PayPal Billing Agreements

Owned by HostBill
Last updated: May 09, 2018 by HostBill
3 min read

Overview

Billing Agreement is a PayPal feature that allows to create agreement for recurring PayPal or debit card payment for goods or services. Billing Agreement is different that subscriptions billing as the amount to be charged and time of payment are not fixed but can be specified by the buyer.

Please note:

In order for this module to work you need to have PayPal Billing Agreements enabled in your PayPal account. 

Activating the module

If the plugin is not included in your HostBill edition you can purchase it from our marketplace and then download it from the client area. Once you download the plugin extract it in the main HostBill directory.

In order to activate the module login to your HostBill admin panel, go to Settings → Modules → Payment Modules, choose PayPal Billing Agreement gateway and click Activate.  

Module configuration

Once the payment gateway is activated you need to configure it. 

Configuration fields available/requred are:

  1. API Username - can be obtained from PayPal merchant panel
  2. API Password - can be obtained from PayPal merchant panel
  3. API Signature - can be obtained from PayPal merchant panel
  4. Allow customer to cancel agreement  - when this option is enabled your customer will have ability to cancel his PayPal agreement with you in your client portal. Otherwise he can only do so from PayPal.
  5. Test mode - tick if your API credentials provided are for PayPal sandbox

All required information can be obtained once you login to your PayPal merchant panel.

Client Area

For customer to submit for a Billing Agreement with you he/she can enter the unpaid invoice in your client portal and select the PayPal Billing Agreement payment gateway. After pressing the Pay Now button module redirects to the PayPal website where customer have to log in and accept the agreement, along with one-time payment submission.
Once customer have Billing Agreement with you, his/her recurring invoices using this gateway will be automatically marked as Paid as the HostBill billing system will debit his/her PayPal account.
All new purchases made with this gateway will also fall under the current agreement. 
The module will check once a day which invoices have not yet been paid (following automatic cards capture settings) and will automatically charge active agreements. 
Customer can also force the invoice to be paid sooner by pressing the Charge existing PayPal Billing Agreement button (This button appears when client have a Billing Agreement number).

FAQ

Question: I've enabled the module but it does not display in my client portal.
Answer: This module does not support the currency you attempt to display it in, please use background currency conversion.