A template in Paythen is basically a set of rules you define which affects any plans created from that template. The main benefit/reason being that each customer's total amount is going to be different (like for eCommerce or if you're collecting data via a third party form, then sending people to a payment page).

Eg: When creating a template, you set a specific billing interval (like 10 weekly installments or 6 monthly installments, etc), the number of payments, the currency, and more. When a plan is created from this template, it inherits these values. You can overwrite these values too by passing new ones via url parameters.

If you're using our WooCommerce plugin, any values that need to be passed are automatically handled by our plugin. See detailed WooCommerce setup instructions here.

To create a new template, click on the "Templates" menu item and the "New template" button in your Paythen dashboard or go here directly.

You can choose from three different template types in Paythen:

For most use cases, the standard Payment plan template will be applicable but here are the key differences between each:

Used when you want to offer customers typical payment plans that have a standard billing interval – weekly, monthly, every 2 weeks, etc.

Used when you want all customers to align to the same dates – eg: Pay $100 or x% on sign up, then 20% on 5 September, 30% on 20 November, etc... This approach is useful if you are selling something that happens at a specific future date – like an event, or a workshop, etc.

Used when you want customers to pay all / some installments first, then receive their product or service. This can either work as a traditional layaway or lay-by plan where customers "reserve" what they want but they only receive it once they have made all payments. This can also be used to control demand when you have limited supply or limited spots (eg: for workshops or events) and you want to encourage some people to wait. You can do this by offering a "Wait for it" discount - eg: Wait 8 weeks to receive your product and get 10% off. Wait for it plans are useful if you want to fully de-risk your payment plan option as they assume customers will complete their payments before they receive their product or service.

You can create as many templates with different rules as you want.

Once you create a template, we'll show your template link which is what you need to paste into our ecommerce plugins. You can also use this template link in other scenarios like in a custom integration, or via any third party tools like form builders, to pass values to it via url parameters. Here is an example using JotForm but the same principle applies to any form builders. This will automatically generate and display a payment plan for your customers on the fly.

Use this demo link below and paste it into your browser – you can change the name and price fields below and you will see that it will generate a payment plan based on whatever you enter:
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​https://demo.paythen.co/template/qyl3kogwn1?price=1000&plan_name=Paythen+Demo+Payment+Plan
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You can change the price above to anything you want and then paste it into your browser. This will create a new plan with that price as the total. This template creates a plan that has 10 weekly installments. When you create a template, you can choose the billing interval, number of payments, add a surcharge, upfront deposit and more. You can see the additional parameters you can pass to a template link below.

If you're using our WooCommmerce plugin, you can ignore all of the information below as it happens automatically once you've installed our plugin. Read more about our WooCommerce plugin and setup instructions here.

If you're interested in using Paythen with Shopify, read more here.

There are 8 default dynamic values you can pass to template links giving you a lot of control over plans that are generated this way. Plan name (plan_name) and the total payment amount (price) are the only two that are required.
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Eg: ​https://demo.paythen.co/template/qyl3kogwn1?price=1000&plan_name=Paythen+Demo+Payment+Plan

REQUIRED

Plan name (required)

Field ID: plan_name

Total payment amount (required)

Field ID: price

OPTIONAL

Plan description (optional)

Field ID: description

Currency (optional)

Field ID: currency

Billing interval (optional)

Field ID: billing_interval

Number of payments (optional)

Field ID: number_of_payments

Start payments after (optional)

Field ID: start_payments_after

Custom confirmation page (optional)

Field ID: customer_redirect_url

In addition to these, you can also pass values to any custom fields you added when creating the template. Eg: If you added a custom field called Mobile phone in your template, then that can be passed as a value also.

Mobile phone

Field ID: mobile_phone

eg: mobile_phone=(213) 123 4567

Any values you pass here automatically overwrite any pre-set values you might have entered in the template. Eg: If you had set a description in the template, but you pass a new value for description in the url, we will use the new value in the plan. Or if you've set a default currency to USD but then pass a currency value as EUR then the plan will be generated with Euro as the currency.

If you're not sure about how you can pass values in the url, read our help article about utm parameters here.

Eg: A template url can have the above values appended to it in this format. Here is an example with 5 parameters. You can pass some or all of the values, as long as the two required ones (price and plan_name) are present:
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https://[your-template-link-goes-here]?plan_name=ABC Shop Payment Plan&price=1000&description=This is a payment plan order via ABC Shop&customer_redirect_url=https://abc.com/thanks

And this can be further expanded on with custom fields. Eg:
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https://[your-template-link-goes-here]?plan_name=ABC Shop Payment Plan&price=1000&description=This is a payment plan order via ABC Shop&customer_redirect_url=https://abc.com/thanks&customer_source=influencer-campaign&preferred_color=purple&mobile_phone=(213) 123 4567

You can pass almost any value in the url parameters – including spaces, most punctuation, numbers and most symbols.

All this happens automatically behind the scenes when you're using our ecommerce plugins, like WooCommerce. But you can use the template url however you want, with any other system, as long as you pass the two required fields to it.

You can also use the templates functionality above with any other system, form builder tools like Formstack, Tally, JotForm or any other setup where you can pass values to url parameters. We outline an example flow using a third party tool here.

You can set up a payment plan flow on Shopify with these step by step instructions – there isn't a Shopify app at the moment.

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