How do I set up recurring payments or subscriptions?

The Subscriptions field type lets you set up subscriptions or recurring payments on your Paperform forms with Stripe and Braintree.

1. To get started, you will need to create the plans as outlined in Stripe or Braintree's documentation. If you don't have a Stripe or Braintree account, then sign up for an account with either of them and proceed to create your plans.

2. Once you have created your plans in your Stripe or Braintree account, connect your account under Account Settings → Account Services by selecting "Connect Braintree" or "Connect Stripe".

3. In the form editor, ensure that the desired payment account is selected under Configure → Payments.

   Stripe payment account configured

4. Create a question, and set the question type to "Subscriptions".

5. In the question's configuration panel, click on "Configure Plans", from there you will see a list of plans that you set up in your payment account.

6. Click on the plan to move it over to the "Selected Plans" section for this question. You can set a free trial and make it discountable as you prefer. Read more about how to set up discounts for a Stripe subscription.

   

7. Once you are happy with your settings, make sure to publish your changes and test your form.

Installment plans or fixed-period subscriptions

You may wish to allow for a recurring payment that expires after a set period of time. To enable this, when creating a plan in Braintree, you can specify the billing cycle length and the number of billing cycles.

For example, suppose you wish to charge someone monthly for a period of four (4) months. You would set up a plan in Braintree with the billing cycle length set to one (1) month and the number of billing cycles set to four (4).

Gotchas

• When testing a Stripe account, make sure you set up the plans in both normal mode and “Test” mode. Stripe treats the “Test” version as a completely separate environment, so plans created in live mode won’t automatically exist in test mode.
• If you don't see any subscription plans, please make sure you have added them to your Stripe or Braintree account. You may need to refresh the form editor to see any newly created plans.
• Subscription plan prices will not show in the form or check-out total price. Instead, the subscription plan price will be referred to in the message below the check-out total. For example:
  "You will be subscribed to:
  Standard Plan ($10.00 / month)"
• Subscription plans are loaded from Stripe when you add them to the form. If you change the subscription in Stripe afterward, you will need to remove the subscription from the form and add it again to load the new subscription details.