MINIBC is moving to a new renewal system (known internally as V2.1). This guide explains the goals, changes in flow and technical changes merchants need to be aware of before migration.
Upgrade Goals
The goals with transitioning MINIBC merchants to V2.1 are to increase scalability, reduce failed renewal involvement and update our renewal architecture to use the BigCommerce Checkout API.
General Flow Changes
With the current version of renewals, MINIBC begins with taking payment using the data it has on hand; should that charge be successful, the renewal order is injected into BigCommerce. With V2.1, we take the opposite approach and begin with creating the order in BigCommerce, when successful, MINIBC takes the calculated order value (performed by BigCommerce) and tries to charge for the order. If the charge is successful, MINIBC moves the order to Awaiting Fulfillment. Should the charge attempt fail, the order remains a temporary order and is not processed.
Technical Notes/Changes
- Customers will now receive an order confirmation from BigCommerce upon successful renewal. Making customers aware of this change is recommended since turning this type of email off is not possible without disabling it for all purchases.
- Promotion rules created in BigCommerce will apply to the renewal orders; should the order meet the requirements.
- Shipping cost and method will be dependent on quotes from BigCommerce, whereas in V1 it is based on values in the MINIBC database:
- By default, MINIBC will try to match the shipping method recorded in our database; if that cannot be found, we'll select the cheapest method available from BigCommerce.
- If your store was customized with specific shipping rules that only apply to renewals and you wish to keep these; please do let us know. We've created an additional rule to make sure we can maintain and override the BigCommerce shipping rules with those already customized in MINIBC.
- Note, if your store is using a custom shipping rule (enforced by MINIBC) BigCommerce is not able to submit tax documentation to your tax provider.
Creation Failures
Currently referred to as Injection Failures these are orders that failed to be created after payment had been successfully taken. Most commonly this was caused by lack of stock for a particular item. With the transition to V2.1 and the changes in renewal flow, merchants will not charge subscribers for orders that cannot be fulfilled. Instead orders that have conflicts will be listed separately within the Daily Summary Email and can be addressed accordingly.