How To Do Topup Credit Payments?

[voxbit]

Hi,

I am using Blesta for a billing a prepaid service.  I would like some advice on how to manage top up credits.  I'd like to find a way that the customer can choose to buy any amount of new credit at any time (in blocks of €10) and apply it to a running service. 

 

At present I have set it up that a client can use a on-off purchase to buy a Pay-As-You-Go package which is delivered as an active service.  The transaction is processed, paid-invoice sent out, service starts up and universal module calls to the realtime billing engine to configure a new customer account and add the selected amount of credit.... all good so far.

 

Here is where the problem starts:

Some time later the customer has used up most of their credit and gets a warning message from the realtime billing engine.  The client wants to make another one-off payment to add more credit to that same service.  How would you set that up in Blesta?

 

So far I have found that I can add a admin-editable configurable option ("quantity") to the package.  That allows the admin to come in and change the quantity of credits in that service, which generates a new invoice requesting customer payment, but processes the service change on the universal module straight away.  Problems with this are:

1) credit is applied on the realtime billing engine before the customer authorises or pays

2) the service options show the total quantity of credits ever bought for the service

3) the admin has to do the transaction.

4) the invoice line items don't reflect that the customer is actually buying new credit on their running service.

 

Conceptually I think I want to create a package which is a child of the PAYG account package, and has no associated service. So that

1) a client can place an order for credit, which is automatically associated with a running service,

2) when the transaction completes, and invoice is closed, the service edit, or service renew action of the universal module for the parent service is called

... is this feasible? Is there another approach?

 

[Michael]

You sound like you need a plugin to check if the credit has reached 0.00 to send a email out to them. But clients can top-up with Make a payment button on the invoices and add whatever they like. So you could edit that and get a dropdown box or some sort.

[voxbit]

Thanks for the pointer... a custom plugin sounds like a useful path...  I have already got a plugin for admins that allows staff to see the current balances on the customers' realtime rating engine accounts from blesta... I think I can modify that widget so that it:

 

1) adds a widget or link on the customer home page so that they can see the remaining balance on their realtime billing account(s);

2) allow customer to select one of their realtime billing accounts, add a topup amount and click a buy now button

3) script the processing of the payment, transaction, invoice generation in blesta 

4) script the adding the credit to the realtime rating engine after the invoice closes

 

Not quite as out of the box as I was hoping, but it should allow me to customise the workflow nicely.