Question

I am working on an application that provides a 30 day trial, then the option to have a monthly or yearly subscription (at two different prices).

I’ve used a lot of the info provided by John Conde on his site (thanks John), but want to be sure I’ve got the right idea about how all this works – my first time doing anything with Authorize.net or subscriptions…

So if I have a 30 day trial, and someone decides they want to pay today, they should not be billed for 60 days. I set the start date ahead 60 days, but should I see any kind of charge in Authorize.net showing it’s pending?

Next, is part of the ARB service that it “watches” for the renewal, or am I supposed to do something to trigger the check on a regular basis. I’m pretty sure that’s what ARB is, and I don’t need cron to check each day, but I’d rather ask a dumb question now rather than have a bunch of missing charges later.

Finally, what information would you recommend I store in my local DB and what should I let the ARB service capture. Currently, I’m storing what the subscription item is, who the person who is making payment is (by id), the name on the card, the last four digits of the card in case they want to reference what was used, the expiration date of the card, so I can look for pending expirations (unless this is part of ARB as well) and the date the subscription starts, ends.

Any additional info is appreciated.

Answer 1

So if I have a 30 day trial, and
someone decides they want to pay
today, they should not be billed for
60 days. I set the start date ahead 60
days, but should I see any kind of
charge in Authorize.net showing it’s
pending?

Use the AIM API to charge their initial payment and then set the start date in ARB to be in 60 days (when their first payment is). You won’t get any notice that the subscription is “pending” but if a subscription ID is returned to you by the ARB API then it’s safe to assume that first payment will be attempted in 60 days.

Next, is part of the ARB service that
it “watches” for the renewal, or am I
supposed to do something to trigger
the check on a regular basis. I’m
pretty sure that’s what ARB is, and I
don’t need cron to check each day, but
I’d rather ask a dumb question now
rather than have a bunch of missing
charges later.

You don’t have to do anything. The “A” in ARB stands for Automated and it is completely automated. Once a payment is scheduled it will run automatically until the subscription ends, you cancel the subscription, or their card expires and you don’t update it before the next scheduled bill date.

Finally, what information would you
recommend I store in my local DB and
what should I let the ARB service
capture. Currently, I’m storing what
the subscription item is, who the
person who is making payment is (by
id), the name on the card, the last
four digits of the card in case they
want to reference what was used, the
expiration date of the card, so I can
look for pending expirations (unless
this is part of ARB as well) and the
date the subscription starts, ends.

Send as much information to the ARB API as you can. It makes researching transactions in the Authnet control panel much easier as you can compare what you have captured to what they show in their transaction history.

It sounds like you’re storing information that will be useful to you. I’d encrypt anything credit card related as to make it less useful if your DB gets hacked. You store enough information that a hacker could use it to convince your customers that they have their credit card number and then things get really ugly.