Correct procedure for moving a service from annual to monthly

[brooks]

A common scenario is for a customer to want to change from an annual billing cycle to a monthly billing cycle after we have already billed them (because they forgot to change it prior to their due date). I've put together the following procedures for dealing with that case if we decide to switch to WHMCS. The payment via "mail in payment" method works perfectly but the credit payment via "credit card" doesn't (see step f).

 

Two questions:

 

1. Is there a better way to handle this situation?

 

2. Why won't the system generate a new invoice for an item that has already been invoiced, even if that old invoice has been refunded, or deleted and the next bill date set back to the previous bill date?

 

Payment "mail in payment"

 

a. delete the invoice (generated when you accept the order)

b. set the billing cycle to monthly

c. click the "auto calculate" check box to reset the price

d. set the first amount to the normal amount due for the service

e. open the customer/summary select the service and click "invoice selected items".

 

Payment "credit card"

 

a. refund the billed amount - with authorize.net I have to wait until it clears.

b. set the billing cycle to monthly

c. click the "auto calculate" check box to reset the price

d. set the first amount to the normal amount due for the service

e. reset the next bill date to the previous bill date

f. open the customer/summary select the service and click "invoice selected items".

Wouldn't do it - "zero invoices created".

 

Note: the system seems to have some fail safe mode that causes it to not attempt to create more than 1 invoice for a customer per service per day. So, if an invoice was generated on a specific date for that service it will not generate a new invoice.

[WHMCS John]

That is the correct procedure. However for "mail in payment" step a. I would personally cancel the invoice rather than delete it, as your accountant might not like having missing invoices. And regarding the invoicing, it's not going to invoice the same item for the same date twice, so you would need to set the due date just 1 day later (or earlier) to raise a new one.

[brooks]

Thank you. That's a fairly complex and potentially error prone set of steps just to change a service from annual to monthly. Are there any plans to simplify it?

 

Having to set the next invoice date in the past or future is VERY confusing and causes an incorrect payment receipt to be sent to the customer. For example, this service should have really been billed from 3/16/10 - 4/16/10. Since there's no proration it bills the correct amount, but it still doesn't look correct (to the customer).

 

I can understand the logic of not invoicing the same item for the same date twice which is why for the "mail in payment" process we delete the invoice. Since we never received the payment there's no harm in deleting the invoice and as a result a new invoice is created. I would argue that for a credit card refund it should work the same way. Maybe the invoice gets moved from "tblinvoiceitems" to some other table but I shouldn't have to remember to set the next due date to a different date than the original just to generate a new invoice.

 

VPY - secondsite.com (03/17/2010 - 04/16/2010) $10.00 USD

[sol2010]

I too would love to see a simplified process to alter an account billing cycle as it is a fairly common request and the above steps are quite cumbersome.

[WHMCS John]

This is a pretty old thread to be reviving. As an admin you can now click the "Create Upgrade/Downgrade Order" link to switch the billing cycle and generate the appropriate invoice/credit.

[theWebalyst]

This is a pretty old thread to be reviving. As an admin you can now click the "Create Upgrade/Downgrade Order" link to switch the billing cycle and generate the appropriate invoice/credit.

 

I was just trying this but it doesn't work.

 

How can one do this for the situation where a client was on monthly billing, did not pay their invoice in the due period (so invoice is overdue), and wants to be moved to monthly billing?

 

I want them to be billed from the date the original payment was due, but monthly rather than annually.

 

Thanks,

 

Mark