Subscribers and plans, day to day

Most of the work in the panel is two things: plans, which are what you sell, and subscribers, who buy them. This page covers the everyday side of both.

What a plan decides

A plan holds the speed, the data and time allowance, the price, and what happens when the allowance runs out. It also decides whether the subscription expires.

• An open plan never expires. A subscriber on it can connect as soon as they are created, and their expiry date stays empty.
• An expiring plan must have a validity period, for example one month. The panel refuses to save one without it, because a plan that expires but has no period would leave subscribers with no date at all.

Switching a plan from open to expiring gives every subscriber on it an expiry one period from now. Switching it back clears their dates.

Creating a subscriber

Under Subscribers, every subscriber needs a username, a password and a plan. There is no subscriber without a plan.

On an expiring plan, a new subscriber starts expired: creating someone is not the same as selling them a month. They connect after you activate them. On an open plan they connect straight away.

The same username can exist with another company on the same service; your subscribers only clash with your own.

Activating and renewing

Open the subscriber and choose Activate. Activation charges the manager who does it the plan's wholesale price and extends the subscriber by one period.

• Tick Generate invoice if you want a subscriber invoice for it. It is off by default.
• Untick money collected when the subscriber has not paid you yet. The amount is then recorded as their debt and appears under Debtors — Subscribers.
• Pressing the button twice, or a dropped connection that retries, never charges twice: each activation carries its own request number and a repeat is recognised.

Temporary activation lets a subscriber who owes money connect for a limited number of days. When they pay the whole debt, their original end date comes back; a late or partial payment only reduces the debt.

Lending resources

On an extension plan marked as lendable, a subscriber who is expired or out of data can be lent days or data, up to a monthly limit you set. The next real activation takes back the lent days in full and only the data that was actually used.

Changing many subscribers at once

Select subscribers in the list and use the bulk actions: activate, change plan, add data or remove data. A bulk action reports each subscriber's result separately, so one refusal (for example, not enough balance) does not undo the others. Read the summary before closing it.

If it did not work

• A new subscriber cannot connect. They are on an expiring plan and have not been activated yet. Activate them, or move them to an open plan.
• The plan will not save. An expiring plan needs a period greater than zero.
• Activation is refused for balance. The manager doing it does not have enough balance or debt allowance. See Reseller balances day to day.
• The subscriber's end date did not come back after paying. It comes back only when the full debt is paid on time, oldest debt first.