How do I set up recurring payments or subscriptions?

You can 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.

   

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

5. Under the configure section (cog icon) for the subscriptions question, you will see a list of available plans. Click on the plan to move it over to the "Selected Plans" section for this question.

6. Optionally, toggle on “Can choose more than one subscription” if you would like the submitter to be able to add multiple subscriptions at once. You can also toggle on the option "Discountable" if you would like to discount a Stripe subscription.

   

7. Ensure you scroll through and configure the available settings for Payments and Subscriptions and make your selections.

8. Test your form.

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.

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

• 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)"
• Trial periods can be activated on the Stripe dashboard. More information on how this can be set up is found via Stripe's documentation. Note that the user will not be informed that they are signing up for a trial during the check out process and the subscription payment will commence after the trial period has expired.
• Subscription plans are loaded from Stripe when you add them to the form. If you change the subscription in Stripe afterward (eg. add a trial period) you will need to remove the subscription from the form and add it again. This will load the new subscription details and any new submissions will include the trial period.