Flexi Deposits

The Flexi Deposits for WooCommerce plugin enhances your checkout process by adding a deposit payment option alongside existing payment methods. This feature allows you to collect payments upfront, either as a fixed amount or a percentage of the total price, or create different payment plans giving customers greater flexibility on how they wish to pay.

1. Download the .zip file from your WooCommerce account.
2. Go to: WordPress Admin > Plugins > Add New and Upload Plugin with the file you downloaded with Choose File.
3. Install Now and Activate the extension.
4. After activating the plugin, you’ll be redirected to the License page. On this page, you will find the License Options. In the License Key field, enter the license key provided in the email. Upon activating the license, Discount Rules, Settings, Ready-to-Use Rule Templates, and Tools pages will be added.

More information at Install and Activate Plugins/Extensions.

Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Deposits.

Enable Deposits on Checkout Page: Enable this option to display and calculate the deposit amount on the checkout page for the whole order instead of individual products.

When the above option is enabled, the new setting “Minimum cart amount to enable checkout based deposit” will appear which means that on the checkout page if the cart total is more than the minimum amount set in the setting, then only the deposit option will appear on the checkout page.

Suppose, the minimum cart amount set is $1000, and the price of the product is $799 and we have enabled the deposit on the checkout page.

So, after setting this, the deposit option will not appear on the Checkout page.

Now, if the minimum cart amount is set to $500 and the product amount is $799, then the deposit option will appear on the checkout page.

The deposit option on the checkout page will show like this:

Enable Deposits – Select whether you want to enable deposits on all products.

• Deposits are optional – Users will have an option to pay the deposit or full amount.
• Force Deposits – Users will be forced to pay the deposit on the products.
• No – Disable deposits.

Default Deposit Type – Select the default type for the deposits.

• Fixed Amount – Users will pay a fixed amount of deposit on the products.
• Percentage -Users will pay a specified percentage of the total price of the product.
• Payment Plans – Let users select payment plans.

Default Deposit Amount – Enter a deposit amount based on the selected deposit type (Fixed or Percentage).

Default Payment Plans – Add multiple payments plans to let users select from them.

Plugin License Options –

• Enter the license key provided to you via email in the “License Key” field. Save Changes and activate the license.
• Now your plugin will get all updates. This plugin works even if the license key is not active on your website but then you won’t be getting any update notifications, hence it is recommended to activate your license for the plugin.

Go to Deposits tab on the Add/Edit product page.

Enable Deposits – Enable the deposits option for a particular product.

• Use Global Settings – The global settings for ‘Enable Deposits’ will be applied.
• Deposits are optional – Users will have an option to pay the deposit or full amount.
• Force Deposits – Users will be forced to pay the deposit on the products.
• No – Disable deposits.

Deposits Type – Select the deposit type for a particular product.

• Use Global Settings – The global settings of ‘Default Deposit Type’ will be applied.
• Fixed Amount – Users will pay a fixed amount of deposit on the products.
• Percentage – Users will pay a specified percentage of the total price of the product.
• Payment Plans – Let users select from multiple payment plans.

Deposit Amount – Enter the deposit amount based on the selected type (Fixed or percentage). If ‘Use Global Settings’ option is selected, the default amount will be applied.

Deposit Text – Enter the text to be displayed on the product page as a label for Deposits.

Payment Plans – Add multiple payment plans for a particular product to let users select from them. If ‘Use Global Settings’ option is selected, the default plans will be displayed.

 Payment Plans

Payment Plans are helpful in letting users pay the full amount in various deposits after specific intervals.

• Go to Products > Payment Plans to add different payment plans. Create a payment plan under the ‘Add Payment Plan’ column. The created plan will appear under ‘Existing Payment Plans’, where you can edit or delete the plan.
• Let’s create a new payment plan. We will create a 15 days plan where users will pay 30% of the amount while placing an order, 50% after 5 days and remaining 20% after 10 more days. Add a name & description for the plan.
• Under Payment Plan schedule, select 30% payment amount in the first field which will be paid by the users immediately. Click on the ‘+’ button to add next schedule.

• Now select 50% payment amount and 5 Days interval. Click the ‘+’ button.
• Select 20% payment amount and 10 Days interval.
• Click on Save plan. The plan will be displayed under ‘Existing Payment Plans’. Add this plan in the global or product settings to let the users select it.

You can add settings to send reminder emails to customers regarding the scheduled payments. You can enable this from WooCommerce -> Settings -> Products -> Deposits as shown below:

On the Deposits page, you can enable sending of reminder emails by ticking the Enable Reminder Emails option as shown below:

Once this is done, Invoice Emails for scheduled payments in the payment plans will be sent automatically the customer on the scheduled date.

If deposits are enabled on products, the customers will see different options based on the deposit type. If deposits are optional, customers can decide if they want to pay the deposit or full amount.

For fixed amount – 

The page will display a message to let the users know the fixed amount of deposit they can pay on the product.

For Percentage

The page will display a message to let the users know the percentage of deposit they can pay on the product.

For Payment Plans

The page will display the payment plans available for users to select.

The cart shows the details of the deposits based on the type of deposit selected. The cart also shows the payable amount and future payments in the cart subtotal.

The order will mention ‘Deposit’ if the customer has opted to pay the deposit. If the deposit type is ‘Fixed’ or ‘Percentage’, the order will display two options – “Invoice Remaining Balance” and “Mark Paid (offline)”. Invoice Remaining Balance will email the customer an invoice for the remaining amount. Mark Paid Offline will mark the order as paid.

If the deposit type is ‘Payment Plan’, the order will display a button to view scheduled payments. It will show the scheduled orders for this plan.

There is a new setting added in Flexi Deposits version 1.4, where you have the provision to disable existing payment gateways if deposit based products are added to cart. To do so, go to WooCommerce -> Settings -> Products -> Deposits page:

On the Deposits page, there is an option Disable Payment Gateways, where you can select the payment method or methods that you wish to disable so that those do not appear on the Checkout page.

Here we are selecting Direct bank transfer, Check payments and PayPal methods to be disabled as shown below:

The Checkout page was displaying all the payment methods available, before disabling the payment methods as shown below:

But after Direct bank transfer and PayPal were disabled, the checkout page showed only Cash on delivery method as shown below:

You can disable the display of adding coupon code on the Cart page if deposit is applied on the products in the cart, using the Disable Coupons option. To do so, go to WooCommerce -> Settings -> Products -> Deposits page:

The Deposits page has a new setting added for disabling the coupon code namely Disable Coupons. You can enable this option by ticking it as shown below:

The Cart page usually displays the Coupon code field as shown below:

But when you opt to Disable Coupons on Deposits page, the Coupon code field will disappear from the Cart page as shown below:

You can enable the coupons on the deposit amount or on the whole product amount. To do so, we have a setting “Enable Coupon on the deposit amount only”. To enable this setting, go to WooCommerce >> Settings >> Products >> Deposit page. There we have a setting as shown below.

This will enable the coupon code for the deposit amount only. Suppose, the price of the product is 799$, and the deposit amount is 399.50$. The coupon code set is 10%. So, when the coupon is enabled for the deposit amount, then that coupon code is applied to the deposit amount i.e 399.50$*10%= 39.95$. Below is the cart page when the coupon is applied to the deposit amount.

When the above setting is disabled, then the coupon code is applied to the whole product amount and not on the deposit amount i.e 10% is applied to the 799$ which is 79.90$.

The below screenshot shows the cart page when the coupon is applied to the whole amount.

You can enable the discount on the full amount. To do so, we have a setting “Apply discount when pay in full choosen”. To enable this setting, go to WooCommerce >> Settings >> Products >> Deposit page. There we have a setting as shown below.

When the above setting is enabled, it will apply the discount amount which is set when full payment is chosen instead of the deposit payment.

Discount % of total order amount:

Suppose 5% is set as the discount percentage when full payment is chosen and if the product amount is 500 then by selecting the full payment on the product page and adding the product to that cart, the total payable amount would be 475 i.e 500*5%=475 on the cart and the checkout page.

Discount Text to Display:

The text which the user wants to show on the product page or on the cart/checkout page when the discount is applied to the full amount will be shown on that particular page with the setting “Discount text to display”. Suppose, we have set the text “5% discount if paid in full”, then that text will be displayed on the product page as shown in the screenshot below.

There is a new feature added in version 1.4 of Flexi Deposits where the ‘Payable Today’ amount and ‘Future Amount’ of the product is displayed on the product page itself when the ‘Pay Deposit’ option is selected.

Let us see how this works by creating a payment plan from WooCommerce -> Products -> Payment Plan page. For instance we create a Booking Plan where Future Payment option is used.

So when this plan is selected for the product, the customer needs to make a 20% payment at the checkout while booking the order and remaining 80% needs to be paid in 30 days after the order is placed.

Now let us select this plan for the product Hotel Pride as shown below:

When you select this product on the front end, on the Products page you will find 2 options, Pay Deposit and Pay Full Amount. When you select the Pay Deposit option, you will get the details of the Booking Plan displaying the price to be payable today and that to be paid in future as shown below:

Similarly when you add this product to the cart, on the Cart page you will see the plan details like 20% total payment to be made today and remaining 80% in future as shown below:

Thus the Order Total is $100 payable today and $400 as future payment. This will reflect on the Checkout page under Your Order section as shown below:

Once the order is placed, the Order details can be checked under WooCommerce -> Orders -> Edit Orders page as shown below:

As you can see Order #2123 shows the details of payment of $100 made for product Hotel Pride with the Full Amount of $500 displayed. Below the Full Amount, you will find a View Scheduled Payments button. When you click on it, you will be taken to a new order that was created for remaining payment of $400 as shown below:

Here as you can see, Order #2124 is created showing a total of $400. When you click on the order, you will land on the Edit Orders page displaying the remaining payment details as shown below:

If you want to check the details of the original order, you can click on the View Original Order button as shown above.

In our earlier post, we saw how the Payable Today and Future Payments feature works using Flexi Deposits. In this post, we will look at a new functionality where Full payment has to be made before X days of booking.

Let us see how this works.

Firstly create a new Payment Plan at WooCommerce -> Products -> Payment Plan page. For instance we create a Full Payment Plan where no payment has to be made immediately, but full amount has to be paid before the specified days.

So when this plan is selected for the product, the customer needs to make 0% payment at the checkout while booking the order and has to pay full amount which is 100% before 10 days of the selected date.

Now let us select this plan for the product Fariyas Resort as shown below:

This product has to be made bookable, so Enable Booking and select Only Days and Single Day option under it as shown below:

When you select this product on the front end, on the Products page you will find 2 options, Pay Deposit and Pay Full Amount. You have to select the booking date from the booking calendar like its 10th July 2018 selected for the below instance. Now select the Pay Deposit option and you will get the details of the Full Payment Plan displaying the price payable today and the amount to be paid in future shown below:

Because we have selected Full Payment Plan, you do not have to pay anything at the checkout but are due to pay full amount of $1000 on 30th June, 2018 which is 10 days before the booking date.

Similarly when you add this product to the cart, on the Cart page you will see the same payment details as shown below:

Thus the Order Total is $1000 to be paid 10 days before the booking date. This will reflect on the Checkout page under Your Order section as shown below:

Order Details section will also show these details:

Once the order is placed, the Order details can be checked under WooCommerce -> Orders -> Edit Orders page as shown below:

As you can see, Order #2125 shows the details of payment of Full Amount of $1000 for product Fariyas Resort displayed with the selected date of 10th July, 2018. Below that, you will find a View Scheduled Payments button. When you click on it, you will be taken to a new order that was created for payment of $1000 as shown below:

Here as you can see, Order #2127 is created showing a total of $1000. When you click on the order, you will land on the Edit Orders page displaying the payment details as shown below:

If you want to check the details of the original order, you can click on the View Original Order button as shown above.

Also, if the date selected for booking is less than 10 days, then the payment option will show Full Amount payable on Products page and no payment will be due after 10 days. Say for instance, we select Booking date as 29th June, 2018, then the amount payable will show full amount of $1000 and no future payment option will be displayed as shown below:

Therefore when a selected date falls within the specified duration for future payment option, then this feature will not be applicable and the front end will show the total amount of the booking payable.

In this post, we will discuss about a new feature of version 1.5 where Deposit options are displayed on the Checkout page instead of Product Page which allows deposits on the whole order.

To enable the display of deposit options on the checkout page, go to WooCommerce -> Settings -> Products -> Deposits and tick the Enable deposits on checkout page option as shown below:

Enabling deposits option on checkout page

Now you need to create a payment plan for which you can refer to this post. Once that is done, under WooCommerce -> Settings -> Products -> Deposits, select Default Deposit Type as Payment Plan and Default Payment Plans as Hotel Payment Plan as shown below:

Selecting the Deposit Type and Payment Plan globally

Since you have opted to display the Deposits option on Checkout page, you need to add these settings globally. This is because when you select checkout based deposit, product deposits will be disabled.

Now let us consider an instance of Booking product. So select a product Hotel Pride on the front end and booking date as 22nd November, 2018. So on Checkout page, you will find the Deposit options as Pay Deposit and Pay Full Amount as shown below:

Deposit options displayed on the Checkout page

As you can see above, Pay Deposit option is selected, hence Hotel Payment Plan gets activated where 30% is payable today i.e $150 and remaining 70% i.e $350 is due to be paid in 30 days. Now let us place this order and you will find the same details on the Order details page as shown below:

Booking details on the Order details page

Once the order is placed, a new order gets created in the back end and its details can be checked under WooCommerce -> Orders -> Edit Orders page as shown below:

Order details in the back end

As you can see above, Order #2283 displays the details of the payment made of $150 out of total $500 and remaining $350 to be paid in the future. There is a View Scheduled Payments button below the payment details. When you click on it, you will be taken to a new order that is created for remaining payment of $350 as shown below:

Scheduled order created

This shows that a scheduled order has a payable total of $350. Now when you click on this order, you will land on the Edit Orders page displaying the payment details of the remaining payment to be made as shown below:

Order details of scheduled order

This shows the total payment to be made is $350 and Deposit was paid of $150. You can click on the View Original Order button to go back to the details of Order #2283. Also you can see under Order notes section, it mentions that this is the 2nd payment for Order #2283.

Moreover, you can change the Deposits option to Force Deposit or No Deposits from WooCommerce -> Settings -> Products -> Deposits as shown below:

Changing the Deposit option

You can also change the Default Deposit Type to Percentage, Fixed Amount or Payment Plan from the Default Deposit Type dropdown on the same page as shown below:

Changing Default Deposit Type

Thus, this way you can apply deposit options for the whole order by enabling the Deposit options on the Checkout page.

After requests from our customers, we have added a new feature on the Deposits plugin for customers who pay with Stripe. Earlier, for all three types of deposits (fixed amount, percentage and payment plans), the admin would have to manually send a reminder to the customers when the balance amount was due, who in turn would have to log in to the website and make the payment. 

With our new feature, we have automated the process. For any order where the deposit has been paid using Stripe as the payment medium, the customer’s card is auto-charged for the remaining balance on the due date. The process plays out differently when the ‘Default Deposit Type’ is set to Fixed Amount and Percentage, and differently when the ‘Default Deposit Type’ is set to Payment Plans.  

First, you have to ‘Enable Auto Payments in Stripe’. Go to WooCommerce –> Settings –> Products –> Deposits to do so.

You can choose to enable Deposits on either the whole order or individual products.

As you can see, you can choose the type of Deposit, the Default Deposit Amount and other things under the settings. The rest of the documentation will give you more details about each.

When you set the Default Deposit Type to Fixed Amount or Percentage, it is up to the admin on when they decide to generate the second invoice. This is what happens.

First, the customer places the order on the shop.  

After the order is placed, the customer receives the following order details.

The admin will receive an email of the order confirmation. This order will be reflected on the WooCommerce dashboard under WooCommerce -> Orders. An email is also automatically sent to the customer, confirming their order. 

Once you click on the order, you will see that the first invoice is generated.

Now, when the admin wants the Future Payment to be charged, they will click on the ‘Invoice Remaining Balance’. An order is generated for the remaining amount with the status Pending Payment. At this point an invoice is also created in Stripe in Draft mode.

A cron event is run hourly when the automated payments for remaining amounts is enabled. So once the admin has generated an order for the remaining amount, the cron event will open the invoice for payment in Stripe.

Once the cron is run, the invoice is opened for payment in Stripe. At this stage the invoice status changes from Draft to Scheduled. When the invoice is opened for payment, the customer receives an email confirming that their card will be charged for the remainder payment.

Once Stripe receives the payment (usually takes up to an hour), the invoice status changes from Scheduled to Paid.

Draft changes to Scheduled as shown below.  

Scheduled changes to Paid as shown below. 

After an invoice is marked as paid in Stripe, the order is marked as Complete in WooCommerce.

At the same time, the Stripe payment link is added to the order (making it easy for the admin to track the payments). Order notes are also added, stating the same.

When the Default Deposit Type is set to Payment Plans, the admin does not even need to generate the invoice manually. Orders are generated with the status Scheduled in WooCommerce and invoices are also generated in Draft mode automatically. On the date the payment for an invoice is due, it is opened for payment in Stripe by the plugin. No action is needed from the site admin in this process.

Please note: When placing an initial order, customers must select the ‘Save payment information to my account for future purchases’ checkbox to save their card details for future payments.

Automatic payments will only occur if this checkbox is enabled during the initial order. If it is not selected, a direct Stripe invoice link will be included in the reminder email for the customer to manually complete the payment of any failed Stripe invoices.

If for some reason, either because the customer has discontinued the Credit Card or it has stopped functioning or it has expired, the Stripe payment will be declined when it tried to auto charge. After that, Stripe tries auto collecting the payment for up to three times. Our plugin updates the order with notes on when the next payment is due. After that, the admin may have to reach out to the customer individually for next steps.

The Flexi Deposits extension is compatible with the Product Bundles & WooCommerce Composite plugin, Let us see how these plugins work together.

Let us consider a composite product ‘DSLR Kit’ with 2 simple product in it – ‘Lens‘ & ‘Memory Card‘.  The DSLR Kit individual price is $1000 with Lens priced at $200 and the memory card is $100 in price.

With composite products, The main product as well as the child products should have the same deposit settings i.e same deposit type as well as amount.

In this example, we have set the deposit to 10% of the total price in all the 3 products.

This is how the product page looks when we select ‘Lens‘:

The ‘Payable Today’ & ‘Future Payments’ on the product page displays the amount based on the total composite price.

Cart & Checkout Page:

The cart page displays the subtotal as $120, in which $20 is the deposit for the ‘Lens’ product. As you can see the ‘Future Payments’ is set to $1080.

On the ‘Edit Order’ page, the ‘Invoice Remaining Balance’ will be applied to the main composite product only and not the child products i.e there won’t be separate invoices for all the child products. The invoice will be created for the remaining amount of $1080.

The main thing is that all the products should have the same deposit settings.

Flexi Deposits for WooCommerce works the same way with the Product Bundles plugin as the WooCommerce Composite products. If we take the same setup with the product Bundles plugin, the product page will look like this:

The ‘Payable Today’ is calculated based on the total amount of the bundles. The cart, checkout & order admin behaviour is same as that of the composite products.

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