A recurring product will form a sale that will automatically bill your customer at a specified interval. These types of products are typically used for such items as web hosting, membership services or “Item of the Month” type products. Recurring products can either be created in your 2Checkout account and passed in using the Plug-n-Play parameter set or they can be passed in dynamically using our Pass Through Products parameter set. If you need assistance with creating products, this article will help you.

What Types Of Options Can My Recurring Products Have?

2Checkout currently supports recurrence intervals that will allow the sale to bill your customer every week, month or year. You also have the freedom to set how many of the intervals must pass for the sale to bill. This means you can set a sale to bill every 1 week, 2 weeks, 8 weeks, 7 months or even every 2 years.

Recurring products must also be given a duration, or the total amount of times the sale will bill before it stops billing. You can currently set a recurring product to bill for any specified number of weeks, months, years, or this can be set so the sale bills forever until it is canceled.

By combining your interval and duration you can set a sale to bill for exactly how long you need it to. If you wish to sell a 6 week e-book subscription where you will deliver a new e-book to your customer and bill them every week. To set this up we would create a product that bills every 1 week for 6 weeks.

Recurring products can be both intangible product that require no shipping or tangible products which do require shipping. A tangible recurring product will be charged shipping on each installment that is billed. Shipping charges cannot be applied to intangible products.

If you need to add a charge for any reason you can set a start-up fee, which will be added to your products price on the first billing only. This start up fee will only be charged at the initial purchase. Setting a $10 startup fee would allow you to bill your customer, for example, monthly for $20, but charge the customer $30 the first billing.

You may also use a negative startup fee to lower, but not eliminate, the initial charge. Setting a -$10 startup fee would allow you to bill your customer, for example, monthly for $20, but charge the customer $10 the first billing.

Recurring products may be edited, but this will NOT effect current recurring orders for those products. Editing a recurring product will only effect orders placed for that product after the changes have been saved.

What Options Do I Have For Tracking My Sales?

Once a recurring sale has been placed, it can be viewed inside your 2Checkout account on its sale details page. This will show you each installment that has taken place, when it was billed and how much it was. It will also contain all your customer information and sale information just like regular non-recurring sales. If you need help finding a sale inside of your account, this article will assist you.

The “Declined Recurrings” report and the “Recurrings to Bill” report will help you track your recurring sales. The “Declined Recurrings” report will show you each sale that has declined and for what reason it declined. When a recurring sale declines your customer is sent an email notifying them of this and they are provided a link to update the billing information they have on file. Suppliers will also receive a copy of this email so they are aware that a billing was not successful. When a customers updates the billing information the sale will attempt to bill again. If the customer does not manually update the billing information the system will automatically attempt to bill the sale every seven days. The “Recurrings to Bill” report will show you the recurring sales on your account that are set to bill again and when they will bill.

Can I Automate Sales Tracking?

Using the Instant Notification Service (INS), you have the ability to receive information directly from 2Checkout to your website and any system you have in place when certain events occur.

To enable INS, you first need to build a script (or multiple scripts) that will be accessed by and will receive data from our server. The INS Documentation will assist you in developing this script.

Once you have your script(s) constructed, you will want to add them to the Notifications section, which can be found under the Account tab. Fill out the text fields with your script URL(s), making sure to enable each notification that you want to get sent to your script(s).

If you need to be notified when an order is created (recurring or not), you can use the “Order Created” message, which will be called shortly after a new order was placed through your account. This is similar to the Approved URL within your account settings, but it is *NOT* the same. The Approved URL setting can be used to pass the customer (along with data about the sale) back to that URL on your website, whereas the INS “Order Created” URL will be accessed in the background by our system after the customer is finished with their order. If you want your customer to be returned to a URL on your website after they place a sale, you will want to use an Approved URL. Otherwise, if you want to just receive data about the new order created, you can use the INS “Order Created” message.

Setting the notification URLs for recurring orders can be done using the last five notification items, and are as follows:

• Recurring Installment Success — The “Order Created” URL setting is called (if it is set) on the first time a recurring product is ordered. Then, this “Recurring Installment Successfully Billed” URL gets called every time the order successfully bills after the initial purchase.
• Recurring Installment Failed — Whenever a recurring order fails to bill, this URL is called. Failures will happen whenever a customer’s billing details can not be billed successfully. This typically happens when a customer’s credit card has expired, or if the customer does not have sufficient funds within their account.
• Recurring Stopped — This URL will be called when a recurring order was stopped before its recurrence length is finished. This URL will be called whether the supplier or a 2Checkout agent ends the recurrence on an order.
• Recurring Complete — This URL will be called when a recurring order successfully bills its final sale and the recurrence has ended. Keep in mind, you will receive an additional call from the “Recurring Installment Successfully Billed” along with a call to the “Recurring Complete” URL.
• Recurring Restarted — When a recurring product has been re-started from previously being stopped, this URL is called. This URL will be called when a 2Checkout agent re-starts billing on a recurring order.

Once you have these URL settings enabled, you will start receiving INS calls as soon as they happen. If you have any issues with the INS or you require assistance with the INS parameters, please don’t hesitate to open a support ticket in the Tech Support category.

How Can I Stop A Recurring Sale?

Recurring line items can either be stopped so that they no longer attempt to bill in the sellers area or by making a stop_lineitem_recurring call to our Back Office API.

To stop a recurring line item in the sellers area, you will need to access the sale detail page by clicking on the Sales tab, clicking the sale number to open the Sale Detail page and then clicking the Stop this recurring link located at the bottom of the recurring line item. Once this link is clicked, it will read “Recurring Billing Stopped” and the line item will no longer attempt to bill.

To stop a recurring sale through our Back Office API a username with API Updating access must make a call using the stop_lineitem_recurring method that specifies the line item id that the supplier wishes to stop the recurring billing on.

Once a recurring line item has been stopped, you will not have access to restart the recurring billing but a 2Checkout representative can restart the recurring billing for you with the customers consent. However, it is important to note that if a recurring billing is restarted it will bill the customer for all missed installments at a rate of 1 installment every 24 hours until the recurring billing has been caught up to the current billing cycle.

Customers can also contact 2Checkout.com to request the billing be stopped. You will be notified of such requests by email.

Implementing this parameter is as easy as passing in the “fixed” parameter
with a value of “Y”. (Please note that this value is case sensitive and must be in uppercase.)

Example URL with “fixed” implemented:

https://www.2checkout.com/checkout/purchase?quantity=1&product_id=10&sid=11&fixed=Y

Example HTML form with “fixed” implemented:

<form action="https://www.2checkout.com/checkout/purchase" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="sid" value="11" />
<input type="hidden" name="product_id1" value="9" />
<input type="hidden" name="quantity1" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="product_id2" value="10" />
<input type="hidden" name="quantity2" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="fixed" value="Y" />
<input name="submit" type="submit" value="Buy from 2CO" />
</form>

Important Note: When you are testing parameters, please be certain to clear the cookies in your browser between tests to ensure the changes you have made are applied.

<a href="http://www.2checkout.com/" target="_blank"><img src="path_to_button" border="0"></a>

To include credit card logos, please see Can I have Credit Card logos on my Site or Cart?

• On: Using this setting all sales will be treated as demo, regardless of any parameter value.
• Off: Using this setting all sales will be treated as live, regardless of any parameter value.
• Parameter: Using this setting a demo parameter sent to the purchase routine will control the demo setting.

Demo sales allow you to see the purchase process as a customer would. No card will be billed during a demo purchase, but you must fill in all fields as you would for a live purchase. The only visual difference you should see is a note along the top of the purchase pages that reads “This is a demo sale. No charges will be levied, no payments made.”. Confirmation emails will also be sent for demo mode as they would for a live sale so that you can see the entire process. Confirmation emails for demo sales will indicate that they were demo sales as well, but will look the same as a live confirmation email otherwise.

To put your account in demo mode and make a test purchase you can select “On” for your Account Demo Settings option. If you choose the “Parameter” setting you would need to pass in parameter named “demo” with a value of capital “Y”. Demo mode will be enabled for every sale that includes this parameter and value. You do not need to pass in “N” to disable demo mode as it is disabled by default. You should either pass this in for a demo sale, or do not pass it in at all.

If you are using buttons on your site to sell your goods through 2Checkout, you would add a single line to the button such as this :

<input type=”hidden” name=”demo” value=”Y”>

This must go between the opening and closing FORM tag that you see when you view your existing code.

If you are using links to sell your goods through 2Checkout, then you would enable demo mode by adding this parameter to your links, such as this :

&demo=Y

If you are using a third party shopping cart, it may have an option within its setup pages or configuration options to enable this for you. If so, please use the method the cart provides for you.

IMPORTANT NOTES : The value of the demo parameter MUST
be a CAPITAL “Y”. Don’t forget to remove this parameter when you have concluded testing and wish to make your sales live again. When using the Demo feature for testing purposes, please be certain to clear the cookies in your browser between tests to ensure the new account settings have been applied. For more information on clearing the cookies please click here.

The demo mode is also controlled by an account level setting inside of your 2Checkout account. Log into your account and access the Site Management page and be sure you have not selected for all sales to be demo sales with the Account Demo Setting option.

If you are still having problems, please submit a tech support ticket and a representative will be glad to assist you.

“Request Invoice” can also be utilized for billing for excessive server time for webhosts, or for services that need to be billed in addition to the product/pricing structure hard-coded via 2CO’s product listing.

To create an invoice you must have a product set-up in the “Products” tab of the Vendor’s Area. The price on the product can be set to any amount as you will be entering the actual payment amount when creating the invoice.

To issue a payment request please follow these steps:

1. Click on the ‘Sales’ tab near the top of your account homepage.
2. Click on the ‘Request Invoice’ tab in the sales menu.
3. Fill out each field on the ‘Request For Payment’ page as they are listed below.
4. Your Invoice Number- number you will use to identify the invoice.
5. Relevant Web Site- The website that is providing the product or service. (optional)
6. Product- You must use the drop down menu to select the product that is being ordered. (Invoices cannot be sent for recurring products so they will not display on this menu)
7. Payment Amount- The total price of the invoice.
8. Payor Name- The customers name.
9. Payor Email- The customers email.
10. Subject of Email- Message in the subject line of the email. (optional)
11. Use the comment box to add any additional comments you wish to include in the invoice such a list of products being ordered or description of the payment. (optional)
12. Click on the ‘Submit Request’ button to send the invoice.

The Customer is sent an email with all the billing information and a link to the checkout routine. Once the customer completes the order with their payment information, the sale will be logged to your account and email notification sent to you and the customer.

Please Note: If you are using the purchase link provided in the invoice to send your own email please be sure to copy it directly from the invoice and not from your browser’s address bar. Sending the customer a link from your address bar can cause session tracking issues that may negatively affect your account.

This document is to list contact information from both parties. It is to state that all funds/customer base/issues are included in the sale. The new owner will be responsible for any negative balance once the account details have been changed.

Please fax the required documents to 614-921-2451 attn: risk

Account status is to be downgraded until we receive the documents, they have been reviewed and approved by the Risk Department.

It is important that you do the transfer of information 2-3 days following the end of a payment period (after your payment has been
issued).

Please complete the following steps:

1. Remove all your contact and banking information.
2. Give the new Vendor the login information.
3. Have the new vendor contact Payments through the ticket system to let them know there is new banking information on the account.
4. The new vendor may then create a username and password for himself by visiting Add Usernames from the Account Homepage.

Important! FrontPage does not verify the text or HTML you type for correctness, or reformat it when the page is saved!

On the Insert menu, click Web Component.
In the left pane, click Advanced Controls.
In the right pane, double-click HTML.
Type the plain text or HTML you want to insert.
Note: If you click Reveal Tags on the View menu, or if Show All is selected, the inserted text or HTML appears as an HTML Markup icon. The inserted text or HTML, however, will appear as intended on the Preview tab, or when a site visitor views the page.

Simply link them to your accounts order page at the link below. Be sure to replace the SID shown with your numerical seller ID.

https://www.2checkout.com/2co/buyer/orderpage?sid=XXXXXX