Question about removing parent plans in CBSubs

I have used CBSubs for many years.  (It has been great!)  But now we want to make a change in how we have structured our plans, and would like advice:

From the beginning, we have used Parent Plans as an organizational tool, grouping the plans into four categories:  Individual, Family, Instructor, and Pony Club (a discounted Plan).  We set it up so that someone would only see those 4 parent plans until they selected one, and then all the child plans would drop down.  It works beautifully - except for a few problems when someone moves from one category to another, which seems to be happening more often.  The biggest problem is with pro-rating.  So we've decided to give up this structure and make all plans "top" to allow movement between plans with pro-rating.  

The question is - how to do it as simply as possible, but without causing unforseen consequences
.  
Our current structure is:
Individual Memberships (Free, lifetime, exclusive. Hide child plans if not selected, No change in group)
-Individual Gold single payment (exclusive)
-Individual Gold 4-payment plan (exclusive)
-Individual Basic Benefits: single payment (exclusive)
-Individual Basic Benefits: 4-payment plan (exclusive)
Family Memberships (Free, lifetime, Exclusive, Hide child plans if not selected, no change in group)
-Family Gold Single Payment
-Family Gold 4-pmt Plan
Etcetera, for a total of about 36 plans, but the structure is the same throughout.
  (These family plans are basically single plans with a field for additional family members.  We set it up before CBSubs created family plans)

In order to change all plans to be "Top" level, would it work to:
Change all existing child plans to "Top" and leave them as "Exclusive"
Change all Parent Plans to "Unpublished", "Not exclusive", "Do not allow new subscription or registration"?  The parent plans were all free, and they did not change a user's group.

Or do we really need to rewrite all the plans as new plans, and make all the existing plans unrenewable, and not able to accept new subscriptions?

Thank you for your help,
Lucy





 

Change all existing child plans to "Top" and leave them as "Exclusive"
Change all Parent Plans to "Unpublished", "Not exclusive", "Do not allow new subscription or registration"?  The parent plans were all free, and they did not change a user's group.

Yes, that should work fine.

Or do we really need to rewrite all the plans as new plans, and make all the existing plans unrenewable, and not able to accept new subscriptions?

It might be work considering a new plan structure now that more features are available. CBSubs Options for example in most cases can completely eliminate the need for child plans as a lot of people were using child plans to offer different price/duration options, but CBSubs Options can allow you to have as many price/durations as you want for a plan. You can find details about CBSubs Options and examples in my blog post below.

www.joomlapolis.com/blog/kyle/18983-cbsubs-options

For family plans you can then just use CBSubs Family Plans integration to eliminate needing extra plans at all and you can use CBSubs Options to let them purchase family shares.

Thank you for your very quick reply!  And you bring better news than I even hoped for.  CBSubs Options sounds as if it will simplify our plans and streamline their presentation.  I'll look at the Family Plans integration as well.  It may work better for us on the backend than the family plan we created. 

I'll report back at some point - meanwhile, thank  you so much!  This is very encouraging!