Support Term Commitments (Contracts)

[aaronfitz]

Request: term commitments that still bill at shorter recurring intervals. For example, a client commits to a 2-year contract but service is billed monthly.

 

I am using Blesta in a situation that involves dedicated physical equipment to support clients' packages. The above scenario is one option I have for new customers so they can amortize their equipment.

 

For now, I set the packages in question to need approval to be activated. I also created a restricted 'contract' add-on package that staff manually add as a step they perform as part of activation. It achieves the desired behavior, but it would be nice if Blesta supported this scenario out of the box

[Michael]

+1

[Paul]

There seems to be a couple different parts to this:

1. Setting a contract length for a package term, and communicating that to the client during order &
2. What to do about early terminations

Regarding #1 above, the way I envision this working is that when you set pricing for a package term, you can specify that it's part of a contract and then set the contract length. The contract length may be able to be displayed to the user in the drop down menu when selecting the term. For example: "1 Month @ $12.95 USD (1 year initial contract)"

 

Regarding #2, either we have a separate contract termination fee, or we piggyback off the cancellation fee field (my personal recommendation)

 

Thoughts?

[Cody]

I'd go with "1 Month @ $12.95 USD for 1 Year". That's how I find it usually phrased for digital services with minimal terms.

 

Secondly, we should definitely use the cancellation fee. The obvious limitation of using the cancellation fee field is that the cancellation fee can only apply if cancelled before the end of the contract term (e.g. after the contract period, cancellation is free).

[aaronfitz]

I'd go with "1 Month @ $12.95 USD for 1 Year". That's how I find it usually phrased for digital services with minimal terms.

 

Secondly, we should definitely use the cancellation fee. The obvious limitation of using the cancellation fee field is that the cancellation fee can only apply if cancelled before the end of the contract term (e.g. after the contract period, cancellation is free).

 

Seconding your wording. The limitation you point out is how most contracts are stated, so I would think that is acceptable.

 

Another thing I didn't think about -- some carriers pro-rate their ETF. I'm not planning on doing so, but something to keep in mind if/when you guys implement this feature

[Paul]

Please see CORE-2057. This thread will serve as discussion on this task, if you have any comments, please let us know. There is additional planning required for this task prior to development.

[Wouter]

Hmm, this is in some cases (colocation or dedicated servers) mostly a must. What about a cancellation period? For example, the customer must cancel the contract 3 months in advance of the cancellation date (so still pay 3 months, after his contract/commitment has been "expired"). Is that something to be added to this feature, or shall I open a new FR for this?

 

When the customer cancels his contract before his commitment is expired, the cancellation date should be the end of the commitment (if the date is 3 months in advance of the end commitment date).