[WooCommerce] How Payments Work With Autoship Cloud

Payments are processed each time a Scheduled Order processes.  While the actual payment processing is handled by Autoship Cloud's hosted service, QPilot, and the payment gateway that each payment method is associated with, there are key features in WooCommerce that Autoship Cloud supports to ensure a great customer experience.

Autoship Cloud extends on the existing functionality of the supported payment plugins to allow for payment features offered by the payment plugin to be used with Scheduled Orders. Learn more about payment integrations here: Payment Integrations

WooCommerce Payment Features Important to Autoship Cloud

  1. Save Payments / Tokenization at Checkout
    1. Each payment gateway that is supported by Autoship Cloud must have a WooCommerce plugin that enables the creation of saved payment methods.
    2. For supported payment plugins, Autoship Cloud will enforce logic during WooCommerce Checkout that requires that any customer purchasing 1 or more products selected for Autoship save their payment method at checkout.
  2. Save / Manage Payment Methods in My Account
    1. Most of the plugins that we support will also include methods that enable customers to add and delete payment methods from within My Account
    2. When a payment is created or deleted in My Account using supported payment plugins, those methods are also added to or deleted from the customer in QPilot
    3. This ensures that customers understand how to manage their saved payment methods and makes resolving issues with existing payment methods easy for customers to understand
  3. Refunds through WooCommerce Edit Order page
    1. Supported payment plugins that offer refund support through WP-Admin > WooCommerce > Orders > Edit Order are supported for Autoship Orders (recurring orders in WooCommerce created when an Autoship Scheduled Order is processed).

How Customers Create and Manage Saved Payment Methods

Customers have 2 ways to create and manage saved payment methods in WooCommerce:

  1. By opting to save a payment method at Checkout (enforced automatically by Autoship Cloud when a product selected for Autoship is in the cart)
  2. By logging into My Account and visiting Payment Methods

How Customers Apply Payment Methods to their Scheduled Order(s)

Autoship Cloud enables customers to apply saved payment methods to Scheduled Orders the following ways:

1. My Account > Scheduled Orders: Selecting/Changing the payment method by updating a Scheduled Order

2. My Account > Payment Methods: Selecting a link/button that applies a payment method to their Scheduled Order(s)

In the following screen capture, a customer logs in to My Account, adds a new payment method, applies it to all of their Scheduled Orders, and resumes their Paused Scheduled Order.

How Merchants Manage Saved Payment Methods

While payment methods are usually managed by the customer themselves, merchants have several ways to help their customers manage their saved payment methods:

  1. Directly in the Payment Gateway
    1. Merchants can always view and manage saved payments by logging into their Payment Gateway
  2. Editing a Scheduled Order
    1. WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Scheduled Orders: Merchants can make changes to payment methods by Editing the Scheduled Order
  3. Editing a Customer
    1. WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Customers: Merchants can add and remove existing saved payment methods to/from an Autoship Customer's profile

How a Merchant Adds or Removes a Saved Payment Method for an Autoship Cloud Customer:

  1. In the WordPress Admin, visit WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Customers
  2. Find the Customer that you want to add or remove a payment method for and select "edit"
  3. Scroll down to the "Payment Methods" section of the Edit Customer view to Add or Remove a payment method

How Payment Processing Works for Autoship Scheduled Orders

Autoship Cloud's hosted service, QPilot, integrates directly with your payment gateway to process Autoship Scheduled Orders.  This enables QPilot to manage and process payment methods directly with your payment gateway so that WooCommerce Orders created from processing an Autoship Scheduled Order include payment information.

How a payment is processed for an Autoship Scheduled Order:

  1. When a Scheduled Order starts processing, QPilot creates an Order in your WooCommerce Store via the WooCommerce REST API
    1. This produces an Order in WooCommerce with the status "Pending Payment"
  2. Your WooCommerce Store sends the Order data back to QPilot including any tax that your WooCommerce Store requires
  3. QPilot sends the complete Order details to the Payment Gateway associated with the Payment Method on the Scheduled Order
  4. The Payment Gateway responds to QPilot with the result: a "Success" or "Declined" response.
  5. If the payment is successful, QPilot updates the Order in your WooCommerce Store with the payment details (for example: the gateway's Transaction Id) and the Order Status changes from "Pending Payment" to "Processing".  The Scheduled Order status remains "Active" and the Scheduled Order data is updated to reflect a new Next Occurrence Date, cycle count and Lifetime Value (LTV).
    1. In the case of "Authorize Only" transactions, the status is usually changed to "On Hold"
  6. If the payment is unsuccessful (a "Decline" for example), QPilot will update the created WooCommerce order and its Scheduled Order to a "Failed" status. The specific reason for the failure is recorded and automatically communicated to merchants via email.

    A quick way for merchants to review recently processed Scheduled Orders that failed to process is by visiting WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Scheduled Orders ( use the "Failed" status filter to only view those Scheduled Orders with a Failed status) or also by visiting WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Dashboard (which will show both recently processed Scheduled Orders as well as a summary of any Scheduled Orders that Failed and why).

    1. You can learn more about managing failed Scheduled Orders here: Scheduled Order Processing Errors
    2. To see which email addresses will be automatically notified by email, please see the "Site Contact" as outlined here: Notifications for Administrators
    3. You can also send notifications to your customers about Failed Scheduled Orders as outlined here: Customer Email Notifications

For more details about how Autoship Orders are processed, please see:  How Autoship Orders are Processed