Overhauling Payment Processing for CiviEvents to enable multiple payments

[jellobrain]

I work for an organization that is focussed on social justice work, as many of us do, and there is a lot of interest in having a payment process that enables folks to pay for event registrations in multiple installments (what I lovingly refer to as the layaway plan). 

There has been some work at Civi on looking into a rehaul of the accounts and payments system (http://civicrm.org/node/606) and am interested here in seeing if there might be a critical mass of organizations that might be able to fund parts of this work together.  Please let me know here if you are interested.  The work would enable a whole assortment of things including:

1)  an API bridge to a non-proprietary accounting system (so that you don't have to hand enter or balance the account by hand.
2)  the ability to post multiple payments towards a balance.
3)  the ability to assign invoices to specific contacts.

In general, I think this work would enable CiviCRM to hit another tier of usefulness and function for the (primarily?) non-profit and social justice organizations who use it.  If we can all join hands together, the pricetag for this development could become affordable.

Thanks!
Ana

[Andrew Perry]

Hi Ana

Thanks for your post and e-mail drawing our attention to it.  We have a client paying us for a project that will result in there being the table structure in CiviCRM for multiple payments against a single contribution, but it doesn't deal with invoices that contain multiple contributions.

I think most of us are on the same page about the need for:

• the ability to generate and send an invoice to a contact for multiple contributions that may include amounts for other contacts' event registrations
• ideally the ability to link those contributions and/or invoices to particular "accounts" belonging to a contact (usually the organisation who is running CiviCRM) so that you can export them for import into an accounts package
• the ability to receive a part payment against a contribution/invoice
• the ability to generate a receipt for the part payment

We are happy to work with other orgs who wish to fund additional parts of the development by us or by other developers in collaboration with all of those who are working on developments in this area.

Perhaps we should organise a Skype call?

Andrew

[jellobrain]

Hi Andrew,

I appreciate your responding.  I think at this point, any development towards this goal would be a good thing, especially if we go about it in a smart way.

I'd love to set up a call.  Still trying to get the sound card on this Dell to work with Ubuntu, but this will give me some motivation.

My week is somewhat open.  I think the best times for me would be tomorrow afternoon (probably too soon), Thursday afternoon, or on Friday (any time).  I am wide open the following week except for Monday, and a meeting at 11am MST on Wednesday.

I'm looking forward to it!

Ana

[Andrew Perry]

Ana

Perhaps you can have a look here at the first steps proposed: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/CiviAccount

Before we catch up on Skype later this week.

Andrew

[jellobrain]

wonderful.  it all looks very exciting.  i will take a closer look to see if there are any questions i have before we meet on tuesday. 

thanks so much.
ana

[Andrew Perry]

The first steps have been moved to: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Proposed+Phase+1+Implementation+-+Data+Structure+Changes but hopefully you found that from the link on http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/CiviAccount

I look forward to speaking with you in about 50 minutes.

[jellobrain]

i think we might have mistaken the times.  i had us down for tomorrow...  i am available now on skype for chat.  i do not have my headphones in the spot i am working from...

[Andrew Perry]

Ana

We're looking forward to discussing further after April 15 code freeze of the initial data schema changes, which will allow UI to be developed for payments to be linked to multiple contributions, or multiple payments to a single contribution, so that people can pay for events etc in instalments.

Andrew

[Eileen]

Hi Andrew,

How's this going? Are the schema changes on track for 3.2 code freeze?

Eileen

[Andrew Perry]

Yes - initial part completed but no UI yet so people won't notice anything from the front end in 3.2.

[Eileen]

Cool, that's what I thought you were aiming for. There seem to be a few people following your progress on this so I thought it would be good to see where you are at.

I think there might be others out there prepared to contribute from one of the threads I saw

[Andrew Perry]

That would be great!  We are going to be back in touch with jellobrain once the code freeze happens so we can look at starting some UI bits around part payments.

[petednz]

Hi Andrew - anything you can update about the UI development - I just had a poke around in sandbox but nothing screamed at out me in terms of enabling partial payments/deposits for Events

[Andrew Perry]

Hi Peter

No, no UI at this stage.  I need to organise a chat with lobo and dave regarding where things are at from our end and then moving this forward... I'll do that now!

Andrew

[petednz]

Thanks Andrew