BillTrack50 released a major update on March 17, 2019. If you’ve had any reason to look at your queries, make a new bill sheet, or if you happen to be overdue in renewing your subscription, you probably noticed.
Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash
New Philosophy
We’ve changed how the system thinks about subscriptions. We aren’t changing our products or pricing, just the workflow for setting them up. Now instead of buying new products individually (bill sheets, scorecards, etc) and getting a chance to pay for them if needed, you buy a subscription ahead of time, and then you can create whatever you are entitled to.
Most of the time this new approach will be more efficient. To create a new bill sheet or regulation sheet you simply need to choose a name and you’ll be dropped right onto the query tab to get started. But if you want to create a bill sheet for a state you haven’t subscribed to, or create a scorecard and you don’t have a scorecard subscription yet, you’ll now need to create the subscription first, and then go create the bill sheet or scorecard.
A major side benefit of this change is that we don’t have to lock your state choices for bill sheets and regulation sheets in place any more — you can now add and remove states to your queries as needed. As mentioned above, we also won’t take you through the purchase process every time you make a new item, so if you create a lot of bill sheets that should be a relief.
Buying New Subscriptions
If you are on a free trial and have decided to subscribe, great! Or if tracking legislation isn’t enough pain for you and you want to track regulations to, excellent! Or maybe you landed a new client and need to add a new state to your subscription, wonderful! Just go up to the account menu and choose “Subscriptions”
Note: only the company administrator will have the subscription option.
On the subscription screen you will see your existing subscriptions and an “add subscription” button:
this will take you to a screen where you can choose which products you’d like to buy. Click “more details” on the item you are interested in and then put it in your cart. When you are done choosing items proceed to checkout. At this point you can either pay with a credit card or switch to pay by invoice and send us a check. You can also visit your subscription page and grab your invoice or pay outstanding invoices anytime later.
If you are adding a new item to your existing subscription then we will pro-rate the price to the part of the year left on your existing subscription, so that all of your items will renew at the same time next year.
Renewing Subscriptions
You can now renew your subscription from the account menu too, if you are so inclined. You can renew up to 30 days ahead of time and we’ll start your new subscription the day after your old one expires (including free trials). Starting 14 days before your subscription you will see a little bell warning in your header, which you can click on to go to the subscription screen directly.
To renew choose Subscriptions from the account menu (or click on your warning) and you’ll see an option to renew your existing subscription. That will take you to your shopping cart with the items you need already selected and in your cart. You can remove any services you don’t want or go back to the selection screen to add more. When you are ready proceed to checkout and either pay with a credit card or choose to pay by invoice.
If you need to discuss pricing with me or arrange for quarterly payments, choose pay by invoice and drop me a note. I can make the necessary modifications and then you can pay the updated invoice online or by check.
Reviewing Subscriptions
You can go to the subscription page any time to see your active subscription and when it expires. The subscription screen will also list any outstanding invoices you have that need to be paid. You can grab the invoice to mail a check or you can just pay right from this screen.
You can also see all your old invoices here too and download them again if you need to by checking the Show Paid Invoices box.
Hopefully you find these new payment screens convenient, and enjoy the streamlined process of creating new bill sheets. Of course please reach out if you have any questions or if anything in your account looks amiss.