Stone Edge Subscription Manager
The Subscription Manager, an add-on
for the Stone Edge Order Manager, makes it easy for merchants to handle a wide
variety of recurring orders, from magazine subscriptions to “product of the
month” type clubs, to regular deliveries of dietary supplements or pet food.
Here's how it works:
The Stone Edge Subscription Manager
lets you create "subscriptions" which can then create recurring orders for your
customers. Each subscription's delivery schedule can be configured in a number
of ways, including daily, weekly, monthly or annually, or on specific days or
dates.
The Subscription Manager supports
numerous types of subscriptions. Some can be for a fixed number of deliveries,
such as a training course with 10 lessons that are delivered one per month, with
the same 10 lessons shipped on the same schedule regardless of when a customer
begins their subscription. Others can be for a set number of deliveries, but
with automatic renewals, such as annual magazine subscriptions. Typically in
those cases everyone with that subscription would get the same product at the
same time, such as the April issue or the CD-of-the-month, regardless of when
their subscription began. Others can be for regular deliveries, but with no
fixed ending date, such as monthly deliveries of vitamins or pet supplies.
The items to be shipped can be set
to a single product for each delivery (such as a monthly supplement delivery), a
product selected at the time when each subscription order is generated (e.g. a
wine of the month club - where all subscribers get the same item this month) or
pulled from a list of SKUs assigned to the subscription (i.e. music collections
- where shipment 1 gets the first CD in the collection, shipment 2 gets the
second, etc., regardless of when they are ordered or shipped).
Billing is also highly configurable
with the Subscription Manager. Some subscriptions may be charged in advance for
the entire subscription, while others may be billed per delivery or for a set
number of deliveries, like magazine subscriptions.
The Stone Edge Subscription Manager
even makes it easy to deal with common nuisance issues, such as address changes
and vacation schedules. It supports alternate billing and shipping addresses for
customers during specific time periods, as well as the ability to "hold" a
subscription for a period of time.
The Subscription Manager works
together with the Stone Edge Order Manager, which is required for its use.
Initial orders are typically imported into the Order Manager from an Internet
shopping cart, such as MonsterCommerce, Yahoo!Store or Miva Merchant, or in the
case of phone or mail orders, entered manually into the Order Manager. The
Subscription Manager automatically detects which orders are for subscriptions,
and sets up the appropriate delivery schedules. The Subscription Manager is
fully integrated into the Order Manager, and can be accessed from the Order
Manager’s Main Menu. Deliveries scheduled by the Subscription Manager appear as
new orders in the Order Manager, which is then used to handle inventory
tracking, fulfillment, shipping, customer service, etc.
