Product - Multiple Part Price

[Kesslers]

How do you setup a product that has a setup fee and a monthly fee?  For
example: phone service would have an initial setup fee and a monthly charge.
Can one product contain both of these charges?  Also I see the Price purpose
of 'Recurring Charge', how do you set this charge up to recur (monthly)?  

[David E Jones-2]

This sort of functionality, ie recurring charges and subscriptions in  
general, is generally pretty complicated and requirements vary a  
great deal depending on the intended user experience and the back-end  
systems, if any.

There is some stuff in place for recurring orders based on shopping  
lists.

The Recurring Charge prices are just information captured when an  
order is placed right now, but that doesn't feed into any automatic  
billing right now. That functionality was built to drive a back-end  
system that does the billing and such.

Either way, this is a tough nut to crack and I'd recommend a good bit  
of analysis and research before deciding on a way to go.

-David


On Oct 21, 2006, at 2:50 PM, Kesslers wrote:

> How do you setup a product that has a setup fee and a monthly fee?  
> For
> example: phone service would have an initial setup fee and a  
> monthly charge.
> Can one product contain both of these charges?  Also I see the  
> Price purpose
> of 'Recurring Charge', how do you set this charge up to recur  
> (monthly)?
>
>
>

[Kesslers]

How can I setup a product that has a price that is composed of more than one
price?  For example, if I order a new phone line I pay one price composed of
multiple charges.  It is clear on my billing statement that I have paid for
several activities/services.  Nevertheless, setting up my phone line without
phone service is not marketable.  On the other hand, phone service without a
phone line is equally futile.  The initial product must be the setup and the
phone service.  Can OFBiz break down charges in the webstore, shopping cart
and billing statement for a product?

David Kessler

[cjhowe]

From memory, you would create a product of type
"Marketing Package" and associate the smaller items as
components of the package.

--- Kesslers <[hidden email]> wrote:

> How can I setup a product that has a price that is
> composed of more than one
> price?  For example, if I order a new phone line I
> pay one price composed of
> multiple charges.  It is clear on my billing
> statement that I have paid for
> several activities/services.  Nevertheless, setting
> up my phone line without
> phone service is not marketable.  On the other hand,
> phone service without a
> phone line is equally futile.  The initial product
> must be the setup and the
> phone service.  Can OFBiz break down charges in the
> webstore, shopping cart
> and billing statement for a product?
>
> David Kessler
>
>
>
>

[David E Jones-2]

David,

Just like with the last question there are various ways of doing  
this, but it is a very complex problem. If you really are doing phone  
line sales and such you should get some help as I know from  
experience working with a large telco that the business rules get  
very difficult around this stuff.

The two ways I've seen tried for this are to extend the Configurable  
Product, or to create a custom UI for each product and have it manage  
groups of products in the shopping cart for the customer. In other  
words, the customer can't just manipulate the cart by adding and  
removing products, they just use the UI for directed cart  
interactions, and have a custom view of the cart as well.

 From my experience the first seems nice at first, but business rules  
change really unpleasantly and modeling everything in order to get  
the user experience you want in a data driven way is impossible given  
the inherent uncertainty (or rather, certainty of change...).

So, I'd highly recommend the second approach.

-David J.


On Oct 25, 2006, at 5:09 AM, Kesslers wrote:

> How can I setup a product that has a price that is composed of more  
> than one
> price?  For example, if I order a new phone line I pay one price  
> composed of
> multiple charges.  It is clear on my billing statement that I have  
> paid for
> several activities/services.  Nevertheless, setting up my phone  
> line without
> phone service is not marketable.  On the other hand, phone service  
> without a
> phone line is equally futile.  The initial product must be the  
> setup and the
> phone service.  Can OFBiz break down charges in the webstore,  
> shopping cart
> and billing statement for a product?
>
> David Kessler
>
>
>