With LearnWorlds, you can sell your Courses and Bundles with Installments and create payment plans (available via Stripe).
Selling your courses with installments can help you gain more conversions as your future users will be more interested in an easier way to purchase. Installments will give the user the chance to opt for a more expensive course or bundle since it can be much more encouraging to buy a product that can be paid in smaller and manageable amounts as the cost concern is then significantly reduced.
How to Create Payment Plans (Installments) for Courses
To create a Payment Plan:
1. Go to Courses → Course manager → Select a course.
2. Set a price for your Paid course under the Pricing tab.
3. Click on Create Payment Plan.
Select the type of Payment Plan (Simple or Advanced)
Decide whether the payment plan requires an upfront payment or not. If an Advanced Payment Plan is selected as a requirement for the purchasing of the plan, then some additional options will be displayed.
Simple Payment Plan
1. Number of Installments: In the simple payment plan, you can edit the Number of Installments that you will offer. They can be as many as you prefer, it is up to you! The user will have access to the course after the first payment.
2. Amount per installment: Set the amount of money that will be paid for each installment. This setting is available in both Simple and Advanced Installment Plans.
3. Interval: In this field, you can manage the interval of the payments. You can choose to charge your customer every 1, 2, 3, or 6 months or weeks.
Advanced Payment Plan
With the Advanced Payment Plan, you can request an upfront payment, choose the amount per installment, and even choose to ask for the first installment after the initial upfront payment to take place after a specific date or days after the initial payment.
1. Initial payment amount: In this field, you can adjust the amount of the initial charge, which will be paid upon the user’s enrollment.
2. Amount per installment: After users have paid upfront the initial amount, you can choose the amount per installment for the rest of the installments. You can also have a glimpse of the Total amount that the user will be charged. This field changes according to your price values.
3. First Installment, after the initial payment: In the Advanced Installment Plan, you also have the option to set the time that the first installment for the plan will be charged after the initial/upfront payment has been completed. You can decide whether the user will pay for the next installment in a month, or on a specific date, or some days after the initial payment.
If you choose the option for the user to pay on a specific date or days after the first payment, the date should be at least 2 days after today's date, to allow the user sufficient time to make the payment for the second installment.
General Installment Settings
a. Payment Plan Status: Change the status of the payment plan whenever you feel to. While preparing your plan you can leave it as a draft (it will be invisible) and publish it only when it is ready.
b. User can cancel the payment plan: Select if the user will have the ability to cancel the payment plan whenever they want from their account page by clicking on Cancel under the Installment Plan.
c. Plan availability: The period that the payment plan will be available. Click on the date field and select the period during which the plan will be visible as a payment option through the pop-up calendar. This choice is optional, so you can also leave the field blank.
d. Payment plan name: If there is no name added to the field, there will be automatically generated a plan name according to the plan’s settings.
e. Payment plan description: You can add a description for the plan, which will be visible only in the payment zone.
f. Appearance order: The order that the payment plan will be shown in the drop-down menu below the Automatic Enrollment button and the payment options sections (in the Site Builder).
If the first installment's date is on the day the user checks the enroll button, then the installment won’t appear as an option.After creating your installment plan, or plans, you can have an overview under the Course Pricing Tab. In the right column, named Actions, you can find the buttons to copy the plan’s URL (arrow), check the plan’s settings (gear), or delete the plan (trash can).
Important Notes
- Once you connect your Stripe account and create your subscriptions and installments, you should not connect to a different Stripe account; otherwise, you will not be able to receive payments from the users who purchased a subscription or installment while you had connected the first account.
- Payment plans in LearnWorlds function like subscriptions in Stripe. When a user buys a product with a payment plan from the school, a new subscription is generated in Stripe with a default duration of "Forever." The subscription will automatically terminate once the final installment is successfully paid. This is the standard functionality of the Stripe integration. It's important not to interfere with this mechanism, as any intervention may disrupt the integration, causing recurring payments to not function as expected.
- After completing the payment plan setup, only specific fields (plan name, access, valid period) can be edited, as the rest of the settings will be locked.
- At the moment, it is not feasible to create coupon codes for payment plans.
- When the admin attempts to manually unenroll a user from a product that is part of an active payment plan, then an alert is displayed informing the author about the product’s status. If the author proceeds with the removal of the product, the payment plan is canceled.
- When a user cancels an installment plan, they instantly lose access to the installment plan and the relevant course.
- If you set an existing installment plan's status from Public to Draft it will get archived, and this means that the payment plan is not available for purchase anymore for new users but already enrolled users will keep getting billed.
- If you Delete an installment plan via your LearnWorlds school that has already been purchased by existing users, it will be archived. This means that the payment plan is no longer available for purchase for new users, but already-enrolled users will keep getting billed. You can also delete an installment plan via your Stripe account.
- When you delete a payment plan in your LearnWorlds school, if no user has purchased it yet, it is deleted and eliminated from the installments list. You can also delete an installment plan via your Stripe account.
- Deleting a product that was purchased with a recurring payment does not mean that the recurring payment will stop automatically. The recurring payment should first be canceled prior to deleting the product itself.
- When you set an expiration date for a course purchased with a payment plan, recurring payments in Stripe will continue to be processed even after the course has expired.
- If you cancel an installment, its invoice will remain listed under the "Orders" tab instead of moving to the "Cancelled Orders" tab (as canceled subscriptions do). This approach ensures that any partial payments already made are properly reflected in your revenue tracking.
How to create Payment Plans (Installments) for Bundles
You can also create payment plans for bundles. The process is the following:
1. Navigate to Marketing → Bundles.
2. Hover over the bundle of your choice.
3. Click on Edit Properties.
4. In the Properties window, click the Create payment plan. You can then edit the new plan in the pop-up window.
5. Save the installment plan.
6. Edit your Bundle Page to promote the installment plan.
Notes:
- In the Communication → School emails → Payment Plans, you can find the Payment Plans category, through which you can activate automated emails referring to specific relevant events.
- These emails can also be tracked on the Emails Log page ( Reports → Activity logs → Emails)
- You can track the following Installment Events in the Activity History:
Installment Paid: When the payment plan Starts and after each interval.
Payment Plan Completed: When the Payment Plan’s cycle is completed (Last Payment).
Installment Payment Failed: When a payment fails for some reason ( i.e., Card expired).
Payment Plan Canceled: When the payment plan is canceled (Admin manually unenrolls a user - User Cancels the Payment Plan - The payment plan fails due to payment failures).
- In case the installment plan is canceled, it is not feasible to reinstate the recurring payments via the LearnWorlds platform. You will need to check the feasibility via your Stripe Account.
- If a user is in the process of updating their billing info, you can control when to recollect the payment from your Stripe settings here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/billing/automatic
- The users can cancel their installment plan by visiting the Account page and clicking on the Cancel button.
