Quick cpanel question..

Lets say a customer signs up today on the 19th for 6gigs of BW.. when will his BW usage go back to 0, oct. 19th, or oct 1st?

oct 1st

Is there any way to make it the other way? Because this way, if lets say the customer signs up on Oct. 25th, they get 6gigs to use in 7 days?

This presents billing problems.. how do you guys handle this?

I am still confused to how you please handle this problem.. any suggestions would be appriciated.

The only way to get around this, is to prorate your customers when they signup (charge them for x days they have before the billing date) and then charge everyone on the 1st of the month.

Yeh, thats what i was thinking.. but that would make billing much more complicated (then the current 2checkout and paypal subscription system that i use).. Do people prorate, or do they just go along with this? Thanks.. any input would be appriciated

I personally use modernbill, authorize.net gateway, and paypal I don't prorate my customers (so i go allong with the bandwidth problems). However, I have thought about turning on the prorate feature, but not becuase of the bandwidth problem. I wanted to turn it on so that everyone is billed on the same day and it is easier to keep track of who didn't pay on time. just my .02

Is there any program that does auto prorating?

Modernbill does it i am not sure about the others.

Modernbill does prorating all by itself?

I wrote my own billing API, and use that. If you want to use the PayPal payment gateway, then here's the easy solution to provide pro-rated service the first month:

Assume it's September 20th when they sign up, and they pay $50 per month. There are 10 days left in the month, so you take their cost ($50), and divide by the number of days in a month (I use 30, regardless of what month it is -- good average), and you get the cost-per-day ($1.666666666) Then multiply this by the number of days left in the month (30-20=10), which gives you ($16.67).

Then do a one-time bill for $16.67 through PayPal. Then setup a new "subscription" to start on the 1st of October, and to charge $50 every month.

Simple pro-rated billing.

Yeh, but i don't know if customers would like this.. for instance if they are expecting $3/month, and get charged less or something.. And i have an automatic link, i don't charge people, i use a paypal link sent via email... (and i use 2checkout).. I can't figure out how to automate this.. hmm.. Plus a $1 charge would be bad for paypal or 2checkout since i would only get to keep like 30 cents of it.

paypal only takes a percentage, so whether it's $1, or $100, they take the same rate...

And I make it clear to my customers that everything is PRO-RATED... State your intentions, and provide some examples... Then make sure that they're clear to ask questions if they have any... The whole concept of pro-rated isn't really too compliated... And I'm sure your users will pick up w/o a hitch if you inform them that billing is done on the 1st of every month.

I just checked Paypal and clicked on the "fees" tab it it showed the following:
Receive Funds Fee: 0.7% + 30¢ to 2.9% + 30¢
So it's not just a percentage, and it does matter whether its $1 or $100.

Ehh.. although i figured out how to automate proration since paypal has a standard link, which my script modifies based on what day it is, etc... and auto brings them to a page with the correct amounts, I can't get this accomplished on 2checkout.. any thoughts?