There are occasions where a business may want to create a trial product but have it auto-convert to a paid subscription after a period of time. Not all billing systems are created equally and to provide a means of accommodating this use case, PeakCommerce has recognized a strategy businesses are using by using two products -- a trial product and a regular paid product.

The marketing team at Company X wishes to have a limited duration trial of 7 days. Once the trial reaches its term date, the customer will then be charged for the full price with a new term start date starting on the 8th day. Company X uses Zuora as it's billing system.

To configure this in PeakCommerce:

• Create a product on a journey

• Set the product type to bundle

• Add the two products to the bundle

• Make sure the trial is setup to trigger off the contract effective date

• Make sure the paid product is setup to trigger off the service activation date

• Set the billing period of the trial charge to be 7 days

• Configure the journey settings defaults

  • Contract effective = enter the number of days to start after the term start date

  • Service activation = enter the number of days to start after the contract effective date

How does this type of bundle show the trial conversion in reports?

When using this approach it is important to remember that these are two distinct product rate plans and product rate plan charges. Therefore, you should plan for trial conversions to be represented with two products for reporting purposes. This is best achieved outside of Zuora in a data warehouse using a business reporting tool such as Domo.

How do I make sure the trial product does not renew?

There are a few days to achieve the removal of the trial product from the subscription to prevent double billing after the trial period. The most frequented method is to create a workflow in Zuora or Salesforce to remove the trial product. You can create a future dated order that will terminate the trial at the end of its term.