Register an Account using a Credit Card for a Trial Plan with Rollover to a Paid Plan

Best Practices

This is the recommended process to follow to register an account for a customer who is signing up for a trial plan using the credit card payment method:

1. Create the account.
2. Authorize the customer’s credit card.
3. 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, assigns the paid plan to the customer.
• For a plan that is initially free, then becomes paid, updates the account to the rollover status specified in the plan in Aria6 and sets the account’s billing dates based on the date on which the trial period was completed.
• For both types of plans mentioned above, generates an invoice for the account, collects the payment from the customer, and sends the statement to the customer.

Preconditions

1. Use Aria6 to create trial plans with the desired account statuses. For each trial plan, you must do the following:

• The number of free months that you are offering in the trial plan.
• The status that an account should have when a customer registers for the trial plan.

• The paid plan to which the trial plan rolls over.

• The number of free days 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.

2. Create your Direct-Post Configuration Set for Trial Plans

Postconditions

At the end of the account registration process described in the credit card payment flow for trial plans, the following results are achieved:

• A new account exists with a trial plan assigned.

After the trial period is over:

• The billing dates are set.
• A payment is collected.
• The customer receives a statement.
• If collection fails, the account goes into dunning.

Process Flow Diagram

The diagram below illustrates the recommended process for registering an account for a trial plan that automatically rolls over to a paid plan when the credit card payment method is used:

• The dark grey boxes indicate functions automatically performed by Aria based on the information specified in the trial plan.
• The light grey boxes indicate functions automatically triggered by Direct-Post based on your configuration set.

You can override the account status selected in the plan in Admin Tools by specifying a different status in the create_acct_complete call.

Registering an Account using a Credit Card for a Trial Plan with Rollover to a Paid Plan

Follow the steps below to perform account registration for a trial plan that automatically rolls over to a paid plan when the credit card payment method is used:

1. Use the create_acct_complete call to create an account.

1. Set the client_no field to your Aria-assigned ID number.
2. Set the auth_key field to your Aria-assigned authorization key.
3. Leave the status_cd field blank. The account status is automatically set based on the status specified in the plan that the customer selected.
4. Set the do_full_invoicing field to false. This prevents the account from being invoiced at this point.
5. Set the master_plan_no field to the number assigned to the master plan that the customer selected.
6. Set the userid field to the user ID that the customer entered.
7. Set the password field to the password that the customer entered.
8. Set additional fields based on your company’s requirements.

Postcondition: The account is created and an account number is returned.

2. Use the set_session call to obtain an Aria session ID for Direct-Post.

1. Set the client_no field to your Aria-assigned ID number.
2. Set the auth_key field to your Aria-assigned authorization key.
3. Set the user_id field to the user ID that the customer entered.

3. Transmit credit card information from your payment information page to Direct-Post.

• 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.

1. Set the mode field to the suffix of the configuration set that you created.Example: If you named your configuration set “direct_post_trialreg”, then you would set the mode field to “trialreg”.The mode field is a hidden field.
2. Set the inSessionID field to the session ID returned by the set_session call. The inSessionID field is a hidden field.
3. Set the client_no field to your Aria-assigned client number. The client_no field is a hidden field.
4. Set the formOfPayment field to CreditCard.
5. Set the cc_no field to the credit card number that the customer entered.
6. Set the cc_exp_mm field to the credit card expiration month that the customer entered.
7. Set the cc_exp_yyyy field to the credit card expiration year that the customer entered.
8. Set the cvv field to the Card Verification Value (CVV) that the customer entered.

4. Direct-Post triggers secure credit card transactions and account changes based on your configuration set.

1. Verifies the validity of the session.
2. Completes a $1 authorization of the credit card.
3. Sets the payment method of the account to credit card.

5. After completion of the trial period, Aria automatically does the following:

• For a plan that is free, then rolls over to a different paid plan, assigns the paid plan to the customer.
• For a plan that is initially free, then becomes paid:
  • Updates the account to the rollover status specified in the plan in Aria6.
  • Sets the account’s billing dates based on the date on which the trial period was completed.
• For both types of plans mentioned above:
  • Generates an invoice for the account.
  • Collects the payment from the customer.
  • Sends the statement to the customer.