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Getting your financial plans right is the groundwork for everything else in SwiftFox Finance. Your subscriptions, invoices, and payments all flow from them. In this lesson, we will be able to plan from scratch, add its fees, and apply it to a member, and by the end, you'll have a plan that's ready to go with future price changes and the invoice settings that suit how you bill.

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We'll cover how to create financial categories to organize your plans, build a plan and choose how it renews and invoices. Add plan fees, including future price changes, and apply a plan to a members profile. So let's dive in.

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You'll find plans under financial in settings. The quickest way there is to open settings and search for plans. This is where you create and manage your financial plans.

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Every plan belongs to a category, so let's set one up first. Select the Manage Categories tab, then add category. Give it a clear name. Say membership and leave multi active subscriptions unchecked unless you want members to hold more than one plan in the same category. Select save back on your categories tab, select Add Plan and give your plan a clear name like Full Rate so it's easy to spot later.

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Next, choose the plan type. An anniversary plan renews on each members own start date. A common plan renews on a shared date for everyone. If your memberships run to the financial year, choose common and set the Common Period date to the 1st of July. Just below set the renewal type for most plans you will leave this on the default renews at a common period.

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Your plan category defaults to the one you're in, but you can switch to create new if you need a new one on the fly. If you've already built plan add ons, surcharges, or discounts, attached them under plan add ons. If not, there's a dedicated lesson on those and you can add them later.

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Under Payment settings, you will set the line type, for example subscription and any tracking codes you use for invoicing which have their own lesson too. There's also a continuous toggle switch it on. If subscriptions on this plan should always auto renew.

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Now for invoice settings, these decide how this plans invoices behave and there is a whole lesson dedicated to them, so we'll keep it short here. Default early invoice generation sets how far ahead of each period in invoice is created. Giving members time to pay. Email invoices

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controls whether the invoice is emailed out. Leave it on inherit to follow your account wide setting. If you take nominated amounts from members, switch on “Allow custom payment amounts”.

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One thing worth knowing you can edit a plan freely until someone subscribes to it. After that, the plan details lock to protect billing history.

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Plan type, the period and renewal dates, renewal type, plan category and allow custom payment amounts all grey out.

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Everything else stays open so you can still change the plan. Name its add ons, payment settings and invoice settings whenever you need to.

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When you're happy, select save and you'll be prompted to add fees to bring the plan to life. Fees set the price interval and timing for the plan. Now there are two ways in the prompt you just saw after saving or the money icon on any plan row that opens the plans to fee structure where it's active future and expired fees all live. Select add fee, choose the plan interval, monthly, weekly, and so on.

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If you bill an unusual cycle, use number of intervals between charges. To bill every two months, set the interval to monthly and the number of intervals to two, and members of the charged on a two monthly schedule. Set the effective date to control when the fee becomes available. Choose a currency if it differs from your default, and then enter the amount under fee types.

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On a common plan, you'll also see Pro rate interval. The interval SwiftFox uses to work out a part period fee for someone joining mid-cycle. It doesn't appear on anniversary plans, since those start a fresh period from the day a member joins.

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Open invoice settings to map how this fee is invoiced. The item account and tax rate pull from here, along with whether the fee is tax inclusive.

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You can also set early invoice generation and email invoices at the fee level here, if you want them different from the plan. Then open additional settings for a few useful controls. Payment offset shifts for charge, date. An offset of 15 on a period. Starting the 1st takes payment on the 16th. Paid to offset nudges the paid-to-date a little earlier or later than the end of each period.

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Always debit on schedule when switched on charges members on their due date, even if they've already paid ahead. You'll usually want this on for weekly, fortnightly and monthly plans. And note it also switches on auto renew for the fee. And override plan type, lets this fee follow a different cycle to the plans default. Select save and repeat to add as many fees as you need, different intervals and future price rises.

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For example, a weekly fee of $50, effective today, a monthly fee of $200 effective next month, and a future weekly fee of $60 effective the 1st of January next year. Your fees are organised into tabs by status. Active is the current fee. Future is the one with a later effective date, which is perfect for scheduled price rises and expired.

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Is the older fee that's been superseded. Give a fee a future effective date and it waits in the future tab until that day arrives, then takes over on its own, moving the existing fee for that interval into expired on the day. You can't delete a fee since members may be on it, but you can archive it to stop new subscriptions using it, and unassigned at any time.

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Let's put the plan to work. Open the members profile. Go to the financial tab and under subscriptions, select Create Subscription. Choose your plan and select proceed. The intervals you see mirror the plans active non archived fees. So if one's missing, check whether that fee is archived or not yet effective.

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Set the starting from date and tick auto renew, if the subscription should roll over at the end of its term. Choose the payment option and SwiftFox generates the first invoice for the period. Select proceed and then confirm. The subscription now shows in the table with its paid to date and a link to generate the next invoice when the time comes.

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And that is a financial plan built and applied. You can now create categories, set up plans with the right renewal and the invoice settings, add fees with future price changes and get members subscribed. For more in-depth lessons on finance, check out the rest of the finance course on the SwiftFox Academy.