The best way to structure a payment plan depends on how you deliver your course or service. We cover some popular use-cases below:
Cohort-based courses
If you sell courses that run over specific periods with a set start and end date, you can choose to either collect all payments in advance before the course starts, or to offer people more flexibility, we recommend aligning the payment plan dates to key milestones within your course. Using our date-based payment plans, you can set up plans where everyone pays a set amount when they sign up, and all subsequent payments are made on fixed pre-set dates (see example):
Eg: If your course runs for 6 months from June to November, you could structure a payment plan like this:
- 10% deposit on sign up (this is collected anytime someone signs up)
- 20% on 1 July
- 20% on 1 August
- 20% on 1 September
- 20% on 1 October
- 10% on 1 November
If you’re collecting payments in advance before the course starts, participants that sign up after one or more of the dates have passed are automatically charged those amounts at sign up so there isn’t any manual work needed for those late sign ups too.
In addition you can choose to incentivize early repayments by offering a 5% discount for early repayments. This is a built in function that allows customers to easily repay part or all of their plan early at any time via their self-serve customer page.
Workshops & seminars
Since workshops and seminars are typically run over one / a few days, it’s best to collect payment in full before the workshop dates. For this, you can use either date-based plans as described above or standard payment plans where people repay over a set number of weeks, fortnights or months from sign up.
For this scenario, we suggest considering using our Pay your way plan type (see an example) which still uses only one plan link – but encourages people to consider paying in full.
You can even incentivize this with a “pay in full discount” shown to them on the payment page. This can encourage some participants that were considering the payment plan option to choose to pay in full at the last minute. As an admin, you get unified reporting and can see how many people choose the pay in full vs. payment plan option. There is no extra admin or work involved for you.
Self-paced online courses
For online courses, we suggest using either the Pay your way plan type described above, or our standard payment plan option as self-paced courses are typically completed by participants at any given time and don’t have any set dates.
Depending on your business model, course structure and course length, to minimize risk of non-payment, we always recommend collecting all payments before the entire subject material or completion certificates has been delivered / is made available. Using our Zapier app, you can set up workflows with your LMS or other systems to only give participants their completion certificates once their plan is completed. Since most learning management systems have a Zapier app, there are many other workflows you can set up between Paythen and your LMS to get it right for your business.
If you have a different business model and want a recommendation on how best to configure and offer payment plans to maximize sales and minimize any risks for you, just reach out via the chat icon or email hello@paythen.co and we’d love to help. We can also help you get set up so your workflow is just how you need it.
