Hi All,
As we announced over on the blog, today we are launching the new item support policy and the functionality to purchase 6 or 12 months support with your item. This release represents a big milestone in a long journey and we’re thankful to every author and buyer that has contributed to date.
If you notice any bugs or have any questions about the functionality then please let us know here.
Here’s a list of frequently asked questions. Please have a read through these to see if you can find your answer before posting a new question:
Buyers
Updates and bug fixes are included in the cost of ALL items
Regardless of whether you have support or not:
- If and when an author releases an updates, it will be available for all previous buyers to download for free
- You can report bugs
- Authors are expected to keep the item in good working order, working as described and protected against major security issues
Impact on buyers who bought before the new item support policy
As mentioned in the original item support announcement, items sold before September 1st will be treated as follows:
- If the item did not advertise support, nothing changes
- If the item advertised support for less than 6 months, that remains valid
- If the item advertised support for more than 6 months, those items will be supported for 6 months after September 1st
So from September 1st there will still be another 6 months for buyers who have purchased before. After that if there are pre-policy buyers who still want support extended further and if the author agrees, then that can happen too. Buyers who need clarification about their purchase should contact the Envato Help Team.
Authors
Identifying if a buyer has support
Regardless of how you choose to support your customers there will be a way to see if they have valid support:
- if you provide support via a third party system then you can use the
Verify Purchase API to see if the buyer has purchased the item and
whether or not they have valid support; - if you provide support via email then you can use the link the email
to verify the purchase and support; or - if you provide support via
comments then we’ll identify buyers that have purchased and those
with valid support.
Identyifying supported item sales on statements
We split the sales from a supported item sale into two lines (license and bundled support) to reflect what is being bought and to help authors more accurately define and describe their earnings for accounting purposes. Authors will still earn the exact same money from a sale as the would have previously, it is just split over two lines of the statement. For more information please refer to this help centre article.
NOTE: There has been feedback from authors about the difficulty in reading statements because of these changes and we are working on a solution to roll the two line items into one although it may take some time to implement.
Rounding of item sale amounts
The rules for rounding are the same as those used for VAT (i.e. if less then 0.5 round down, if greater than or equal to 0.5 then round up). Because we are splitting a supported item into two (license and support), the author fee and any taxes were being applied separately and therefore rounding can occur twice meaning each sale can be up to 1 cent out (positive or negative).
NOTE: When we combine the line items into one (as mentioned above) this will be less of an issue.
Categories the item support policy applies to
The item support policy applies to all categories on ThemeForest and CodeCanyon except PSD templates, Sketch templates, TypeEngine themes, Mobile, and Edge Animate templates.
j/k