A trial plan is a type of master plan that offers your customers a product or service free of charge for a specified time period. You then automatically transfer (rollover) customers to a paid version of the plan. You can create a trial plan with rollover to a paid plan in two ways:
Best Practices
This is the recommended process to follow to simultaneously register a parent account and a child account with responsibility level 2, 3, or 4 for a trial plan using a credit card:
- Create the parent and child accounts.
- After the completion of the trial period, Aria automatically does the following:
- For a plan that is free, then rolls over to a different paid plan:
- Assign the paid plan to the child account.
- For a plan that is initially free, then becomes paid:
- Update the child account to the rollover status specified in the plan in Aria6.
- Set the child account’s billing dates based on the date on which the trial period was completed.
For both types of plans mentioned above:
- Generate an invoice for the child account.
- Transfer the child account’s balance to the parent account.
- Generate an invoice for the parent account.
- Collect the payment from the parent account.
- Send the statement to the parent account holder.
The process described in this flow for simultaneously registering a parent account and a child account with responsibility level 2, 3, or 4 for a trial plan using a credit card deals with:
- Creating an account with no orders.
Preconditions
Create your Trial Plans with the Desired Account Statuses
Use Aria6 to create trial plans. For each trial plan, you must do the following:
- For a plan that is free, then rolls over to a different paid plan, specify:
- The number of free months that you are offering in the trial plan.
- The paid plan to which the trial plan will roll over.
- The status that an account should have when a customer registers for the trial plan.
Note: This must be a billable status so that an invoice can be generated for the child account after the trial period is over.
- For a plan that is initially free, then becomes paid, specify:
- The number of free days or months that you are offering.
- The status that an account should have when a customer registers for the trial plan.
- The status that an account should have after the trial period is over and the paid plan goes into effect.
Create your Direct‐Post Configuration Set
To create a Direct‐Post configuration set for parent and child account registration for paid plans using a credit card, define the following name‐value pairs in the set_reg_uss_config_params API call:
- Set the client_no field to your Aria‐assigned client number.
- Set the auth_key field to your Aria‐assigned authorization key.
- Set the set_name field to the name of your configuration set. The name of your configuration set must begin with direct_post_.
For example, the configuration set could be named direct_post_paidreg. - Set the redirecturl field in the in_reg_uss_config_params array to the URL in your account registration application where you display error or success messages. These messages are sent by Direct Post.
Setting this field causes Direct Post to trigger the update_ acct_ complete call to set the payment method of the parent account to credit card. - Set the do_collect_or_validate field to 1. This performs the following actions:
- Triggers the validate_payment_information call that will perform a $1 authorization of a credit card.
- Triggers the update_acct_complete call that will set the payment method of the account to credit card.
Instructions
Follow the steps below to simultaneously register a parent account and a child account with responsibility level 2, 3, or 4 for a trial plan using a credit card:
Step 1. Use the create_acct_complete call to create the parent account.
Precondition: A customer visits your website and signs up for a parent account and one or more child accounts in the same sitting.
- Set the client_no field to your Aria‐assigned ID number.
- Set the auth_key field to your Aria‐assigned authorization key.
- Leave the status_cd field blank. The account status is automatically set based on the status specified in the plan that the customer selected.
- Set the do_full_invoicing field to false. This prevents the account from being invoiced at this point.
- Set the master_plan_no field to the number assigned to the master plan that the customer selected for the parent account.
- Set the userid field to the user ID that the customer entered.
- Set the password field to the password that the customer entered.
- Set additional fields based on your company’s requirements.
Note: It is not recommended that you set the credit card fields using the create_acct_complete call. It is recommended that you use Direct‐Post to set the credit card fields as described in Step 5 below.
Postcondition: The account is created and an account number is returned.
Step 2. Use the create_acct_complete call to create a child account.
Precondition: A customer visits your website and signs up for a parent account and one or more child accounts in the same sitting.
- Set the client_no field to your Aria‐assigned ID number.
- Set the auth_key field to your Aria‐assigned authorization key.
- Leave the status_cd field blank. The account status is automatically set based on the status specified in the plan that the customer selected.
- Set the do_full_invoicing field to false. This prevents the account from being invoiced at this point.
- Set the resp_level_cd field to 2, 3, or 4.
- Set the senior_acct_no field to the account number of the parent account.
- Set the master_plan_no field to the number of the master plan that the customer selected for the child account.
- Set the userid field to the user ID that the customer entered
- Set the password field to the password that the customer entered.
- Set additional fields based on your company’s requirements.
Postcondition: The account is created and an account number is returned.
Step 3. Repeat Step 2 for each additional child account that the customer added.
Step 4. Use the set_session call to obtain an Aria session ID for Direct Post.
Precondition: A parent account and one or more child accounts were created.
- Set the client_no field to your Aria‐assigned ID number.
- Set the auth_key field to your Aria‐assigned authorization key.
- Set the user_id field to the user ID that the customer entered for the parent account.
Postcondition: An Aria session ID for Direct‐Post is obtained.
Step 5. Transmit credit card information from your payment information page to Direct Post.
Preconditions:
- You created a Direct‐Post configuration set for trial plans.
- An Aria session ID for Direct‐Post was obtained.
- The customer entered credit card information for the parent account.
Transmit the following fields and values from your payment information page to Direct Post:
- Set the mode field to the suffix of the configuration set that you created.
For example, if you named your configuration set “direct_post_cctrialplan”, then you would set the mode field to “cctrialplan”. The mode field is a hidden field.
- Set the inSessionID field to the session ID returned by the set_session call. The inSessionID field is a hidden field.
- Set the client_no field to your Aria‐assigned client number. The client_no field is a hidden field.
- Set the formOfPayment field to CreditCard.
- Set the cc_no field to the credit card number that the customer entered.
- Set the cc_exp_mm field to the credit card expiration month that the customer entered.
- Set the cc_exp_yyyy field to the credit card expiration year that the customer entered.
- Set the cvv field to the Card Verification Value (CVV) that the customer entered.
Postcondition: The session ID is returned.
Step 6. Direct‐Post triggers secure credit card transactions based on your configuration set.
Precondition: Credit card information was transmitted from your payment information page to Direct‐Post.
Direct Post does the following:
- Verifies the validity of the session.
- Completes a $1 authorization of the credit card.*
- Sets the payment method of the parent account to credit card.
Note: If an error occurs after Steps b or c above, then redisplay the payment information page and repeat the process beginning with Step 5.
Postconditions:
- A session ID is returned.
- The payment method of the parent account is set to credit card.
Step 7. After completion of the trial period, Aria will automatically do the following:
- For a plan that is free, then rolls over to a different paid plan:
- Assign the paid plan to the parent and child accounts.
- For a plan that is initially free, then becomes paid:
- Update the parent and child accounts to the rollover status specified in the plan in Aria6.
- Set the parent and child accounts’ billing dates based on the date when the trial period was completed.
- For both types of plans mentioned above:
- Generate an invoice for the parent account.
- Collect the payment from the parent account.
- Send the statement to the parent account holder.