Features:

• UK approval rates: We have added a UK merchant account with several processors to improve UK approval rates.

Bugs fixed:

• Subscription details: Bug fixed that caused an error when trying to view subscription details.
• Account Management Portal subscription start date: Bug fixed that caused an incorrect subscription start date to show.
• Account Management Portal translations: Updated grammar on French translations on the Orders page of the Account Management Portal.
• Dropbox: File fulfillment through Dropbox resulted in an error. This has now been fixed.
• Webhooks: Webhook payloads were not updating when subscription is changed. This is now fixed.

Features:

• Subscription Pause: Sellers can now allow their buyers to Pause subscriptions from the Account Management Portal, directly from the App, or through our API. Pause can be an effective tactic for deflecting churn. Learn more here about how to configure this in the Account Management Portal, or Pause subscriptions through our API.

Changes based on your feedback:

• Tax Withholding reporting: Sellers can configure webhooks to notify them when a transaction is eligible for Withholding Tax. Sellers can also see Withholding Tax in the following exports: Order Export, Order Item Export, Base Order Item Export, Account Order Item Export.

Bug fixes:

• Web Storefront: Payment options don't get selected when "Short Checkout Flow" is unchecked. This has been fixed.
• Manual order taxes: Fixed a bug that caused tax to disappears from certain manually-created orders.
• Account Management Portal payment methods: Bug prevented buyers from adding payment methods other than credit cards to the Account Management. This has been fixed.
• Account Management Portal access: In certain circumstances buyers were unable to access their account management page to make changes to their subscription. This has been fixed.

Bug fixes:

• Billing terms hyperlink: The billing terms hyperlink on pop-up checkout was not displaying specific dates for billing terms, but rather generic subscription information. This is now fixed.
• Tax exemption in Quotes: When a buyer added a VAT exemption ID at checkout and then generated a quote they were able to remove VAT a second time when they checked out after accepting and paying for that quote. This was fixed so that once the VAT exemption ID is added in checkout and a quote is generated then buyers will no longer see the option to add a VAT ID when they check out from the quote.
• Tax exemption in Popup: In Popup, a buyer was able to enter their US tax ID before their postal code, which caused an error. Now buyers can enter their Tax ID before or after the postal code without issues.
• “Awaiting Payment” order due dates: Certain orders that were “Awaiting Payment” showed incorrect due dates. This is now fixed.
• Account Management Portal performance: We have improved the performance of our Account Management Portal and added pagination when there are more than 15 orders or subscriptions.
• Duplicate orders: Fixed a bug where we showed two orders for one payment.
• Reseller tax: Tax was being charged on certain reseller orders. This has now been fixed. Custom Order coupons: Custom Orders w/ 100% off coupon would not complete checkout when "Force Address Collection" is on. This has been fixed.
• Trial cancellations: Some canceled trials were not deactivating at the end of the trial. This is now fixed. Payment method updates: Some Contextual subscriptions were not allowing buyers to update their payment method. This is now fixed.
• PayPal postal code field: In the Popup checkout, postal code is hidden for certain physical products when PayPal is selected. This has been fixed.
• Multi-discount coupons: Multi-discount coupons being applied via Seller app (Orders -> Subscriptions) were not being appropriately applied to the subscription. This has now been fixed.
• Virtual Products: Canadian tax displayed as $0.00 on checkout but charged fully upon completing order. This has been fixed.
• Volume discounts: Fixed a bug preventing the proper volume discounts from resulting when a subscription is changed in the Account Management Portal or via API.

Changes based on your feedback:

• Coupon limits for DI: Digital Invoicing now supports the ability to limit a coupon (e.g., if a quote with one use limit is accepted and paid then that coupon is no longer available)
• ADA Accessibility: We have made several enhancements to the Web Storefront and Popup checkouts to support ADA requirements, including support for screen readers for visually impaired.
• Support Community Single Sign On (SSO): Users can now use their FastSpring login credentials to access the Support Community.
• Tax exempt data: Added tax exempt data to webhooks and APIs with applicable.
• Withholding Tax webhook: Sellers will now be notified of withholding tax is applied to a payout. We added a sub-object to the webhook that will show whether any withholdings were assessed; and if true, then the amount, currency, and the percentage will be shared.

Keeping you compliant:

• Tax ID on invoices: In certain countries the Tax ID is required on invoices. This is known as an “Invoice Disclosure”. We already did this in many countries, including the EU, and with this change we have added several countries (e.g., Australia, Canada, South Korea, and South Africa).

Bug fixes:

• Price when discount is null: Fixed a bug that could not find price when discount was null.

Changes based on your feedback:

• Limits for Manual Subscriptions: In order to better support usage based billing models, we now have looser daily and monthly charge limits to allow for more frequent charges.

Q1 Major Releases

Our Q1 product update was released on April 8, 2021 and includes the following improvements to the platform:**

• Mailchimp Integration - Sellers can now use Mailchimp for features like cart abandonment more reliably. Previously, the Mailchimp v3 API was experiencing intermittent gaps on our platform and Sellers were not able to get all of the marketing data they expected. We’ve now improved validation to better determine if and when a cart has been abandoned.
• New Reseller Store Experience - Resellers and Split Payees now have access to the newest version of the FastSpring App. These users will be able to access their store and accounts via app.fastspring.com and use the new user interface. By migrating our reseller experience, we can begin adding new features and enhancements based on your feedback.

Changes based on your feedback:

• We extended the session timeout interval on app.fastspring.com to 12 hours. Previously, the FastSpring App would time out very quickly and require users to log in again if they briefly stopped activity.
• We changed the payment method we used to call “PO” and “Purchase Order” to “Invoice” across our checkout and the FastSpring App to reduce any confusion around this payment option.

Fixes in our Contextual platform:

• A small number of non-US Sellers were seeing incorrect calculations on volume-based discounts, which was leading to higher discounts than intended. We quickly fixed this issue and customers should now see appropriate discounts when a volume discount is being applied.
• Stores in non-US countries were not able to purchase products as gifts through our platform. We improved validation to ensure that a postal code is collected for gift purchases for all supported countries.
• Web Storefront content was cutting off footer content. We improved the styling to ensure the footer renders as expected.
• Custom Orders of Digital Only products were incorrectly showing price when Buyers switched countries. The platform will now recalculate custom order tax after the customer has entered their payment address to ensure we are calculating price and tax accurately.
• Fixed a bug that caused certain credit cards to get blocked for 24 hours after receiving a soft decline from the card-issuing bank on both the original attempt and backup attempt through our backup processor. This impacted transactions from February 23rd through April 8th.
• Secure call discounts were being calculated incorrectly, causing products to be discounted at higher rates and prices to be lower than intended. We added validation to ensure prices are correct after a discount is applied.

Fixes in our Classic platform:

• Classic Stores in gross pricing mode were adding tax to digital and physical products for Buyers in the United Kingdom, Australia, and European Union. The platform will now recalculate custom order tax after the Consumer has entered the payment address.
• Sellers trying to use Create Order/ Option 6 style links were unable to complete sales because it referenced an insecure URL using the http protocol, which was leading to a 400 (Bad Request) error. We’ve fixed this by replacing the http protocol with a secure https protocol.

Digital Invoicing Early Access Improvements :

• Quote webhooks tags were labeled as "attributes", which many Sellers noted were confusing. We updated the label to now say “tags”.
• We improved how we display VAT exemption (zero-rated tax) on our Buyer Quote and Seller Quote views. Previously, the tax was subtracted from the Gross subtotal resulting in the total value. Based on your feedback, zero-rated tax is now displayed as a zero line item.
• Quote webhooks were not supporting coupons and discounts as they were being applied to quotes, which created the possibility for incorrect reporting information. Quote webhooks now include the correct payload on coupons and discounts.

New Features & Improvements
Taxes and Tax Exemptions

• We made improvements to the mobile experience. When viewing our VAT/GST tool-tip, it was getting cut off on smaller screen sizes. This has been fixed.
• We fixed an issue where buyers who were checking out with a free trial product weren’t able to enter their VAT ID.
• We made changes to taxes for India on Classic. Orders in India, but in USD on the Classic store were charging unusual tax amounts. This was causing pain for our buyers, and driving cases to our Support team. This has been fixed. Indian orders in USD should assess appropriate tax.
• We fixed the taxation in South Africa and Russia. We were allowing users to enter their VAT # and were then exempting their tax. However, those two locales do not allow tax exemption by the seller; instead, it is handled internally between the buyer and their taxing authority. This has been fixed, we now assess taxes for South African and Russian buyers appropriately.
• If VAT Exempt buyer also has a discount on their cart, their tax is being displayed incorrectly. This has been fixed.
• VAT Exemption was not being applied to subscription add-ons. When a customer has a subscription addon AND should be exempt from VAT, we are still charging VAT. This has been fixed.
• Buyers with orders that were VAT Exempt and in Gross pricing mode who then made a negative change to their order were having incorrect pro-ration. This is now fixed and the proration amount should be correct.

Update on Fastspring Quoting Functionality

• We made searching for products simpler when creating or editing a quote. It used to be that you couldn’t search by the product path. We have enabled search by product path to give sellers more flexibility when creating or editing a quote and searching for the right product to enter into the quote.
• We updated the max quote length. When creating a quote, sellers were limited to only 1000 in the notes field. We have expanded that to 5000 and added an indicator of how many characters are in the field.
• Users who have Quotes enabled can now filter their Orders by Quote Based or Non-Quote Based Orders, or All Orders. This provides sellers the ability to see their quote-only orders, their non-quote orders, or all their orders.
• When generating an invoice via our dashboard from an open quote, fulfillment upon quote acceptance wasn’t working as expected. Fixed. Now sellers can hit “Generate Invoice” for stores that Fulfill upon Quote Acceptance and use License Generator. This unlocks the capability for sellers to confidently use “Generate Invoice” for their customers when they want to fulfill on quote Acceptance.
• We have updated some of the look and feel of parts of our quote flows, including the products drop-down when sellers are creating the quote; as well as the language selector when buyers/prospects are looking at their quotes. This will result in a better experience for both our sellers and buyers.

Bugs & Fixes

• We fixed an issue where manual subscriptions were not offering Wire/PO as a payment option. In our continuous drive to provide our buyers with the most options to pay in order to increase our seller conversion rate, we wanted to remove any roadblocks that were preventing buyers from completing a sale. We had identified a case where when there was a manual subscription, buyers were not presented with Wire or Purchase Order (Invoice) as a payment option. Now that this is fixed, buyers will see Wire or Purchase Order (Invoice) as a payment option - even when their order contains a manual subscription.
• We fixed an issue for Buyers using Firefox were experiencing difficulties when purchasing a .zip or .bz2 file. There was a bug where the download would not start. Fixed - Firefox users can now purchase .zip or .bz2 files and the download will begin upon completion of checkout.
• When a buyer checked out from the Account Management Portal, we would say “You will be charged XXX for the upgrade”; however that was not taking into account pro-ration logic. We have updated the verbiage to now say: “You will be charged the prorated amount for this plan change today and xxx upon rebill”. Should reduce confusion at checkout.
• In the Popup checkout experience, bundles were not displaying accurately on the cart. Products were being added to the cart individually, instead of as an entire bundle. This would cause fulfillment to not work as intended. This has been fixed.
• Some Taiwanese orders were not receiving the email receipt of their purchase. This is especially important in Taiwan, as the receipt can be used to enter a lottery sponsored by the Taiwanese government for Taiwanese taxpayers. Fixed - now all buyers in Taiwan should receive email receipts for all of their orders.