Q: How do I choose which way to set up my packages when it seems like the monthly recurring, auto renew and selling a big package and splitting it into multiple payments all do the same thing.
A: You are right the end result is similar in all these features it is the small details that will help you decide which is right for your business. Many businesses use all of them so it is just a matter of thinking through how you want things to happen. Here are the differences so that you can decide which is right for the package that you are trying to sell:
- Auto renew, You can setup an item/package in inventory to have a specific renewal tied to it. This means that every time you sell that item/package Volo will log it into the member auto renewals area and you can edit or delete it from here. You can set up items/packages to renew after a certain amount of days/weeks/months/years or after the item only has a certain amount remaining. You can also add auto renew on at the moment of sale. At midnight every day Volo will go through all of your members and anyone that has an item that is ready for auto renew Volo will create an invoice and attempt to take a payment on the invoice. This does not pro-rate the item/package to the members account due date and you can set different parameters on the renewal.
- Monthly, when this is selected during the inventory setup the item/package will be tied to the member's account due date. When you go to sell the item it will pro-rate the price from the date of sale to the next due date. After that it will renew at what ever price you have it setup and it will keep renewing until you "remove" it from the member's on account area. This item is added to the members monthly bill when you "create Invoices due". This is always tied to the account due date.
- Payment Split, you can create split templates and apply them to the invoice or you can create a custom split. This will log the entire sale on the day that you make the sale and then take payments on the original invoice whenever they are due. There is a separate tab in your sales area that will show you all of your scheduled payments that are due. You will go to the scheduled payments tab and process the payments there. This is not tied to the account due date, it is scheduled based on what you set up.
This is an area that if you haven't thought about before can be a bit confusing, I hope that we can clear it up for you so that you that you will be able to create your inventory smoothly and easily.
Items are allocated to Categories so that you can see all the Items that you sell that are in the same income stream. For example personal training, you could have a 30 minute personal training session that you sell but you could also have a 60 minutes session that you sell. When you look at your sales they are both related to your personal training income stream but they are different Items.
You can create as many Categories as you need to track your sales but an Item can only belong to a single Category.
Packages are groups of Items, for example a single boot camp class is an Item but a monthly package that has 8 boot camps in it is a Package that you assign 8 Items into.
This is important to understand as when you link your appointments to inventory they can only link to an Item, an Item links to a single appointment, so the Item needs to be in the Packages that you sell at the correct quantity.