Subscriptions

Managing all the different facets of fulfilling a subscription can be a difficult task; from initially signing-up a subscriber, to delivering the product, to renewing the subscription; the process requires a great deal of time, organisation, detail and staff resources. IP1 Subscriptions Module eases the entire subscriptions process by providing you with a comprehensive marketing and sales tool as well as an automated order management system.

The Subscriptions Module automates the subscriptions process saving you time and staff resource while reducing the potential for processing errors, thereby improving efficiency. IP1 Subscriptions gives you access to in-depth and comprehensive reports to help you gain a better understanding of your subscribers and subscriptions and in this way better control of your subscriptions process. It provides you with useful features including deferred revenue (ensuring that financial reports depict a true indication of how revenue was generated throughout the subscription term).

Additional features include moratorium periods (time for which no charge or a reduced price is levied before full price is charged), discounts and grace days (number of days to supply a product after a renewal is issued and unpaid). The Subscriptions Module also supports event based and time based subscriptions. Access to these features gives you greater control of your entire subscriptions process as they are specifically designed for the management of subscriptions.

Online subscription order records can have an additional contact, belonging to the admin type specified in TMSCRM/CR-ROLE control file, to be responsible in administering the subscription. This contact can be added when entering the subscription order and a warning message will display if the contact ID and email address are not entered. Captured contact details will be sent to the DPD (Digital Product Distributor) via the DPD interface. Whenever any of the online subscription details are changed the changes will be resent to the DPD. [Read more…]

Maintenance Work with subscriptions lists

Subscription list maintenance

Subscription order selection

Subscription order maintenance

Work with subscriptions customers

Subs product list maintenance

Subs component maintenance

Quotation contract

Subs points maintenance

Work with subs sweeps

Subscription collation text

Resource group maintenance

Release/Renewal Subscriptions order release

Subscriptions order monthly release

Subscriptions release run management

Subscriptions renewal by customer

Subscriptions reports

The Subscriptions module allows you to run an array of detailed reports which give you invaluable insights into your subscribers, their behaviour and subscribing patterns as well as statistical information on things such as your subscription numbers, new and renewing subscribers and revenue.

The reports allow you to analyse your subscriptions on dimensions such as:

  • Cancellation reasons
  • Movement types
  • Subscription source
  • Gratis orders

Reporting in IP1 Subscriptions provides you with detailed information enabling you to make better business decisions which ultimately increases your revenue.

The following reports are available to analyse your subscriptions:

  • Customer Subscription Listing – This subscriptions report can be output to either a printer file or a disk file. The report is sorted by customer/delivery number and shows Charge to and send to customer addresses, Subscription code and title, Quantity, Reference, Start, Renewal and Cancel dates, Status, Charge method, Gratis code and Discount % (if selected).
  • Multiple Subscription Lists Report – displays Customer, address, phone, fax, normal quantity and gratis quantity and the total by normal orders and gratis orders.
  • Subscription Cancellation Report – report displays Customer, Subscription list ID, quantity multiplier, cancellation codes and phone & fax for the selected Subscription ID or all Subscription IDs.
  • Subscription Movement Report – used to analyse the movements of subscribers to different Subscription Lists. The report can be defined by summary, gratis and subscription level.
  • Subscription Reports and Lists – a range of reports are included within this menu option. The reports available here are listed in Control File TMSSM/RPTSEL.
  • Subscriptions Renewal Report – displays Gratis/non gratis orders and units for each subscription list in the selected range of months (up to 12 months).
  • Subscriptions Renewal/Forecasting Report – displays a break down of type of sales for individual ISBNs within each subscription product. In addition to the number of orders and units, the report also shows the values of these orders and units for each month.

Other reports include:

  • Deferred revenue report
  • Payment methods and deferred revenue

The Subscriptions module supports multiple payment methods; Pay As You Go (PAYG), payment by instalments, and more subscription specific methods such as Pay In Advance Anniversary and Pay In Advance Fixed. Both of these subscription specific payment methods require the subscriber to make a payment for the entire subscription term at one specified time. However, a subscription product is despatched to the subscriber at different times within the subscription term. Reporting this payment in one period is not a true indication of the revenue generated throughout the term of the subscription. To help depict a true picture of the revenue generated throughout the subscription term, the Subscription Module uses the Deferred Revenue feature.

When a subscriber makes their payment the amount is placed in a deferred revenue account. Based on the length of the subscription a user-defined fraction of this amount is posted to the general ledger every time a product is despatched to the subscriber. This ensures that the financial reports show a constant stream of revenue throughout the subscription term and gives a more accurate indication of how revenue was generated.