Offline sales, payments, invoices

Hi there

After spending a month working to get a CBSubs system up and running, I've run into a big problem when I am supposed to launch tomorrow.

We manage about 25,000 subscriptions, and approximately 10% of these subscribers order and pay offline (phone/post).

It seems the only way I can process these orders so that I can (i) record the payment in CBSubs, and (ii) generate an invoice, is if I log in AS THE USER in the front end.

Is there seriously no way of processing an order and payment entirely on the back end?

This is very hard to believe so if I am misunderstanding this then please, please point me in the right direction.

Thanks so much.

Hello?

Currently the process is as you described:

User initiates an offline payment in frontend to subscribe to a specific plan.

CBSubs creates a basket for this.

User sends in the (offline) payment

Website team receives offline payment and finds basket and records the payment

Subscription is now paid and activated

--

Please propose how you would see your process working so we can discuss internally.

Hi Nant

Thank you for your reply.

The process as you described is fine but assumes that all orders will be initiated by the user, online. But in the real world, this is often not the case. I did stumble across posts by membership organizations - members drop in to renew and pay in person; in our case, we get postal and telephone orders, as well as orders in person at trade shows.

It seems very strange that admin is unable to process an order from the back end... ie - select a subscription for a user [which, as on the front end, causes CBSubs to create a basket & invoice] and then record the relevant payment.

Nant, can you propose any way I can work this in the meantime - I need to launch this site ASAP and this aspect of CBSubs caught me completely off guard. Can I create orders/baskets using the database tables? How?

akasharkbow wrote: Hi Nant

Thank you for your reply.

The process as you described is fine but assumes that all orders will be initiated by the user, online. But in the real world, this is often not the case. I did stumble across posts by membership organizations - members drop in to renew and pay in person; in our case, we get postal and telephone orders, as well as orders in person at trade shows.

It seems very strange that admin is unable to process an order from the back end... ie - select a subscription for a user [which, as on the front end, causes CBSubs to create a basket & invoice] and then record the relevant payment.

Nant, can you propose any way I can work this in the meantime - I need to launch this site ASAP and this aspect of CBSubs caught me completely off guard. Can I create orders/baskets using the database tables? How?

Ok.

First of all I understand the use case much better now - thank you.

The issue is that there is a need to be able to handle an offline order - CBSubs handles offline payments. As you can see (I do now) these are two different items.

CBSubs has always assumed that the order process is initiated by the end user via an online process on the CBSUbs powered website.

We are in discussions internally to work on a proposal to support this "new" (for us) use case.

The only solution/work-around I can propose in the meantime is to manually modify the password of such an offline ordering user and login as him from frontend to manually create the order (and basket) on his behalf (making sure that the address data, coupons, etc. are all properly input in order for CBSubs to produce a proper invoice for user).

Then your CBSubs backend admin can manually record the offline payment and perhaps send user a nice email instructing user that his new subscription is now activated and that his password has been reset (and he must use the new one to login and then he can modify it again).

This work-around does not compromise anything (as manipulating directly the database might prove tricky).

That's the best I can think of until a proper solution to this new "offline ordering process" use case is available.

PM sent with alternative way to login as a user without resetting their password.