How to Setup Recurring Profiles in OpenCart 3.x

Video transcript: Recurring profiles are a popular model that OpenCart stores use to setup repeat payments. They are used when you want to sell products by subscription over a specified period of time. So, let’s show you how to set them up in your OpenCart 3 store. Hi and welcome to our new video brought to you by iSenseLabs in cooperation with OpenCart. Step one, create a recurring profile. Go to your catalog and click on Recurring Profiles. We already created a profile for 10 dollars a month, but we’ll create a new one to show you the step-by-step process. Click the Add New button and start with a name for your new recurring profile. This will be shown in the storefront where your customers will need to select it, so make the name easy to read and understand. Something like $19 per Month. So, the section called recurring profile contains the parameters needed for your store to know the value of the repeat payment, its duration and frequency. The price will be $19… this will be the amount that your customer will be billed with each payment. The duration will be 12 months. This means that the entire subscription will last 1 year, after which the customer will not be billed anymore. The cycle will remain at one, and the frequency will be set to Month. Meaning that each payment will occur once every month. If you set the cycle at 2 for example, and the frequency to a Week, this means that the customer will be billed once every two weeks. Cool? Okay. Now just enable the status and we’re done here. We’ll explain the trial profile section in a bit. Click Save. Step two, assign the profile to a product. Go to your products and select the product you want to have recurring payments. The tab you need is called Recurring. We already entered the previous profile we had and now we’ll add the new one. Simply click the Add button and select the profile you just created. You have an option to enable it just for a specific customer group, but we’ll leave it for the default one. Click Save again. We’re done here. Let’s check out how this looks in our store. Here’s our product. The Payment Profile field has appeared right above the Add to Cart button. You can see the two profiles we have created and assigned to the product in the dropdown. So, that’s the whole process in a nutshell. Your customers select the profile they prefer and checkout with the product like with any other. Now, two questions remain. What about free trials and payment processing? Let’s explain. Step three. Create a trial period. Go back to the Recurring Profiles and create a new profile. Give it a name like “Free Trial” or anything along those lines you decide. To create the trial period, you still need to configure the recurring profile itself. So, let’s give our new profile a price. It’s important to know that this price will be activated after the trial period you setup has ended. Now, configure the rest of the details and enable the status of the recurring profile. Scroll down to the Trial profile section. As you can see, it’s pretty much the same like the recurring profile. If you want the trial to be free, just leave it at zero. We’ll set the trial duration at one and the cycle at one. The frequency will be set at month. This means that the first month of the subscription will be free. Again, enable the status and click save. Since this is a new profile, you need to assign it to your product as well. Repeat the process again and click Save. Now, let’s go back to the store and see the results. So, the free trial is part of the profiles and your customers can make the checkout with 1 month free of charge! Now, the last question. Step four. Payment processing. To have recurring payments available in your store, you need to have the right payment method enabled. By default in OpenCart 3, there are two methods that you can use - PayPal Express or Square. We’ll do it with Square for this tutorial. Go to Extensions and then select payments from the dropdown. Scroll down and find the Square payment method. Click install and then edit. You will need to go through the setup process which is shown in another video tutorial we did. When you’re all done with Square, you now have a payment method that supports recurring payments. Now we are ready to complete our checkout using the free trial profile and by entering our credit card information to confirm our order. Cool, right? Let’s go back to the dashboard and show you where to find the order. Go to Sales and hit Recurring Profiles. Here are all the orders we’ve made with recurring profiles so far. They all have their own Recurring ID and Order ID, Customer name, status and date. You can view and edit them like the normal orders in your OpenCart store. So, that’s basically how the Recurring Profiles work! We hope you learned something new. Click the like button if you did and subscribe if you want to keep getting better at growing your OpenCart store! Thanks for watching!