Automatic Fee Added To Order On Price List

Hi Tim,

Is there a way to add a mandatory flat fee to a price list that is automatically added to a customer's total order before checkout?

I have one high school that doesn't want us to charge the grad sitting fee up front, so I told them I would charge it on the back end when a customer orders their photos.

It's like an option that is applied once to the entire order, but I want it to be automatically applied and non-removable.

Thanks!

Todd

Doesn't this defeat the purpose of a sitting fee? It allows the student to have photos taken but then possibly never purchase anything.

I agree 100%.

It was either this, or walk away from their business. 1600 school day photos and 500 grads.

I was willing to walk away, but we decided to give this a try for one year.

I haven't had to do this, but a couple of options might be

- Paid access feature.
The downside of this might be that the student may have more than one family member logging in to look at photos and they would then each need to pay for access.

- Set everything up as a package with the base cost being the sitting fee, and nothing being included to start.
The downside of this could be that if they come back to purchase more, they will pay the fee again. And if more than one person is purchasing for the same student, they will pay the fee again.

- Set your session fee as an item and put it in a separate product group. Edit the settings of that product group to require a purchase from it before adding from other groups. 
Again, the downside of this could be that if they come back to purchase more, they will pay the fee again. And if more than one person is purchasing for the same student, they will pay the fee again.

- Set up an online purchase, where you don't load their images until they pay the sitting fee.
This is more manual work, and will require a separate transaction per student, but it eliminates the possible issue with multiple family members purchasing photos.

I'm curious to hear what other solutions there are!

I see that you're in Canada too. For what it's worth, I'm not sure about all of the big companies, but I know that mountain west is charging a sitting fee/set up fee to schools now. They're the "big guy" in my area, and I try to use what they are doing as an easy gauge of what I can push for (and improve on) without a lot of blowback. 

There isn't a way to charge a flat fee when someone purchased from a price list.

But a suggestion would be a set of required collections to be purchased to unlock other products.

In the product groups in your price lists, there is this option: 

Require a selection from this group before the can select products from other groups

This option is available when editing a product group (the edit icon next to the product group name). Checking this option will make it so the customer is required to select a product from the product group with the option checked before they can purchase/add products from the other product groups. Example: the customer must select/purchase a collection before purchasing other products. 

You would have a set of collections that price in a sitting fee, and once added to cart, they can purchase a la cart products. 

The only problem is: I already have a required product group.

The only solution I can think of at the moment is to create a shipping group and have everyone pay the sitting fee when they choose any of the shipping options:

Pick up at studio = sitting fee

Deliver to School = sitting fee

Deliver to home = mailing charge plus sitting fee.

The downside will be if they place a second order, or a different family member places an order. They will be paying the sitting fee every time they order.

Now, if it were possible to have paid access on sub galleries, I think that would solve my problem.

Would it not be simpler to just have a separate price list for this group of students and have slightly higher prices?  Figure your average sale from last year, add the session fee, this will give you the percentage you will need to increase the prices to cover the session fee.  And don't forget the PITA tax!!! LOL

I'm with Brian - you don't want a barrier to purchase, especially as you have already done all the work for free.

I don't know how many photos/poses you show, but you could even have the first photo at $35/$85 - whatever your min fee might be and then value packs for not much more coin to encourage better buys?

Definitely look at past sales/trends and make up a pricelist just for these guys.