Batch Subscription Updater

Fusebill provides a "Subscription Updater" feature which allows you to make changes to your existing subscriber base after making changes to your Catalog. Currently, the Subscription Updater supports two actions: Add Product and Update Pricing.

Sections on this page:

Adding Products to Subscribers

Updating Pricing of a Product

Monitoring Update Jobs on the Jobs Tab

Succeeded vs. Failed

Planning an Update

Adding Products to Subscribers

To use the Subscription Updater to add a product:

1. Under Catalog > Plans, add one or more products to a plan (see Adding Products to Plans). You may want to create entirely new products before adding them to a plan (see Creating Products).
   
   
2. From the Catalog > Plans page, click on the SUBSCRIBERS button for the plan that you want to update. On this page, you will see the list of Subscriptions that exist for the selected Plan.
   
   
3. If you want to update all Subscriptions, skip to step five. Otherwise, you can use the Quick Search to quickly find Subscriptions by a single Fusebill field. Or, click Advanced Search to use advanced filters.
   
   
4. In Advanced Search, use the filters at the top of the screen to narrow the list of Subscriptions down to those to which you would like to update. Some common examples of filters:
   • Only update Active Customers with an Active Subscription (Customer Status = Active and Subscription Status = Active)
   • Only update Subscriptions that do not already have this Product (Subscription Filter by "Does not have Product [x]")
   • Only add these Products to the Customers who are owned by a specific Sales Manager (Customer Filter by Sales Tracking Code value)
5. When you have the list narrowed down as required, use the checkboxes to select particular Subscriptions that you want to update. You can page through the filtered list and choose specific Subscriptions and this selection will be remembered. You can click on the top checkbox in the title row of the table to select all Subscriptions within the filter.

   Tip: It is always recommended to filter the list down to the smallest set possible before using the Updater, to keep your job as efficient as possible.

6. Once you have chosen the Subscriptions to update, indicate which Products to update by clicking on the 'Select product(s)' box next to the button that says 'ADD PRODUCT(S) TO X SUBSCRIBERS' and then adding a product. Add another product by clicking on the box again, or add all products by clicking on ALL.
   
   
   
7. Click ADD PRODUCT(S) TO X SUBSCRIBERS. A preview window will pop up, and it will show you how many of your selected subscriptions will be updated with the Products you have selected. This number is shown in the "Valid" column. Proceed with the update by clicking PROCESS.
   
   
8. Choose whether to generate charges or not. Some notes about how to choose the right option for charges:
   • If you choose to generate charges, then for each Customer and Subscription selected, when the Product is added to the Subscription it will automatically generate an Invoice based on that Customer's billing settings. If the Customer is set to Auto-Post and Auto-Collect, then these actions will also take place immediately upon the addition of the Product.
     

     Note: If you choose to generate charges, the Update process can take up to 3-4 times longer for each Subscription than if there are no charges generated. This can cause the Update process to take a long time, though you will be able to continue working in Fusebill while the Job processes in the background. We suggest you plan this activity accordingly if you have a large number of Subscribers to update - in extreme cases (thousands of updates) the process could take >1 day to complete. Thus it is especially important to plan ahead if you want a change to be in effect, for example, before the first of the month.

   • This option will only be relevant if any of the Products you are adding are configured to be "Included", or "Optional (Included by Default"). For "Optional" Products, the charge option has no effect.
9. Once you are ready, click Process to start the batch. Your update will process as a Job. You can monitor its progress by clicking on Jobs under the affected Plan from Catalog > Plans.

Updating Pricing of a Product

To use the Subscription Updater to update a price:

1. Under Catalog > Plans, change the pricing of one or more product within a plan.
   
   
2. From the Catalog > Plans page, click on the SUBSCRIBERS button for the plan that you want to update. On this page, you will see the list of Subscriptions that exist for the selected Plan.
   
   
3. If you want to update all Subscriptions, skip to step five. Otherwise, you can use the Quick Search to quickly find Subscriptions by a single Fusebill field. Or, click Advanced Search to use advanced filters.
   
   
4. In Advanced Search, use the filters at the top of the screen to narrow the list of Subscriptions down to those to which you would like to update. Some common examples of filters:
   • Only update Active Customers with an Active Subscription (Customer Status = Active and Subscription Status = Active)
   • Only update Subscriptions that do not already have this Product (Subscription Filter by "Does not have Product [x]")
   • Only add these Products to the Customers who are owned by a specific Sales Manager (Customer Filter by Sales Tracking Code value)
5. When you have the list narrowed down as required, use the checkboxes to select particular Subscriptions that you want to update. You can page through the filtered list and choose specific Subscriptions and this selection will be remembered. You can click on the top checkbox in the title row of the table to select all Subscriptions within the filter.

   Tip: It is always recommended to filter the list down to the smallest set possible before using the Updater, to keep your job as efficient as possible.

6. Once you have chosen the Subscriptions to update, indicate which Products to update by clicking on the 'Select product(s)' box next to the button that says 'UPDATE X SUBSCRIBERS TO CATALOG PRICE' and then adding a product. Add another product by clicking on the box again, or add all products by clicking on ALL.
   
   
   
7. Click UPDATE X SUBSCRIBERS TO CATALOG PRICE. A preview window will pop up, and it will show you how many of your selected subscriptions will be updated with the Products you have selected. This number is shown in the "Valid" column. Proceed with the update by clicking PROCESS.
   
   
8. Your update will process as a Job. You can monitor its progress by clicking on Jobs under the affected Plan from Catalog > Plans.

Monitoring Update Jobs on the Jobs Tab

The Jobs page will show you a list of all of the Update Jobs that have been submitted for this Plan.

Access a Plan's Jobs page by navigating to Catalog > Plans and clicking on Jobs under the respective plan.

Clicking Details will bring you to the Job Details screen.

You can investigate the results of a job with the Task Details list at the bottom of the screen. Use the filters to look for all failed updates, for example. For a failed transaction, you can hover above the Status to get a short explanation of why the update failed on that record.

Succeeded vs. Failed

The main reason why an update action will fail is because you have tried to add a product to a Customer or Subscription in a "non-active" state and also asked to generate charges. So for example, if you add a product to a Cancelled Subscription, it cannot generate the charges associated with that addition and therefore the update will fail. The product will not be added to that Subscription.

In general, if using the generate charges option will result in either a Subscription or a Customer being in an "invalid" state in terms of invoicing, then the update will fail.

You can see a list of which Subscriptions failed simply by returning to the Subscribers page and using Advanced Search for "Subscription Does Not Have Product"... choose the product that had the failures and you will see a list of those Subscriptions that were not updated (assuming the same set of filters that was used to generate the list in the first place).

Planning an Update

As mentioned above, the amount of time a Job can take to complete can be quite long, particularly if:

• The set of subscribers is very large (>1000)
• You are generating charges with each update
• Customers' billing settings are set to auto-post and auto-collect (the latter will require a round trip to the payment processor for each update, too)

For these reasons, use the Updater carefully and pay attention to the above factors when planning your Job. If you need a large update done by a certain date, make sure you start it in plenty of time to ensure all the updates are completed on time.

Tips for planning an update:

1. Submit a small update job with the desired characteristics first. Include all of the products you want to add, but only choose a few subscriptions to update (e.g. 10). Test and verify results.
2. Next you can try a slightly larger update set. An easy way not to duplicate work is to use the search filters to choose only those subscriptions which don't already contain one of the products you added in Step 1. Test and verify results.
3. If 1 and 2 are successful, then try your full update, though we do recommend that you don't try to update more than ~1000 subscriptions in one Job. Use the filter options to repeatedly apply the update to new sets of subscriptions until all are complete.

Note: It is not harmful to try and add the same product into a subscription that already has it; it will simply be ignored and you will see a message in your Job results to that effect.