Set up products and prices

Arc XP Subscriptions is designed for selling digital products, enabling clients to offer subscriptions that control access to content based on a user’s subscription. Arc XP Sales allows managing these subscriptions and their associated products.

Each subscription will be linked to a product (i.e., SKU). Depending on the type of subscription, a price (i.e., PriceCode) may also be attached to the subscription, and it must be associated with the product. Arc XP Subscriptions provides marketers with a user-friendly interface to create and manage products and prices before setting up subscriptions.

Features of products and prices

Before describing how products and prices can be created, let’s dig into some important features.

Marketers start by creating products and prices, a CSR needs to understand key product and price features in order to comprehend how certain flows, such as renewals, work in Arc XP Subscriptions.

Product statuses

Each product can have one of the following statuses:

• Published: An active product that is part of at least one published offer.
• Draft: An active product that is not part of a published offer.
• Archived: An innactive product.

Note

While a marketer can change the product status from Draft to Archived, and from Archived to Draft. A product status is automatically changed to Published when at least one offer containing it is published. Once the product is published, their status cannot be changed.

Price types

There are two price types, and the difference between them lies in the purpose, duration, and usage of the subscription:

• Regular: Purchased by the subscriber for their own use. It usually involves recurring payments (i.e. multiple rates can be set up with different cadences such as weekly, montly, yearly, etc). When a user selects a regular price and completes a purchase, an active subscription is started on their account.
• Gift: Purchased by one individual but used by another (the recipient or redeemer). It is a special price offered when one person buys a digital subscription as a gift for someone else. In Arc XP Subscription, a gift price does not go through renewals. This price has a single rate with a fixed period (e.g. 1 month, 3 months, 1 year). The recipient needs to redeem the gift to start the subscription, and once the period ends, the subscription is automatically terminated.

Price statuses

Similar to products, each price can have one of the following statuses:

• Published: An active price that is part of at least one published offer.
• Draft: An active price that is not part of a published offer.
• Archived: An innactive price.

Note

While a CSR can change the price status from Draft to Archived, and from Archived to Draft. A price status is automatically changed to Published when at least one offer containing it is published. Once the price is published, their status cannot be changed.

Price rates

In a price (also known as pricing strategy), a rate typically refers to the specific amount of money charged for a product or service over a certain period or per unit of measurement. Rates apply to the first payment and subsequent renewal payments. Arc XP Subscriptions provides configurable renewal timeframes. The cadence for rates in Arc XP Subscriptions includes several options, as listed below:

• Daily: The renewal payment is collected 24 after the previous payment. This option is not recommended for real-world scenarios.
• Weekly: The renewal payment due date is set to the same day of the week as the initial purchase.
• Montly: The renewal payment due date is set to the same day of each month, except when the day does not exist in the next month. In such cases, the renewal payment will occur on the last day of the month when the initial purchase day does not exist. The due date is recalculated monthly and returns to the original day of purchase if possible.
• Yearly: The renewal payment due date is set to the same day of each year. The only exception is when the initial purchase is completed on a leap year, February 29, all subsequent renewal payment due dates will be on February 28.

When setting rates on prices using the Arc XP Subscription admin tool, you can select different combinations for your rates:

Regular prices have both, frequency and term length in their rates.

• $5 USD Every Week Until Canceled
• $10 USD Every 2 Weeks For 1 Month
• $8 USD Every Week For 1 Week (This rate is equivalent to set $8 USD One time For 1 Week).

If you select “Until Canceled”, additional rates cannot be set up, as this option means regular renewal using the same rate until the user decides to cancel the subscription.

Gift prices only have term length since renewals are not allowed.

• $5 USD For 1 Week
• $8 USD For 3 Weeks
• $20 USD For 1 Year

Price rates are considered not only during the first payment but also during renewals.

Create product

To build compelling Offers and Campaigns, marketers start with creating Products and Prices. This can quickly be done in the Products tab by selecting “Create Product”. This screen will also show a paginated list of all the products configured in your site and environment.

When you click on “Create a product,” a modal will appear. In this modal, you will need to set the product name and the SKU. The SKU is the unique identifier for the product. Keep in mind that once the product is created, the SKU code cannot be edited.

Before you start creating products, we strongly recommend defining a naming pattern that accurately reflects the product’s purpose. This will help you for searching purposes.

After entering the product name and SKU, click “Create” to create a new product, if the request is successful a new product is created in Draft state.

Search and filter products

The product landing page appears when you click on the “Retail” tab in the navigation sidebar, followed by “Products”. This page provides several functionalities.

• Filter by product status.
• Filter by site. If you manage more than one site, you need to select the site to see the products created for that site..
• Filter products by name using a prefix.
• Create a new product.
• Sort products by last updated date.
• Paginated product list: Displays existing products as cards based on the search and filter criteria.

Edit product

Note

There are two versions for creating and editing products and prices, and you can switch between them. Only the new version includes the most recent features, so we strongly recommend using it.

Once the product is created, you are redirected to a page in edit mode. This is the same page you will see when clicking on any of the cards containing product details on the products landing page. In edit mode, you can enter or update information related to the product, and you will also have the option to create prices associated with that product.

Note

Try to identify as many relationships between each product and its prices as possible, avoiding creating a product for each price. Our system supports one-to-many relationships between products and prices, so take advantage of this as much as possible.

The edit product page consists of 3 sections:

1. Workbar: The workbar is located at the top of the page. It contains information about the product status (i.e., Draft, Published, Archived), the product name, and the “Cancel” and “Save” buttons, which are enabled once the page detects a change in the form.

2. Right sidebar: This section contains information about the last product update, when it was created, and who performed these actions. Since an organization could have multiple sites set up for Arc XP Subscriptions, the sidebar also indicates which site the product belongs to.

3. Product details: This is the main section, where you can include product details, such as the description, features, and more. Let’s check these in detail.

   • Name: The customer-facing display name of the product.
   • Description: the customer-facing summary of the product. The description is stored in HTML format and can be used to render the product details on your site page.
   • Entitlement: Entitlements provide access to specific sections or content types when a paywall is deployed for subscribers. Arc XP Subscriptions supports a many-to-many relationship between products and entitlements. .

   Note

   If you currently have multiple products and want to do a bulk update of Entitlement, contact your Account Manager and the Subscriptions team can help you. Entitlement is only available in the new product screens.

   • Allow associate subscribers: You can enable a subscription to be shared with multiple users. These users, referred to as associated subscribers will enjoy the same privileges as the subscription owner. For example, this option is useful for offering family subscriptions, where one user is the one who purchases the subscription and can share it with N users (family members). A product can be shared up to 10 users. If you need to share a subscription with more than 10 users, we recommend to use an Enterprise subscripion. This value can be changed at any time, but the new value will only apply to subscriptions created after the change is made. Existing subscriptions will retain the property value that was set when they were started.
   • Product image: A depiction of the product. You can use the images stored in the Photo center App to attach to your product.
   • Features: A list of benefits of the product. Each feature has a style, which can be used to style it in the front or drive an alternative rendering. To create features, you must have at least one style created, which can be set up on the Settings page.

   

   • Prices: Arc XP Subscriptions supports a one-to-many relationship between products and prices. Each product needs at least one pricing strategy, which is a sequence of rates the customer will be billed. To set up pricing strategies for your organization, click the Create price button in the Product screen. A table of prices will appear once at least one price has been created. For additional details, see Create price.

   

Create price

Most subscription types have a product and a price attached. The price must be related to the product. A CSR can create a price (or pricing strategy) by clicking on the “Create price” button in the Prices section. This action will open a sidebar where the CSR will need to enter some information related to the price.

• Name: The customer-facing display name of the price.
• Summary: the customer-facing detailed summary of the price. The summary is stored in HTML format and can be used to render the price details on your site page.
• Description: the customer-facing detailed description of the price. The description is stored in HTML format and can be used to render the price details on your site page.
• Currency: The currency used to collect the payment during purchases and renewals. By default, the form loads the currency you have set up in your settings. You can update it by selecting any of the currencies we support from the dropdown. For more details, see Currencies supported.
• Eligible for subscriber initiated changes: This attribute can take a true or false value. If set to true, a subscriber can use this price to upgrade or downgrade their active subscriptions. For more details, see Change price for subscription.
• Gift price: This determines the price type. If set to true, the price will be created as a gift price. Once the price is created, this flag cannot be updated. For a gift price, a single rate should be set up since gift prices do not go through renewals.
• Include tax as part of displayed price: If this flag is set to true, the price defined on rates will correspond to the final price. If you have custom taxes or an external tax provided enabled, and this flag is set to false, the final price will be computed as the amount defined in rates plus the applicable tax. For more details, see Set up taxes: custom taxes and external integrations.
• Price rates: Here, you can set up all the rates to be applied to the subscription during the initial payment and subsequet renewals. Depending on the price type, you will be able to define multiple rates (i.e. regular price) or a single rate (i.e. gift price). As mentioned in the Price rates section, a rate refers to the specific amount of money charged for a product or service over a certain period or per unit of measurement.

Search and filter prices

Once you have created at least one price, a table with some price details will appear in front of you. This section provides several functionalities.

• Filter prices by name using a prefix.
• Filter by price status. The dropdown will provide options for “All active prices”, “Only published prices”, “Only draft prices”, and “Archived prices”.
• Sort prices in ascending or descending order by Price Name, Added Date, and Currency.
• For each row in the table (each price), several options will appear depending on the price status:
  • If the price is in Draft status, you will see the Edit, Duplicate, and Archive options.
  • If the price is in Published status, you will see the Edit and Duplicate options.
  • If the price is in Archived status, you will see the View, Duplicate, and Unarchive options.

Edit price

To edit a price, go to the table containing the prices. You can either click on the price name or select the “Edit” option from the overflow menu in the row of the price you want to modify. This will open a sidebar containing the price information. Note that once a price is created, certain attributes, such as the price type, cannot be updated.

In addition to the attributes available when creating the price, you’ll be able to see:

• Price status: Draft, Published, Archived.
• PriceCode: A unique price identifier generated by the system..
• Last update: The date the price was last updated and the user who made the change.
• Created: The date the price was created and the user who performed the action.

Once a price is published, only a few attributes remain editable. This limitation is in place because, for example, allowing updates to rates could interfere with subscriptions already attached to that price, potentially causing issues during renewals.

Create styles

Styles can be used to style the font or drive an alternative rendering of the product features. Styles are required if you want to add product features, and these can be created, edited or removed on the settings tab, under the Product features style page.

On this page, you can define as many styles as needed. All created styles will appear in the “Style” dropdown when adding product features.

Currencies supported

Your default currency is the one that appear by default when you are creating a price. This currency is configured in the Setting Admin and can be updated at any time. When changing the default currency, previously created currencies are not impacted. The currencies that we support: USD, NZD, PEN, EUR, JPY, CLP, COP, KRW, MXN, BRL, CAD, GBP

Note

To request to add a new currency as a price option, contact your Technical Account Manager.