Recurring

Recurring billing allows you to automatically charge a cardholder for specified goods or services on a prearranged schedule. To view your recurring payments select Invoice on the left-hand menu, then click on the Recurring tab at the top to see a full list of all plans created through MX™ Merchant.

What You'll See

Recurring shows all contracts regardless of their status. To view a list of all contracts, click on Invoices in the left-hand menu, then click on the recurring tab toward the top of the invoice page.

Each recurring line displays with:

• Contract # - System generated contract number each time a contract is created
• Customer - The name of the customer being billed for the contract
• Frequency, Every, On - How often the recurring plan is scheduled to bill the customer
• Plan - If you have recurring templates in use (refer to invoice app settings for more information) you will see those here
• Amount - Total amount billed to the customer each time the contract/recurring plan is scheduled to run
• Status - If the contract is actively running, paused, or canceled (Statuses: active, paused, canceled)
• Last Billed Date - The date the recurring plan was last run to bill the customer based on the schedule for the contract/recurring plan

Recurring Status

An active contract. This contract is set to run on the next scheduled due date.


A paused contract. This contract will not run until manually reactivated.


A cancelled contract. No further action is available, this contract has been voided.

Search, Filter and Export

To locate a specific contract use the search box in the upper right. To search, simply type the invoice # or customer name you are looking for and hit enter.

To access the filter, select the down arrow to the right of the search box. Select the criteria you want to filter on and click Apply. Please note, these filters will only be applied if you click the green Apply button at the bottom of the display, clicking outside the box will cancel your changes.

To reset your search criteria click default and the Apply button. If you want to set your own defaults, check the boxes you would like to filter on, then click Save as Default in the lower right. Now whenever you come to the Recurring page, your filter options will be automatically applied (this can be used for any of the filters).

To the right of filter, you will notice that there is also an export button that will export the current search and filter you have set and convert it into an excel spreadsheet.

Create A New Contract

To create a new contract simply click the +Add Contract button in the upper right-hand corner of the Recurring page.

Now you will be taken to a new screen to fill out your contract/recurring plan information found in the image to the right.

You may notice that this page looks very familiar to the invoice page. That is because a recurring plan is essentially just an invoice that is being automatically billed to your customer on a predetermined schedule.

There are a lot of fields to discuss on this page so let's break it up by the following sections:

• Contract - Customer information and Plan template
• Schedule - How often the contract should run, Start date, and terms
• Items - What the customer is being billed for, tax and discounts
• Payment - How the plan is being paid, proration, and receipt options

Contract

Enter Customer Name - Start typing in the name of the customer, a list will appear with potential matches (this is pulling from the customers you have already created on the customer tab in the left menu).

• If you see the customer you are looking for in the drop-down list provided, simply click the checkbox to the left of the customer name.

• If you don't see the customer name or that customer does not yet exist, simply click the blue Add New Customer text at the top of the list. Clicking this will now bring up a pop up for you to create the customer record. Enter the first and last name (if it isn't there already) and any other information you wish to provide, then click save. You are now back to the contract and should see your customer has been added in the first field.

Choose Plan - This is an optional field. If you have plans setup within your invoice/recurring settings and would like to pre-populate the recurring contract with information from your saved template you may do so by entering in the name of the plan you created and selecting it from the list provided. Once you select the plan name you will see the information from that template has been automatically added to the contract for you. Please note you may change this information, however, any changes will remove the plan name but will not affect your template.

More Section

Now that the customer information has been entered you will see a blue More button appear just below the customer name field. This section contains billing address, shipping address, additional contact information, and the option to add attachments.

Bill To, Ship To, and Contact - The billing is where the contract should be sent or the address for the credit card. Shipping is the address that the items should be sent to and contact is a phone number or email address as additional contact information for this customer.

• If you would like to change the billing address, shipping address, or phone number for the customer on the invoice simply click the blue pencil icon to the right of the x. This will allow you to add a new address or select another one on file.

• If you just created this customer they won't have an address so you will need to manually enter one by clicking on the blue plus icon if you find this to be important to capture on the contract.

Attachments - Use the attachments to upload any PDF file you feel is necessary to keep on file for this contract. These could be agreements that you require, miscellaneous forms, and/or copies of identification. There is no limit to the number of files that can be uploaded for each contract, so, upload away!

Schedule

Determine how often the recurring plan should bill the customer.

Frequency - Choose if you would like this recurring plan to run: weekly, monthly, or yearly

Every - Now that you have chosen the frequency, determine if it should be every week/month/year if so enter a 1. Every other week/month/year enter a 2. And so on.

On - Now that you've chosen the frequency and every, determine when in the week/month/year the payment should take place.

• Example: if you want to charge every month on the 1st. Frequency = Monthly, Every = 1. On = Day, 1

• Example: if you want to charge every month on the 15th. Frequency = Monthly, Every = 1. On = Day, 15

• Example: if you want to charge every month on the first weekday. Frequency = Monthly, Every = 1. On = First, Weekday

• Example: if you want to charge once a year on a specific day. Frequency = Yearly, Every = January. On = Day 1 (select the month and day within the month you want to bill)

• Example: if you want to charge bi-weekly on a specific day(s). Frequency = Weekly, Every = 2. On = Monday

Start Date - Even though you have selected your schedule and are creating the contract you can schedule the start date of the contract

Occurrences - How many times you want this contract to run through the schedule you've selected. Leave it blank (shows Unlimited) if you want them to continue until you manually cancel the contract.

• Example: if you want your monthly contract to run for a year and then stop running payments once a year of payments has been made, simply enter the number 12 for the number of occurrences.

Terms - If you would like to give your customers x number of days to pay the recurring plan after the scheduled date.

Item Information

Items are manual entries (unless you have the MX™ Retail app installed and then you can use products on the invoices and track inventory).

Enter Item Here - You can type the item name and/or description of the good or service the customer is being billed for. Once you are done filling out the item information you can click tab to get to the next field or use the mouse and click into the next field. When you move onto the next field you will notice another line item that appears for you to continue entering as many items as you need.

Quantity - The amount of this item are you billing this customer. The default is 1 but you can change it to any number higher than 1.

Price - The amount the customer is being charged for this item. Please note the price should be for one item; if the quantity is greater than 1 MX™ Merchant will calculate the total for you.

Item Tax

To add tax to the line item simply click the chevron or arrow found to the left of the item. A new section will expand showing you the taxes and discounts, the tax being the first tab. You can only select one tax category per item. When you select a tax rate it will appear in the calculation total to the right of the memo.

Item Discounts

To add discounts to the line item simply click the chevron or arrow found to the left of the item. A new section will expand showing you taxes and discounts. Click on the discount tab. Now you will see the discounts you have created in the discount settings. You can only select one discount per item. When you select a discount it will automatically reflect to the right of the price and the total will also be updated.

Order Discounts

You can add as many order level discounts as you would like. To do so simply click on the $0.00 in blue under the subtotal. A pop up will appear and allow you to select using a checkbox all of the order level discounts you want to apply in addition to the line item discounts

Once you have made your selection don't forget to click the green Apply button to confirm.

Payment

Once a customer has been added to the contract you will now see a new section called payments appear below the item section. This is where you determine things such as how the contract will be paid, proration, receipt options, and customer agreement requirements.

Payment - You have a couple options available to you.

• Use Account On File - This is the card vault for this customer. So if you already have a card on file for them OR would like to add a card for the recurring plan that should also be saved on file then this is the selection for you.

  • Account - Now on the next field labeled "Account" you will see a drop-down appear with the list of cards within this customers account vault. Clicking on the card last 4 will set this card to be billed. If you don't see the card number or would like to add a new card to the vault for this customer, click Add New in blue and enter the card information and save.

  • Receipt - You can also choose when the customer should receive a receipt for this recurring contract. Receipts are sent after payment has been successfully made. You can choose to have the receipt sent: Always, Never, or Once for the initial payment and then never again.

• Send Invoice - If you don't have a card on file or would like to send the customer a copy of the bill each month for them to pay at their own convenience then "Send Invoice" is the best choice. When sending an invoice you will see another option appear just below for what payment methods you would like to accept. In this example, it shows "Accept Credit Cards" is set to Yes. This means that each time this bill is sent to the customer it will have an option for them to make a payment directly on the emailed receipt. When they go to make a payment they can pay you with a credit card. If you don't want your customer to have the ability to pay their recurring through a link and you would rather they call you or submit their payment manually simply move "Accept Credit Card" to No.

Prorate 1st Invoice - If you don't want to bill your customer for a full cycle and would like to prorate for the remaining days left until the next full payment simply check the box to the left of the Prorate option. This will automatically calculate the number of days left until the next scheduled payment (based on the schedule you selected above) and calculate the customers first payment. This payment will be automatically billed on the start date of the recurring contract.

Request Customer Agreement - Some companies require their customers to agree to have their card on file as an additional security measure to prove that a recurring plan wasn't set up without the customer's approval. With that being said MX™ Merchant allows you to do just that just by selecting Yes next to Request Customer Agreement (found at the bottom of the payment section on the recurring plan). Please note if you don't see this option it is due to your invoice/recurring settings being set to No.

Once the recurring plan/contract is saved the email shown below will be sent to the customer.

When they click on the green button it will take them to the screen shown in the next image where they will either confirm the card on file that you selected or enter their own card they would like to keep on file. Next, they will agree that they approve the recurring charge on this card. Once that is complete the recurring plan will mark an event in history to show you the customer agreed and the billing process will begin.






Please note if the customer does not agree to the email the contract will remain in a pending status until the customer agrees or the contract is canceled.

Buttons

The buttons at the bottom of the invoice (also pictured below) allow additional flexibility with the invoicing capability.

• Cancel - Completely delete this contract

• Save - Once clicking Save the contract will become active and start billing on the next billing cycle.
  
  
  
  
  

View

To see more information on an existing contract click on the contract number within the list view of the Recurring page. Doing so will take you to the contract preview shown in the image below.





#Edit#

In this view, you can make any changes that are needed to the contract. Just make sure to click the green save button in the upper right of the screen once you are done and the changes will be in effect for the next billing cycle

Pause of Cancel a Contract

To pause or cancel a contract you must be in the contract view (please see the view section above for more information) once you are there you will see two buttons at the top: a More button and a Save button.





Clicking on the More button will show two options:

• Cancel - This is the equivalent to voiding a recurring plan. Once in a Cancelled state, no further action is available and is now for reporting or history events only
• Pause - This will stop all payments while in a paused status. The contract will not pick back up on payments until it is manually reactivated. To manually reactivate simply click on the contract view and click the Activate button found at the top. Please note if you have occurrences for a recurring plan they will not be taken into consideration while the contract is paused, once reactivated it will still run for the remaining attempts outstanding for the occurrences.

Change Payment

If you need to change the card that is being billed on a recurring plan you can do so by clicking the red x found to the right of the card shown in the image to the right. Once you click the x you can choose another card from the customer's vault or add a new card. Adding a new card to a contract will apply it to the recurring plan and add it to the customer's account vault for you.

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