Have you heard of subscriptions? Ever thought of using subscriptions as a marketing tool? Check-in. If you are already aware of subscription as a tool for marketing just don’t hesitate to dive into it. It is one of the best and most effective tools to maintain good customer relationship management. It supports you to retain a customer base for a longer period and helps to improve customer-seller relationships.
How can a subscription help a business? Subscription retains the customers for a longer period. Subscription can be paid for or free. A subscriber is more likely to purchase products from the shop or online platform where he or she has a subscription. With the help of a subscription, the vendor can also manage to generate an income.
Why do you need ERP for Subscription Management?
ERP applications can help us generate subscriptions and manage the renewal of subscriptions. It can help us to send subscription offers and alerts to the customer. We can also send subscription alerts and renewal requests using the ERP.
Subscriptions can be organized with the help of ERP software. An ERP can create subscriptions and manage services through subscriptions. When we think about a subscription business Odoo is the first ERP choice. Odoo open-source software provides the business operator with a dedicated Subscription module. This module, which can be integrated easily with other modules, helps the business to progress.
Getting a one-time solution for managing subscription-related worries is easy by implementing an ERP to manage subscriptions. There are different ERP solutions that offer support to manage subscriptions. Choosing the one to suit your operations is what is important. Odoo, a comprehensive ERP manager can help any business to manage different types of operations. Odoo also provides us with a module to manage subscriptions. With this Odoo helps us to manage all subscription-related activities. This is suitable for all types of operations and business communications.
What is Odoo Subscription?
Odoo subscription is an Odoo Module that can be used to manage all subscription generation and renewal activities. It will help the business to manage the subscribed members. It can help you to manage subscription products, subscription renewal, and all subscriptions. The status of subscriptions can also be viewed with ease from the dashboard itself.
Odoo, being a modular ERP platform offers support to integrate subscriptions with other modules. This helps different business ventures integrate subscriptions with marketing and customer management software solutions.
Odoo gives a clear view of all subscriptions created by the user in the dashboard of the application. The Subscription dashboard helps the operator to find the status of the subscription and then modify the subscription if required. The operator will be able to view the subscription in the draft, the subscription in the progressing stage, and the subscriptions closed with the help of the dashboard view.
The operator can get a Kanban view as well as a list view of the subscriptions. This will help the operator to get an idea of the subscription reference number, customer detail, next invoice date, salesperson details, and other details. The upcoming activity, company details, percentage of happiness, recurring progress, and the status of the subscription can also be viewed at a glance with a list view.
Let us see the benefits of subscription
1. To create and manage subscriptions easily
2. It helps you get a view of the customer details in the application form
3. With this application we can manage different subscription variants
4. It also speeds up the renewal of subscriptions enabling payment and auto-renewal support
5. We can generate reports on subscriptions with Odoo support
This blog will help you to know the way to use Odoo for subscription management.
To make use of Odoo Subscription just install the app from Odoo Apps.
With Subscription management, one can easily manage their recurring revenue assured on a monthly, yearly, quarterly basis and add up value to your business.
To properly sell your subscriptions using this application then one must follow these steps:
Create your subscription templates.
Create your subscription products with the right settings.
Subscription Template is a feature in Odoo which helps one to create recurring invoices and renew them apace. In Odoo you have the option to manage, create and edit your subscription template.
Let us see how to create a Subscription Template.
For that go to Subscriptions> Configuration> Subscription Templates.
With Odoo you can see by default two subscription templates are created ie. MON-Monthly Subscription and YEA-Yearly Subscription and create a new one from the create button.
When you click on the create button you can find all the necessary information that needs to be filled in for creating a subscription template.
The Subscription template forms include options:
Invoicing Period: This field is used to mention the recurring period for the invoice creation which repeats every Day/Week/Month/Year.
Duration: This field is used to mention the recurring duration, for which we have two options ie. Forever or Fixed. When we select the Fixed option it will show the extra field to mention the period.
Create Invoice: This field provides the option to create invoices Manually, Draft, Send, Send & try to charge, and Send after successful payment.
Closable by Customer: If Checked the user will be able to close his/her account.
Group of Subscription: One can use this tag to filter your subscription report.
Journal: If enabled subscription with this template will invoice in this journal.
Company: Here you can mention your company name.
Code: This field is used to mention the code which will automatically be added to the name of the template.
Terms and conditions: This option generally defines the terms and conditions associated with the subscription template.
Health Check: This helps to set certain conditions which give you an indication about how many subscribers (customers) extend or stop their subscription. Based on that one can do an overall analysis and find If you have bad health on your subscription due to many customers canceling the subscription, you can take action on that.
In Odoo we manage Subscription like products where you can create your quotation with Subscription Products and can sell for a certain recurring period.
So let's see how we can manage Subscription Products with Odoo.
Go to Subscriptions> Subscriptions> Subscription Products.
From here one can create a new Subscription product with a product type as Service.
It is here where we have to enable a subscription product and choose a subscription for the created template. Since the product type, we have set as service so we get certain additional fields related to service and its tracking under the sales tab.
Now let's see how we can create different Subscription Stages
To do so go to Subscriptions> Configuration> Subscription Stages
From here one can create different stages through which they need to evaluate their subscription order.
Stage Name: This field is used to provide the name for the stage.
Rating Email Template: This field is used to send mail to the customer when the subscription order reaches this stage.
Category: This one is used to mention the category for the stages.
Requirements: In this field, you can provide your team with requirements to move through different stages.
Generate Subscription Alert
This feature is used to Alert subscribers about subscription period end and payment dues
by enabling alerts at Subscriptions> Configuration> Alert
With Alerts creation we have the option to mention the name of the alert that we are creating and has a certain other option that involves information that is related to the subscription order like MRR Between which is used to mention the Monthly recurring revenue, also fields like Rating Satisfaction which determines the customer satisfaction based on the positive rating and the overall rating.
Then you have a set of options under Action like :
1. Create next activity - This allows to schedule and assigns the activity to the team to get feedback on their subscription.
2. Set a tag on the subscription - When set will get the option to mention the tag on it
3. Set the stage on the subscription - When set will get the option to mention the Stages on it
4. Mark as to Renew.
5. Send an email to the customer - When set will get the option to set the email template.
6. Send a text message to the customer - When set will get the option to set the SMS template.
And also have the option to mention the trigger actions and trigger date which works based on the scheduler that we set.
Create Quotations for subscription products
To do so Install Sales App and create a quotation including the subscription product in the Orderline and once you confirm that you will get a smart button indicating the Subscription in the Order.
From the above image, you can see that you will have the option to Renew the quotation, Upsell, and Close the subscription.
With Upsell, it will ask to create a quotation with new products and send it to the customer for approval and when the quotation is confirmed, the products will be added to the subscription. Quotation prices will be prorated to the remaining time of the current invoicing period. And with the Close, we can simply close the quotation.
Closing Reasons
With this feature, it Understands the customer responses and reason for closing the subscription also helps to introduce corrective measures. And to do so go to Subscriptions> Configuration> Closing Reason.
Subscriptions to Renew
This feature comes to use when the customer is willing to pursue a subscription.
From Here one can create new subscriptions that need to be renewed.
