Go Live Checklist

Site Settings

Your site settings are the core part of helping Recurly bill your customers. Everything from the gateways Recurly displays to the taxes that can be charged, are controlled by these settings.

Recurly Subdomain

The site subdomain you set is only exposed on the hosted pages.

Company URL

This is used primarily for the logout link on the Hosted Account Management Page - the customer will be brought to this URL when they opt to log out.

Site Contacts

Technical and Billing Contacts should be the go-to contacts at your company for any urgent issues coming from Recurly Support. While only the Billing Contact is required, we strongly recommend filling out all four contact fields so that we can best help you.

• The site billing contact is also the default address for your customer communications, but that can be overridden on the Email Settings page.
• The site technical contact is where we send notices about configuration changes, when someone edits a gateway, an API key, or changes fraud settings. Without this contact in place, Recurly will notify all of your site users who have Integration-level access.

Setting up your Business Entities

The Business Entities page is where you define the customer-facing information to be used for invoicing and taxation. Every site on Recurly will have one Default Entity, however, merchants on Recurly's Elite plans are able to add as many business entities to their site as they need based on their organization's structure. Elements included on the business entity component include the Company Name and Location displayed on invoices sent to your customers, your business' registered tax address(es) to use for accurate merchant-side tax calculation, your TIN/VAT numbers associated with each business entity, as well as the option to create subscriber locations to allow for easy automatic entity assignment based on your customers' addresses. Accounting codes are also configurable at the entity level if your site has Recurly revenue recognition enabled.

Company Name and Location

Your company location(s) determines what supported gateways are shown as well as how tax rates are offered and calculated. The company location that is used at signup will also help define the default site currency, although that may later be changed.

Tax Information

Supply your own company information such as Tax ID Numbers or VAT numbers to display on your customer invoices.

Plans

Your subscription plans tell Recurly how much and how often to bill your customers.

Accounting Code Scheme

This is an optional set of data, but for larger companies an accounting department may insist on populating data with an accounting code scheme to help recognize revenue in specific buckets. This data can always be added to Recurly in the future as your company grows!

Editable Quantities

Checking this option allows your customers to choose the quantity of their purchase at checkout. Regardless of this setting, you may still override quantities using other Recurly integration methods.

Tax Options

At a high level, you can decide whether or not this subscription plan is eligible for taxation. You may also define the tax type, which is used for more advanced tax calculations.

Trial Options

By configuring this option, your subscription plans will have a default trial period. This can always be overwritten on a per-user basis or customized during Recurly.js checkouts.

Reminder Emails

There are two options to configure at the plan level - a trial ending email and a renewal reminder email, each sent 7 days before a trial ends or subscription renews. These emails are especially important to configure if your state/location has trial opt-in rules, or you offer annual subscriptions.

Success Configuration (for Hosted Payment Pages only)

For merchants using the Hosted Payment Pages, enable this functionality to redirect customers to a specific page after their subscription process is complete.

Invoice Settings

Making sure to properly set your invoice settings will ensure your customers get timely notifications, as well as ensure your modification settings fit your billing requirements.

Invoice Terms

Configure your invoice defaults to give your customer support agents a step in the right direction! These values can always be overwritten as needed.

Subscription Modification Settings

These two settings allow your business to control what happens when a user wishes to change their subscription and has a payment problem. This may not be as needed as you just start in Recurly, but can always be modified as you experience issues with subscription changes and non-payment.

Currencies

Most customers will default to just one currency (defined above, in your site settings), but multiple currencies are available. See Currencies for more information.

Plan Configurations

If adding multiple currencies, make sure to access your subscription plans to specify the plan price point in each currency you offer.

Coupon Configurations

If adding multiple currencies, make sure to access your coupons to specify the discount price point in each currency you offer.

Taxes

Tax settings are important to ensure you're in compliance with any regulations imposed by your local tax authorities. Luckily, Recurly's got you covered with our out-of-the-box integration with Avalara:

Jurisdictions

If you need to collect tax from any customers, set your taxable jurisdictions. Not sure if you need to charge tax? Check with a tax accountant!

Tax Addresses

Decide whether to use the billing-level address (ideally for electronic goods) or account-level address (ideally for physical goods) for tax calculations

Validation

Decide whether or not to use VIES for VAT validation and set requirements for validation evidence. Warning: Turning this feature off means you may accept potentially invalid VAT numbers.

Email Templates

Setting good communication with your customers is key to reducing churn and recovering revenue. When configuring your email templates, check the following:

Customize Header and Footer

You can add custom HTML to the header and the footer of your emails. This allows you to put information like a company logo or address information to personalize your emails.

Email Settings

Under the Settings for each email template, you can control certain functions:

Enabling/Disabling Emails

Depending on your communication style, you may not want Recurly to send emails. You have the option to enable or disable each email type.

Set Email BCC's

Add BCC's to alert employees to critical actions, such as subscription cancellations or late manual invoices.

Overriding default FROM addresses

Your FROM address will default to your site billing contact. You may override this email address (which your customer sees) on a per-email basis.

Payment Gateway

Your payment gateway is key to success at Recurly, so spend time getting this just right.

Credentials

Your payment gateway will provide you with a set of credentials, usually called API credentials. Contact your gateway for instructions if you do not already have this data. You will need to select your supported currencies and card types.

Test

Once you have your credentials entered, run a test transaction to validate a basic transaction (please note this is not 100% accurate in all cases, but a good indicator of successful integration).

Account Updater

Enable Recurly's Account Updater functionality

Addresses

Validate your address requirements (see site settings) with your gateway AVS controls. Make sure you are passing through all the information your gateway requires.

ZDA

If your gateway supports Zero Dollar Authorizations, you may enable this functionality.

ACH

The payment gateways GoCardless and Adyen provide ACH for

Hosted Pages

Hosted Pages are basic Recurly integrations targeted at companies without developer resources, or companies that want to go live quickly while developing a more robust and customized integration.

Access

Enable or disable hosted payment pages and account management pages depending on your desired customer experience. If you want your customers to be able to log in from your website, query the Recurly API for the customer's hosted login URL.

Customize

Upload a company logo, set a background color, and add a ToS and/or privacy policy link. You may also customize your signout URL, which is defined in your Site Settings

Options

Want to let your customers pay online or self-service their subscription cancellations? Make sure to choose these options.

ACH

If you already have GoCardless or Adyen payment gateway account up and running with Recurly, you may add the ACH option to your hosted pages.

Dunning Management

Recurring payments fail. It's a fact of life. Recover more of those invoices by setting a dunning policy that makes sense for your user base:

Email Frequency

In general, Recurly recommends that B2B companies set fewer emails over a long time period, while B2C companies set more frequent emails over a shorter time period.

End Result

Expire the subscription or leave it active? Leaving the subscription active is best if you have external collection efforts.

Dunning Length

Make sure your dunning cycle is never longer than your shortest plan.

User Access

User invites and settings are managed in the Admin section on the Users page. Because Recurly doesn't charge on a per-seat basis, you're free to add everyone in your company! How can you do this safely?

User Access

Each user should be added to Recurly under their own company email address. This allows for proper auditing and account controls.

Permissions

Set a role appropriate to each user's access needs - don't give access to more than a person needs.

Timezones

Each user can configure Recurly to display in their local timezone. This is great for multi-national teams.

Passwords

Your Recurly password should be unique. Do not share this password or use it for any other systems.

Alerts

Subscribe to status.recurly.com and/or follow @recurlystatus for system updates.

Need More Help?

Recurly Enablement offers Onboarding Packages, Sandbox Configuration, and Custom Trainings. Reach out to [email protected] to get started today!