4.10 Create Upgrade Fees

If you offer different levels of membership, you may want to allow members to pay a fee through the Member's Only Area, and instantly have their account upgraded. There are three steps involved, which are explained below.


4.10.1 Create Upgrade Fee Transactions

Go to the Transaction->Transaction Settings menu, and create a "Withdraw - Upgrade Fee" transaction. The next page asks for specific information on the upgrade fee transaction, and looks like:

Complete the section shown above with the following information:

Field	Description
Upgrade From	The member type that is being upgraded. In other words, a member from this member type will pay the upgrade fee, and have their account upgraded.
Upgrade To	The member type that the member will be upgraded to, after paying the upgrade fee.
Cancel Transaction	This is only required if the Upgrade From member type is being charged a recurring membership fee. Select the recurring membership fee the member is being charged, and when a member upgrades, their old recurring membership fee will be automatically cancelled.
Add Transaction	The recurring membership fee for the Upgrade To member type. When a member upgrades, this recurring membership fee will be automatically added to the member's account.
Amount	The one-time fee the member must pay, in order to upgrade. This is the only fee members will pay when upgrading. Then the recurring membership fee selected will also be added to their account for all future payments.
Force Payment	If yes, the member will be physically charged the full amount of the upgrade fee. Otherwise, the fee will be withdrawn from the member's current balance, and will only be physically charged the needed amount.

Then fill out the transaction name and description fields with anything you wish. Once done, submit the form to create the new upgrade fee transaction. Continue creating upgrade fee transactions as described above for every type of upgrade you need.


4.10.2 Set Transaction Privileges

Once you have created all upgrade fee transactions, you need to set the privilege settings, and allow members to process the transactions through the Member's Only Area. Go to the Setup->Privilege Settings menu, and select the desired member type. The bottom of the next page allows you to define transaction privileges, and looks like:

Members can only process transactions through the Member's Only Area, if that transaction has first been added as a privilege. If the transaction privilege has not been set, the member will receive an error message when trying to process the transaction. Select the appropriate upgrade fee transaction from the list, and click on the "Add Transaction Privilege" submit button. This will allow the selected member type to process the transaction through the Member's Only Area.


4.10.3 Add Links to Member's Only Area

Last, you need to add the needed links to your Member's Only Area, allowing your members to process the upgrade fee transaction(s), and have their account instantly upgraded. First, you need the ID# of each upgrade fee transaction. Go to the Transaction->Transaction Settings menu, and click on the "View Details" link for the upgrade fee transactions. This will display a list of all upgrade fees, with their ID#.

Inside your Member's Only Area, you will need to add the following link for each upgrade fee transaction:

index.cgi?~authtext~&action=process_transaction&transid=[ID#]

Of course, replace [ID#] with the actual ID# of the upgrade fee transaction. When a member clicks on the link from within the Member's Only Area, they will be prompted to process the upgrade fee transaction. Once the transaction has been successfully processed, their member type will be instantly upgraded.