Sell prepaid packs of hours or classes

What this does

A prepaid pack lets a customer pay now and use it later: for example 10 hours of Consulting or a 10-class pass. When the invoice for the pack is paid, the customer gets the hours or places:

hours you mark as prepaid on their work orders, charged $0;
places in your paid group sessions, which they use by signing up on your booking page with nothing to pay.

They see what they have left in their customer portal, and you see it on their customer page.

Before you start

The Customer Portal add-on is turned on for your business.
The pack is a product in Settings → Pricing → Products & Services (for example “10-class pass, $180”). Set its price and taxes there. Tax is charged when the pack is bought.
For an hours pack, the service is one of your rate names that has a company-wide rate (in Settings → Pricing → Time Rates). A rate set only for some customers is not offered, because a buyer without it could never use the hours.

Make a product a prepaid pack

Go to Settings → Pricing → Products & Services.
On the product, select Prepaid pack.
Tick This product is a prepaid pack.
Choose Hours of a service or Group session places.
Type how many (hours in quarter hours, places as a whole number) and choose the service, or the group session (or Any paid group session).
To set an expiry, tick Must be used within and type the number of months. Leave it off for no expiry.
Select Save. The product shows a Prepaid pack badge.

You can change a pack until the product is first used on a document. After that it can’t change, so what a customer paid for stays the same: archive it and add a new product instead.

Sell a pack

On a work order, invoice or estimate: add the product like any other product. When the invoice is fully paid, the customer gets the pack (an estimate passes it on to the work order made from it). The quantity must be a whole number: selling 2 of the same pack gives them twice the hours or places.
On your website: select Sell online on the product to make a Buy button. A customer who pays gets the pack straight away.
In the customer portal: packs with a Buy button switched on are listed under Your prepaid packs → Buy a pack. The customer should use the email address you have for them, so the pack is added to their account.

Use prepaid hours on a work order

Open the customer’s work order and add the time as usual with the pack’s service.
A purple box at the top says how many prepaid hours are left and the use-by date.
Select the button that names the line, for example Use 1 hr 30 min prepaid on Network setup. That time is now charged $0 and marked Prepaid pack. If the line is longer than the hours left, only the hours left are used and the rest stays charged.
To undo it, remove the prepaid line. The hours go back to the pack. Deleting the work order gives them back too.

Prepaid time stays on its own line: it can’t be merged with other time.

If the customer also has a membership with included hours of that service, the membership hours are used first (they don’t carry over), then the pack that ends soonest.

Prepaid places in group sessions

The customer signs up on your booking page while signed in there. For single sessions up to the pack’s use-by date, with places left, the sign-up shows Paid for by your prepaid pack “pack name”: nothing to pay, with no card or deposit. If they cancel in time, the place goes back to the pack. A no-show keeps the place used.

A whole series, a package, or more sessions than places left is charged as usual. A membership’s included places are used before a pack.

See what a customer has left

On the customer’s page, Prepaid packs lists each pack with what is left, the use-by date and its history.
In the customer portal, the customer sees the same under Your prepaid packs.

End a pack

On the customer’s page, under Prepaid packs, select End pack and confirm. What is left can no longer be used, and nothing is refunded (to give money back, use Refund on the payment instead, which ends the pack by itself). You need permission to refund payments.

Refunds

Refunding a payment for a pack ends the pack, whatever the amount: what is left can no longer be used, and anything already used stays used. The refund popup tells you this before you refund. Decide the amount by your own refund policy.

If a payment for the pack is removed, the pack is on hold until the invoice is paid again.

If the customer disputes the card payment with their bank, the pack is on hold while the dispute is open. If you win the dispute it comes back on; if you lose it, the pack ends.

Good to know

Expiry dates are your choice. Some provinces limit expiry dates on prepaid purchases, and you are responsible for your own terms.
QuickBooks records the pack as a sale when it is bought.
A pack the customer paid for keeps working even if you turn the Customer Portal add-on off.
A service or group session that a pack is for can’t be deleted. Archive it instead.