ASP.

This can be done using the new billing administration menu that was created during the installation. This is described in the next section under administration. Use the Send Billing e-mail. This will send out all bills that are due to be sent out. It will look at the next billing date and send out all bills that have not been sent out since this file has been run. So it will send out bills for which the next billing date is less than or equal today’s date.

    

Billing Administration

Billing Administration allows you to view and modify the billing and projects table. It is implemented
with new file shopa_billingadmin.asp. With this table you can:

* Send out Bills
* Manually create new billing records or review existing billing records
* Display bills that have been sent out (projects)
* Run reports based on time periods to see what has been sent and what remains to be sent

 

Send Billing E-mail
This is used to read all the billing records. It determines if any mail needs to be sent and generates the
appropriate project records. This file should be run daily or as often as necessary to send out bills.

Edit Billing Table
This is just the standard VP-ASP edit facility for tables. It is placed here for your convenience.

Display Projects
This is just the standard VP-ASP display projects facility from the original Option Package. It is placed
here for your convenience.

Project Reports
The project report displays those projects (actual customer bills) that have not yet been processed. As
projects are paid, they can be marked paid and processed. The details can be updated by editing the
record.

    

Recurring Billing Summary

The recurring billing system adds the facility to sell products such as subscriptions, loans, rentals or other types that require that you bill the customer on a periodic basis such as per week, month or year. This is a separate VP-ASP product and needs to be purchased separately.
 
The billing can be set-up automatically when a customer purchases a product from the shop. The billing can also be manually configured without any purchase from your shop.
 
The facilities of the recurring billing system includes:
 
1. Automatic creation of recurring billing on purchase of a product.

2. Manual set-up of a recurring billing for a customer.

3. Ability to pay for the bill using any payment method the shop currently uses

4. Ability to set-up any number of billing installments

5. Repayments can be set as weekly, monthly, yearly or any number of days. The interval can be set to any number; for example, bill every week or every 15 days.

6. Customer receives the bill via e-mail. You can change the format of the mail message.

7. Customer pays for bill by using your VP-ASP Shopping Cart.

8. Reports available to show you how many bills have been sent out or will be sent out over any period of time

    

Requirements

The Billing Facility requires VP-ASP 4.0, 4.50, 5.0 or 5.50 with the Option Package.    

Cost

The Recurring Billing is a fee paid add-on to the VP-ASP Shopping Cart. The cost is shown on our web site.     

Installation Steps

The installation steps include the following:
1. Copy the files to the VP-ASP directory

2. Unzip the files and copy them into the VP-ASP Directory. The file is called vpasp550bill.zip. 

    

New Shop Configuration

These are the Shop Configuration values that control recurring billing. 
 

Xbilling	Yes turns on the billing system
Xbillemailname	Optional. Used as the name of the company sending the bills via email
Xbillemailsubject	Optional. The subject of the e-mail
Xbillemail	Optional. The e-mail address from which the bill appears to the customer
Xbilltemplate	tmp_billing.txt the default mailing template

    

Automatic Billing Creation

Automatic bill creation is used when you want to create an installment when the customer purchases a product from your site.  It allows you to decide which products, when purchased, should start the automatic rebilling process.
 
When a customer orders a product from your shop, VP-ASP checks to determine if this is an installment product by looking at the following new fields in the products record. The most important is billinginstallments. If this value is non-zero, then VP-ASP will generate a billing record to start the recurring payment facility.

billprice	The amount to be billed.
billinstallments	A number representing the number of installments. For example 12 will mean that this customer should be billed 12 times.
billinstallmenttype	One of the following words: Day Week Month Year For example if Month is in this field, the person will be billed once per month for 12 months. The name is important. The first character is checked. So D is equivalent to Daily, Or Day
billinterval	A number such as 1. This is the interval between bills in the same units as above.

 
 

    

Examples of Billing Summaries

Example of Bill every two weeks

billprice=50.00
billinstallments=6
billinstallmenttype=Week
billinterval=2
 
The customer will be sent an e-mail bill every two weeks. There will be six bills in total. Each bill will be for $50. The first bill will be sent two weeks from the original order.

Monthly billing

billprice=10.00
billinstallments=12
billinstallmenttype=Month
billinterval=1
 
This means send the customer a bill every month for twelve months. 

Daily billing

billprice=5.00
billinstallments=999999
billinstallmenttype=Day
billinterval=7
 
Send the customer a bill every 7 days for $5. There is no limit to the billing. It will be billed 999999 times.

    

Automatic Creation Summary

At the end of an order, VP-ASP will look at each product. If the field billinginstallments is not 0 a billing record will automatically be created in the new table called “billing” for that product. The billing is done by product and not by order. So it is possible for a person to order say two products with different billing amounts and times.     

Manual Creation of a Billing Record

It is not necessary for a customer to buy something from your shop. It is possible to set up manual billing. Simply create a record in the billing table with the correct values. Do this through the VP-ASP administration system by creating a new record.     

Billing Table Fields for Manual Creation

These are the fields in the billing table that need to be updated.

billamount	How much to bill at each interval
billnextbilldate	The date to start the billing
billcustomer	Customer’s name
billemail	E-mail address of the customer
billdescription	The description of what the bill is for such as the product or service
billinstallments	A number representing the number of installments. For example 12 will mean that this customer should be billed 12 times.
billinstallmenttype	One of the following words: Day, Week, Month, Year For example if Month is in this field, the person will be billed once per month for 12 months. VP-ASP only checks the first character of this field so Y means Year, M means Month, D means daily and W means weekly
billinterval	A number such as 1. This is the interval between bills in the same units as above.
billcreationdate	Date you are creating this billing record
billenddate	Optional. The last date for which a bill should be sent out. If not supplied VP-ASP stops sending bills when the installments are completed.
billtemplate	Optional. A special mailing template used when sending out bills for this billing record

 
 
Other fields should not normally be filled in. They will be filled in by VP-ASP as bills are sent out.
 
Once a billing record is created, it works exactly as if the record was created automatically through an order.

    

Sending out Bills

It is up to you to manually run a file from your browser. There is no time driven event in VP-ASP.
 
This can be done using the new billing administration menu that was created during the installation. This is described in the next section under administration. Use the Send Billing e-mail.
 
This will send out all bills that are due to be sent out. It will look at the next billing date and send out all bills that have not been sent out since this file has been run. So it will send out bills for which the next billing date is less than or equal today’s date.
 

    

Billing Template

What does the customer actually receive by e-mail?  This is determined by a file called tmp_billing.txt. It is possible to have a different billing template used per billing record by altering the billtemplate field.
 
Templates are explained in the VP-ASP Option Design Guide. Since the mailing is done from the projects table, any field in the projects table can be used in this template. A sample template is shown below. The items in brackets […] is information taken from the projects table.  The projects table represents a bill sent to a customer.
 
To: [customer]
 
Payment is now due for:
[billdescription]
 
Billing Reference:
[description]
 
Payment can be made by going to:
 
http://www.mysite.com/shopping/shopprojectlogin.asp
Project #: [pid]
Email:     [customeremail]
 
You can modify this file (template) to add your own site-specific company and payment terms     

Sending a Bill Summary

The following happens when you send out a bill.
 
1. A record gets created in the projects table. This is the information about how much the customer must now pay. By viewing the projects table you can see the records that represent the bills that have been sent out.

2. E-mail gets sent to the customer asking him to come back to your site to pay the bill. The “Bill” is information from the tmp_billing.txt template merged with information from the project record and e-mailed to your customer.

    

How does the customer pay

The customer pays by coming back to your site to file shopprojectlogin.asp. A hyperlink to this file is automatically generated in the e-mail that went to the customer.
 
They enter the project number that has been e-mailed to them and their e-mail address. VP-ASP then automatically adds the project to their shopping cart and they continue to checkout normally. 
 
Nothing prevents them from browsing your shop and purchasing other items as well as paying the bill.



On entering their project number and e-mail address, the service is added to the cart in this form automatically. 


 
After the project is added to the cart it is treated like any other “product”. The customer can add another project by using shopprojectlogin.asp or can simply start the checkout process to pay for this bill and other items being purchased.

    

Project Payment Updates

Unless you tell VP-ASP, it does not automatically mark the bill paid. 
 
VP-ASP can automatically mark the bill paid when the customer checks out or you can choose to verify each bill manually. To allow automatic updates, set 
 

Xprojectupdate

Yes. This automatically updates the project record when payment is made

If you have xprojectupdate=No, it will be up to you to look at all orders received, note which project they belong to and manually mark that they have been paid. This can be done using the project report described in the next section.

    

Billing Administration

Billing Administration allows you to view and modify the billing and projects table. It is implemented with new file shopa_billingadmin.asp. With this table you can:
 
• Send out Bills

• Manually create new billing records or review existing billing records

• Display bills that have been sent out (projects)

• Run reports based on time periods to see what has been sent and what remains to be sent

Send Billing E-mail
This is used to read all the billing records. It determines if any mail needs to be sent and generates the appropriate project records. This file should be run daily or as often as necessary to send out bills.

Edit Billing Table
This is just the standard VP-ASP edit facility for tables. It is placed here for your convenience.

Display Projects
This is just the standard VP-ASP display projects facility from the original Option Package. It is placed here for your convenience.

Project Reports
The project report displays those projects (actual customer bills) that have not yet been processed. As projects are paid, they can be marked paid and processed. The details can be updated by editing the record.

    

Link Back to Original Billing Record

By clicking the number under the billing # header, you will see a formatted billing record that was responsible for the creation of this project record.
    

Billing Reports

The billing reports allow displaying a summary of how many bills were sent out over a period of time or will be sent out in a period of time.
 
 
Summary Report - Future
A Summary Report is used to list the number of bills sent and or the number remaining to be sent in a given period. The report below is for a future period. In this period there will be 3 bills e-mailed for a total of $80. The future reports simple list the count based on next billing date. They DO NOT do forward projections based on number of installments that may occur in the future. 
  
 
Summary Report – Past or Current
In this report 1 bill was e-mailed for the date. 
 
Detailed Report
A detailed report lists a summary of a few billing fields. Hyperlinks are generated to the original order or the billing record.

In the report above, sorted by next billing date, there are three bills to be sent out. Two of them have orders and were created by a customer ordering a product. The first one has no order number and was created as manual billing record.
 
The third one had one bill already sent out on September 23. The first two have had no bills yet sent out.

    

Billing Administration Miscellaneous

Here are some hints.

Stopping billing records from being generated.
If you want to stop VP-ASP from generating any more bills for a specific billing record, edit that billing record and set  
 

billcanceled

True  (or not zero)

Stopping automatic billing records from being created
If you do not want VP-ASP to automatically create billing records based on customer orders, set the Shop Configuration value xbilling=No. 
 

Xbilling

No

 

    

Billing Intervals

The billing system uses three VP-ASP tables. 
 

Billing	This holds control information that tells VP-ASP how often to bill, how much, when to stop
Projects	Holds the actual bills that are sent to the customer to pay. E-mails are generated to the customer from this table. Records are added when you click the Bill Administration Send Billing E-mail function.
Orders	This holds the original order that may have caused a billing record to be created and it holds the actual payment for a project.

Project Billing Fields
New fields have been added to the Projects table. These fields include: 
 

Billid	This is the record number in the billing table that caused this record to be created
Billdescription	This is a copy of the original product that the customer has purchased. It comes from the billdescription field in the billing table record. This is used so that the customer knows what they are paying for

 
New Fields in the Products Record
These fields are used if you want VP-ASP to automatically start the installment billing when a customer purchases a product. The field billinginstallments determines whether a billing record gets created at the time the  customer purchases this product.

Billprice	The amount to be billed
billinstallments	A number representing the number of installments. For example 12 will mean that this customer should be billed 12 times.
billinstallmenttype	One of the following words: Day, Week, Month, Year For example if Month is in this field, the person will be billed once per month for 12 months.
billinterval	A number such as 1. This is the interval between bills in the same units as above.

    

Billing

This is a control table. It is used to determine how many bills to send out, how often, at what interval. 
 

billamount	How much to bill each interval
billnextbilldate	The date to start the billing
billcustomer	Customer’s name
billemail	E-mail address of the customer
billdescription	The description of what the bill is for such as the product or service
billinstallments	A number representing the number of installments. For example 12 will mean that this customer should be billed 12 times.
billinstallmenttype	One of the following words: Day, week, Month, Year For example if Month is in this field, the person will be billed once per month for 12 months.
billinterval	A number such as 1. This is the interval between bills in the same units as above.
billcreationdate	Date you are creating this billing record
billenddate	Optional. The last date for which a bill should be sent out. If not supplied VP-ASP stops sending bills when the installments are completed.
billorderid	It is the original order that caused this billing record to be created
billlastmaildate	The date the last bill was sent out
billsentcount	The number of e-mail bills that have been sent to the customer
billcanceled	If True, then the merchant has decided to stop sending bills to the customer
billcompleted	If true, it means that this billing record is no longer used since all installment e-mails have been sent. It is normally set by VP-ASP automatically after the last installment is sent
billcreationdate	The date this billing record itself was created.
billorderitemid	The record number in the oitems table for the original order that created the billing record
billenddate	Used to stop billing at a certain date regardless of whether the number of installments has been reached. Normally this field would not be used
billtemplate	Optional. Used to specific a unique mailing template for bills generated from this billing record
billother1	Unused
billother2	Unused