Monthly Renewing Product Purchase? Will it float?

My pre-sales question is this:

A Client has a virtuemart/Joomla 1.5.X site. We would like to implement a consumable product sale that renews monthly.

(All products and prices are fictional from this point on)

Here is the senario:
An end-user signs up for the Cheese Of The Month Club. Each month they are charged $35.00 to receive a block of cheeze that they have selected. Some clients might select cheddar, some gouda, some munster. We do not want to charge them $105 for three months, we would like to charge $35 every month until they cancel their membership.

So will that float?

Additionally, are there ways to link it to VirtueMart so it does the following:
1) Create a new order every month so that we know to ship
2) Create a membership from a product?

Or am I not understanding how this product works?

Thanks in advance for your help in this matter.

Maybe I don't understand the question. Are you wanting them to sign up for 3 month blocks, but be charged monthly? Or are you wanting them to sign up just a month at a time? CBSubs does both.

I can't answer the question regarding Virtuemart. CBSubs can handle it's own sales, so it doesn't need Virtuemart to handle the selling of the merchandise. Unless you just prefer Virtuemart, there's no reason to even use it.

There may be a plugin to link it to Virtuemart, though. Could check the plugin directory, or I guess someone who is more familiar with Virtuemart can clarify this point.

Well, you do understand the question better than I do I think.

I don't really care if VirtueMart is involved or not I guess. It's just that I am selling cheese here. I need to be able to have some kind of process for shipping all the cheese at the appropriate time.

For example: Someone signs up for the cheese of the month club in March. They order cheddar. In April, how do I know to ship a monthly supply of cheddar to the user?

Am I reminded by the software somehow?

Also, lets say they are chjarged monthly. Can that run indefinitely until the user cancels? Can the service expire in a year reminding the user to renew?

Questions, questions.

Thanks for taking the time to answer me, are u an admin around here or just a helpful user?

Neither, actually. My response to you is, I think, the first post I ever made in response to a question. But I enjoy being helpful. I'm not nearly cool enough to be a dev or an admin.

If it were me, personally, I'd abandon Virtuemart. It's a great product, but I think unnecessary for what you're trying to do.

I'm still trying to grasp the whole "how do I know" thing. Whether they run indefinitely, yes. You set it up so the software knows when it expires, when to notify them, when to know to cancel, et cetera. The only thing I'm not totally sure about is that it sends you notification.

I think what would need to happen is that the customer would need to change the subscription type. If the entire purpose would be just to order cheese, I don't think a monthly subscription would be the best way to go. I think this would depend on other features of the site. If it's JUST the cheese, I don't think there'd need to be a subscription at all.

Let's take your example. The software is going to tell them their subscription is going to expire. You can set it up so it tells them that it's going to expire and they need to pick another cheese or keep the same one, but they need to pick a cheese regardless. It'll notify you, I think, that they placed another subscription order. (If not, it should.) You can ship out the right stuff.

I think this entire thing depends on what other benefits you offer. If you don't offer a "How can you use cheese rind" discussion, I think you'd just set it up as a standard merchandise purchase. If you have forums, newsletters, whatever... You'd just set up as a subscription thing.

One of the things that I like about this software is the flexibility. There are a lot of things you can do with it. I'd be happy to discuss this in more detail if I'm still not getting my point across... Which I don't think I am. But I don't think you need Virtuemart. I think CBSubs is all you need.

Oh and if you set it up to bill monthly, it's going to remind them monthly. If you set it up as a merchandise thing, it's not. If you want to set up a one-year subscription, but bill monthly, it can do that also.

When you set up the subscription, you can tell it "Expire after this many periods... or not." If you tell it "or not" it's going to bill until they cancel.

So forget the cheese. Maybe that was not the best analogy.

Let's call it the shampoo of the month club. It's mundane and a consumable that people need. All the better if it is delivered monthly. We already run a VirtueMart store, so that is why I am hung up on VirtueMart. It's nice because that's where all my sales reports come from, and that's where orders come from. If an order is placed, VirtueMart generates a bunch of stuff to pass to the boys in the back so they can ship. Order a three pack of product x? Well an order is generated that gets passed to shipping. They put the thing in a box and ship it.

So you are saying forget VirtueMart for this venture. I get that. I just don't want to make people mad by not shipping their monthly order, but still charging them. Seems to me that would make me mad....!

So you have managed to answer every bit of this besides the order bit. I appreciate that.