PayPal Payment Plan/Installment Question

[bromanski]

I have a question about the Canvas Catalog listing and PayPal – my intention is to have an option where a person would be able to break up a PCE course payment into 3 or more payments for our larger programs.  For example, if program tuition was $5,000 could they pay in 3 installments of $1666 or a lesser amount over a course of the program length to make it seem more affordable.   Do you know if this is a possibility?  Has anyone done more than one lump sum payment?

Beth

[jsowalsk]

We just have in the backend the transaction manager split it up in Authorize.net or separate course lists for each amount or a program with different amount course listings.

[kevinhitt]

Hey Jessica, 

I am having a similar problem trying to accommodate a payment plan, and hope you might be able to help.

Our transaction manager is TouchNet, I am unsure if they could split transactions like Authorize.net does for you. 

Could you please explain how separate course lists might work? Are you describing a separate Canvas Course & Catalog Listing for each segment of the payment plan? 

Thank you!!

[jsowalsk]

We have a subaccount created for each Kuali financial service number and that same subaccount has the courses related to that subaccount. In Authorize.net, the transactions that go through are based by batch for that day and each transaction has a Transaction ID from Authorize.net and a Reference ID from Catalog and these IDs are identical. Does this make sense?

[kevinhitt]

Thank you Jessica for the quick reply

Sorry but that went way over my head - maybe it is because I have never worked with subaccounts or Kuali. 

I think my difficult has more to do with the structuring of Courses (in Canvas) vs. Listings (in Catalog)

Our issue is after a student enrolls in a course (at say, 1/3 the total price via Promo code due to a 3 stage payment plan) - we want the option for the student to return to the same Listing & make the remaining 2 payments. However, they cannot do this since they have an existing Enrollment.

[I had an idea to 'Inactivate' the user & have them re-register through Catalog with the 2nd payment, however it gives an error as if there is still an active enrollment]

An alternative I thought you mentioned would be to create separate Courses & Listings for each portion of the payment plan. For example:

• [Listing 1 for Course 1]: Workshop Payment 1 of 3
• [Listing 2 for Course 2]: Workshop Payment 2 of 3
• [Listing 3 for Course 3]: Workshop Payment 3 of 3

This seems cumbersome though & could quickly get out of hand if different students are allowed to have different rates of payment. 

I appreciate all of your time & any advice you have to offer, thank you!

[jsowalsk]

The easiest option would be to create a program and then have them enroll in that program with the courses they want to enroll in. Let's say Math 1, Math 2, Math 3 and then have them pay a single price for all three classes. This would be a separate enrollment. Would that work? Then just lump the sum of the three courses with the promo code.

[kevinhitt]

I suppose this method would work - we were hoping to avoid multiple Classes, but it seems necessary if we want to keep everything in Catalog.

I will keep searching for alternative ways, but this is great to have 

Thank you again for your thoughts!

[jsowalsk]

Sure thing. Happy to help.

[bromanski]

As more CE registration and online learning platforms integrated with payment plan features and CRM automation have increased since the rise in alternative credentials since the pandemic, this is still a feature that would be very useful for the Instructure Catalog Team to consider.  These are a few examples:

• Examples of Payment Plan options:
  • CourseStorm
  • Partial.ly
  • Teachable