extremecarver

Okay – here you go:
Prerequisites:
1. Install the GeoIP Maxmind Plugin
2. Create an empty Page called “Payment Button”
3. Install into your theme the following file: https://www.velomap.org/plugin_vat/template_velomap_paybutton.php.txt (and remove .txt ending)
4. Install the plugin: https://www.velomap.org/plugin_vat/mc_velomap.php.txt (and remove .txt ending)

Note – you will have to adapt it with your data. and get a VatAPI.com account. You will need to replace all “velomap” references with your own domain…

It currently sets a drowpdown for several fields to checkout – it should be easy to understand and adapt.

Expect 2-3 hours to get it working! Good luck before midnight…

Well I don’t see why you cannot read here – I’ve just opened a Github Issue referencing here…

Well – actually I can setup a 0.1% rate for some random country where noone lives – e.g. BV.

HOWEVER – s2member is in the case of 0% tax not passing forward those fields!

And even more – if I set up a global taxrate of e.g. 10% – then I get Invalid parameters to Stripe; please contact the site owner.
(everything else equal!).

So there seems to be more s2member Stripe bugs…

(ripping my hair out, impossible how f**cked up Stripe integration is. If I’m in testing mode, accounts get created and so on, but nothing is shown in my Stripe account. So I need to test live. Testing Live I discovered that the Country/City/Postcode Fields are not passed on to Stripe — WFT – even if no tax is charged – the assumption should be to pass on all that info SO that you can later on prove to your tax authorities WHY you did not charge VAT … anyhow I don’t wan’t to use the insufficient s2member for charging VAT but octobat.com – so I need those 3 fields in any case – else Octobat cannot correctly handle neither my Invoice, nor my EU VAT reporting obligations!).

I can probably post my solution tomorrow – sorry for the delay… It will require 2-3 calls to vatapi.com for each sale!

I hope to be able to post code here on Saturday. So far my dev has developed everything except invoicing and old subscribtions.. (working through all old emails) but only got 5 more hours left for doing so…
IP check is currently done via vatapi.com – but I need to get that to a inbuilt solution – as the checks will be too costly (10-20 checks for each checkout, because showing the checkout forms/payment stuff often was the best way to increase conversion rates for me)

As for Stripe payments – I will probably handle them using octobat.com – that’s a full integration needing no work on your own site as it seems no. I just need to test it out a bit more (spend 2 working days figuring out how SSL certs work, which to get for my sites, and then in the end ordering EV certs noticing I need to update some address info on my company registration and so on… time is running out now…).

Got really bugged down – that s2member downloads do not work once I switched my whole site to https:// – will open up another topic for that soon. There seems to be some s2member code not compatible. Users were redirected to payment page if I truly enforced https:// only (strangely it works just fine if people simply enter the https://)

Yes I am – hoping that my dev finishes the main work on Friday…

Oh yeah – I will make the code available for vatapi.com integration (that’s a mid 4 digit figure worth of programming – or at least that’s what I pay for integration).

Well as it stands now – I will use vatapi.com and stick to s2member (for now) – but if anyone tells me a decent way how to switch over to WooCommerce (seems to be more reliable and more used than EDD for now) – then I’m saying goodbye to s2member… S2member was great a couple of years ago, but it simply doesn’t do it anymore and the promised new version will probably never appear.

Hi David, thanks a lot for your answer…

I cannot tell you about the WooCommerce subscriptions add on (yet) – as I put a programmer to work on implementing VAT for s2member for me (well based on vatapi.com – as for s2member there is also no invoicing plugin/support)

Should this fail I will instantly need to pay someone to move all my site to WooCommerce – then I will buy the Subsription plugin and your premium version…

Any news on this, This whole VAT issue is really troubling – especially the need now to send invoices for any transaction!!!

I found vatapi.com – which seems to also allow for paypal (besides Taxamo) and being a lot cheaper than taxamo – so that would be a great solution to implement..

Really troubling finding not much info. If everything goes wrong I will need to move to EDD or WooCommerce – both have plugins to handle the new EU VAT laws…

Well yes – anything that would work for the email backend would be great. But so far nothing works there (at least when I checked couple of years ago – but I don’t think there were any relevant changes).

I dropped Quick Cache (non Pro) after it once really really badly crashed my site on an update. That was only partly Quick Cache problem – but I was just to afraid about it happening again – and switched to W3 Total Cache – which made my site a tiny bit faster compared to Quick Cache. I cannot compare with Quick Cache Pro however.

About other plugins not being compatible with Caching plugins – I haven’t heard so yet. But knowing W3 Total Cache is the most used caching plugin right now – I do hope WooCommerce or EDD do make sure their plugins are compatible with W3TC.
About them being slow in general – I haven’t tried out yet. I have already one insanely slow plugin – qtranslate – but difficult to get rid of it and no good alternatives exist.. At least it plays well with all sort of themes or plugins.

So knowing that, I rather overpay for hosting (meaning 32GB RAM root server with i7 idling along all day – well need about 20TB traffic a month anyhow so shared hosters / hosting platforms won’t like me as customer in any case or overcharge me) than being constrained by slow hosting.

With my server so overpowered – I could actually without much speed problems at all ditch caching anyhow – but prefer to keep it for SEO/W3C compliance.

For Stripe – I also found this solution now: https://quaderno.io/stripe-vat-invoicing/
Well at least that’s easy to implement and not too expensive (though more expensive than buying a plugin of course). They told me they are working on Paypal too – but no ETA yet and not sure if possible. They wrote me back that they are prepared for 1.1.2015 and will change without any interaction needed.

Still to bad – that in my country Stripe is not available yet. (and neither is Amazon Payments – who absolutely dump payment prices in Germany). Amazon Payments would be really my N1° provider if they are properly integrated.

Of just noted that EDD has a sofort.com plugin. So that seals the deal for me if there is any way to get my users from s2member seamless into EDD.

Yes – s2member is terrific value and can do lots of things. But IMHO you better be able to code yourself very well – in order to get missing features. Also no more direct support since they shut down their own forum – and also no offers like pay for 15min support time or similar to help you out properly.

Well and I’m sure they won’t implement the EU VAT regulation – even though they themselves would actually very much need to comply to. S2member does fall under the EU VAT rules. (but yeah – so far no-one knows how the EU cracks down on foreign companies)

It’s just crazy that some really essential features – like renewal reminders – are not part of core – or offered a longer time as a plugin (the plugin is great – but doesn’t exist very long yet).

Also e.g. no buttons where you can have a dropdown with different price for different period. I needed to pay a developer to do that for me
(e.g. 10€ 1year, 20€ 3 years, 30€ years).

And well – like all membership plugins missing sofort.com / Sofortüberweisung as gateway – but that’s a german special so not to be expected somewhere else.

Also no proper tutorial about how to setup paypal express payments for EU non UK users – where Paypal Payments pro is not available. Essentially there is no need to get s2member pro if you live in Germany or Austria.

And lots of config that takes deep knowledge to be done. In essence s2member is great for me – but it’s the little things above that really drive me away.

Oh I know – but it’s too bad. s2member is too cheap simply said – and lifelong licences not a good idea at all. Both EDD and WooCommerce are much more expensive – but they do have support and I guess for WooCommerce there are also some EU VAT solutions readily built?

So maybe my buest guess is to hire someone to port my site to EDD?

I just need to check carefully if EDD can really satisfy my needs. If I pay 400-500 USD/€ a year on licenses – then that’s fine if there are no grave problems as right now with s2member. (for me mainly no resume support on protected downloads served from own server – and no EU VAT handling – plus long time promised new features never to arrive)