products and subscriptions should have expiration and renewal end dates

[OptimusBain]

Hello everyone,

I hope IPS listens to my suggestions. I have read many other suggestions that should be implemented in the core and they haven't been added for years. Some great functionalities have been even eliminated when they were great and made the application better. Please, @Jordan Miller bring these issues up with the team.

The products and subscriptions modules lack a few functionalities. A very important one is being able to specify the expiration date. There is no way to do that right now. A member buys a subscription or a product and there is no way to automate the expiration date 😞 

I believe that Invision wrongly assumes that a product should never expire or the end of the product will be reached ONLY WHEN the user cancels the renewal. That's not logical.

How can I do this?

• I offer a course that will be available for the user for six months or a year. After that, he loses access to the page where the course was located. The product has expired. He no longer can ask questions about it or access the learning material.
• A product can be paid in several instalments. Once the last instalment has been settled, the member will have access to the service he purchased forever

There are so many uses, but none of them is possible right now because:

• ACP won't let you add an end date (expiration) for the renewals
• ACP won't let you specify the expiration date for the product/subscription

See the screenshots to see how this could be done.

Choose rebill times:

• No more charges: a single payment. No more charges will be made
• Charge second price (renewal) once. We could set a second price once, then the product expires or user has unlimited access
• Charge second price (renewal) X times. Recurrent payments that have an END. The product/subscription will end after X times have been charged
• Rebill second price (renewal) until cancelled. The member is charged X until he cancels the renewal

See an example for charging a renewal only ONCE.

 

See an example for charging a renewal five times.

See below an example to charge the renewal price until cancelled.

 

I believe these examples are self-explanatory. Nothing has been done. IPS assumes that community owners will sell products that do not expire. Products/subscriptions should have expiration dates and letting users pay the service in several instalments is a must.

Nothing like that is available. On top of that, the renewal price cannot be set different to the initial price. PayPal and Stripe allow you to do that (been doing this for many years).

As I said in a few of my posts, I believe that the Commerce module is "abandoned" and users are not being listened to.

Thanks a lot

 

@Marc Stridgen could you please move this to the Features forum? I placed it here, and I believe it should be under Features. Thanks

Edited February 25, 2022 by OptimusBain

[Marc Stridgen]

I certainly can. And done 🙂 

[dmaidon1]

On 2/25/2022 at 3:22 AM, OptimusBain said:

There are so many uses, but none of them is possible right now because:

• ACP won't let you add an end date (expiration) for the renewals
• ACP won't let you specify the expiration date for the product/subscription

I run a site that sells memberships, for an organization, that expires the same calendar year as sold.  All memberships expire on December 31, with no exceptions.  There is no way to set this in the commerce package.  Adding this ability would be a great benefit.

 

Edited October 16, 2023 by dmaidon1