Overview.
Listing products are configurable listing membership plans sold to your directory listing owners. Product is required for the listing to appear in the directory and can be paid or free. A variety of product options motivate listing owners to upgrade to increase their listing visibility.
Product invoices are used to bill listing owners. An invoice is created for each billing cycle. Listing owner can pay the invoice using any of the available payment gateways.
Each listing type has a separate set of products and product pricing levels.
Listing Product Payment Flow.
The following steps occur in a paid listing submission:
1. A registered user enters the user account panel, selects the desired listing type in the account menu and clicks the "Add Listing" button.
2. A list of available listing type products appears. Once user selects the product pricing level they are presented with a list of categories available for that pricing.
3. After selecting the listing primary category the user is being redirected to a listing submission page that includes all listing type form fields allowed for the selected product and category. A discount code may be applied on this stage.
4. On successful listing submission a page with the payment details pops up for the user to check the generated invoice details and select the applicapable payment gateway to use.
5. Depending on the gateway type user can be redirected to a 3rd party payment gateway site or use an on-site facility to proceed with the payment.
6. Once the payment is done an invoice is flagged as 'Paid' making the listing discoverable in the public directory. No invoice status update occurs in case of a payment failure.
7. A new invoice is generated for the next billing cycle 3 (configurable setting) days before the listing expiration date and an unpaid invoice email notification is sent.
8. Three unpaid invoice notification emails are generated on second, third and eighth day (configurable setting).
9. The listing owner clicks the invoice payment link in the email or enters the account panel and clicks the "Invoices" menu item to see a full list of invoices with an ability to filter by status. Also an unpaid invoice notification box appears on the account dashboard with a direct link to an unpaid invoices list.
10. On listing expiration the script will check the last invoice status and renew the listing order for the next billing cycle if the invoice status is "Paid". On an unpaid invoice 5 days are allowed for the listing owner to pay after the listing expiration date. If no payment is submitted the listing gets suspended and is no longer discoverable in the public directory search results.
11. A suspended listing invoice can be paid after the listing expiration and will activate a new billing cycle for the listing starting from the date of payment.
Membership Options.
Membership plan can be "Hidden" if you do not want that product to be available to your users but still accessible via administrator panel.
Enable the "Featured" option to make the plan appear as featured on the products widget.
Each product includes a list of features a product listing will inherit:
"Featured Listings" - flags all listings of the product as featured.
"Listing Position" - is a listing position in the search results. The lower the number the higher listing will appear. Most expensive product will probably have this set to "0" for its listings to appear on top of search results.
"Extra Categories Limit" - sets the number of extra categories allowed for each listing of this product.
"Title Size Limit" - the number of characters listing title may include. If listing gets downgraded to a product with a lower number of characters the title gets truncated on the search results page and listing detailed page.
"Short Description Size Limit"
"Description Size Limit"
"Gallery Photos Limit" - is the number of photos user is allowed to upload for the listing gallery. On product downgrade only X number of images will appear, where X is the number of gallery images allowed for the new product.
"Show Address" - enables full address on the listing template. This does not affect the listing submission form fields.
"Show Map" - makes listing available on the search results map and adds a map to the listing page.
"Event Dates Limit" - is available for events. Limits the number of the recurring event's dates.
"Allow Messaging" - enables the on-site messaging system that allows site visitors send requests to listing owners.
"Enable Reviews" - enables listing reviews. Make sure listing type has the reviews facility enabled.
"Enable SEO" - adds owner specified SEO title, keywords and description as meta tags on the listing page for better listing discoverability.
"Linked Categories" - a list of categories available for this product.
"Linked Fields" - a list of listing fields of the listing type enabled for the product.
The listing field will be hidden if enabled in the product but disabled for the listing category because the field-to-category relation is of higher priority.
If you update the product and want the existing listings linked to the product to update the list of available options make sure to enable the "Sync Existing Listing" setting before clicking the "Update" button.
Do not "Sync Existing Listings" if you want only new listings of the product to use the updated settings.
Pricing Levels.
Each product may include one or multiple pricing levels that determine the product price and duration.
Each pricing level may be set to "Auto-approve Listings" and make those appear in the public directory without administrator approval even if listing moderation is enabled for the listing type.
If you want the pricing level to be available for listing claiming make sure to enable the "Used for Claiming" setting.
To hide the pricing from users enable the "Hidden" option.
To set the billing cycle duration for the pricing level configure the "Billing Period" setting that can be "Day", "Month" or "Year" and set the "Number of Periods" for that billing period. For example, if you want to set the pricing level duration to 20 days, set the "Billing Period" to "Day" and "Number of Periods" to "20".
If you want the listing owner to be able to change their product, make sure to specify the allowed pricing levels in the "Upgrade" field.
To allow the listing submission of this pricing level to owners of the specific pricing level of any listing type, set those pricing levels in the "Required Pricings" field. Note that at least one active listing of any required pricing allows listing submission.
To limit the number of users who can post listings of this pricing level, please, set "Users Limit" to any positive number. "0" means no limitation.
To limit the number of allowed listings per user, please, set the "Per-user Limit". "0" means no limitation.
"Supported Payment Gateways" setting is required for all levels. Set it to the "Offline / Wire Transfer" gateway for free pricing levels.
To apply updates to existing listings of this pricing level make sure to enable the "Sync Existing Listings" field before clicking "Update". This will update all existing listings of the pricing level to use new price and duration for the next billing cycle.
Listing Product Change.
It is possible to change listing product for pending, active or suspended orders.
The list of available pricing levels for the upgrade must be specified for the current pricing level "Upgrades" field. The pricing change is disabled for the listing if no pricing levels are available for upgrade. Administrator is allowed to change listing product without any limitations.
A partial or full refund is offered to the listing owners with paid product if their current billing cycle is in progress. The refund amount is calculated by deducting the used billing cycle amount from the current invoice total and applying the resulting amount to the account balance for future use.