Invoicing problem/question about deleting/canelling invoices

[stardotstar]

Hi guys,

 

I have a need with some clients to make adjustments to their monthly package pricing. Often if a client has two packages I will manually remove a setup fee/charge and adjust the monthly recurring amount before I let them see an automatically generated invoice.

 

I have things setup to generate invoices 14 days in advance and billing is always on the 20th of the month - therefore everyone gets invoiced on the 7th of each month.

 

In order to make sure that the amount for a new client is right I have taken to:

1) setting up their client account as normal and letting whmcs send the welcome email to them

2) adding the orders for products ensuring that the generate invoice is not checked

3) going into the prduct and changing the setup cost and monthly recurring amount as well as ensuring that the billing cycle dates are correct.

4) changing their email address to mine and checking all products and generating a test invoice to ensure that totals are correct for the first and recurring invoices

5) deleting the invoice once i have confirmed that it is correct

6) setting their email address back to their correct one so that future invoices are correctly generated.

 

Now I have found that when I do this multiple times I see that the invoice due date skips forward one month every time an invoice is generated and subsequently deleted (as opposed to cancelling it)

 

ie:

setup client and add two products (don't email or generate invoices)

product a $100

product b $100

monthly cycle first payment due 20/04/2010

generate a test invoice (with their email addressed to me so they don't get millions of test invoices)

The invoice is correctly generated and shows a due date of 20/04/2010 for $200 so I am happy

I delete the invoice

I then generate an invoice for the products again and this time I see that the due date is

20/05/2010 not (having deleted the first one due 20/04/2010 but never having received payment for it *and* with the next due date still set to 20/04/2010 in the product page.)

Every time I do a test invoice and then detete it the next one has the due date pushed back a month - as though deleting the invoice has treated it like its paid or waived or something...)

 

I know that doing things by changing the email and "testing" invoices like this is probably not best practice but in the past when I have tried to do the ammendments in advance and let the system generate the invoices on the 7th I have ended up with incorrect totals and what then becomes a process of the client getting lots of invoices every time an adjustment is made to the invoice.

 

I really need to be able to do a test invoice for the next billing cycle so I can confirm that everything is as it should be - usually it is multiple products with options and sometimes discount vouchers so the above example of 100+100 is oversimplistic.

 

I hope I have explained myself ok - looking for advice on how to ensure that my client will get the correct due date on their invoice.

 

So far the way I have managed it is to leave an invoice generated and, rather than delete it and wait for the automatic cycle to kick in I edited the due date and switched the client email back to their genuine one.

 

TIA

Will

[stardotstar]

PS (sorry no edit available to me for above post) I have seen that the warning on deleting invoices does state that recurring amounts for this period will not be reinvoiced so really I guess I am looking for a better way of ensuring that I can get modified invoices right before they get put into the automatic schedule.

 

The way I have decided to do it for now is to test it all out with my email address assigned and then once I have all the figures right I delete the product/service and then start fresh.

[WHMCS John]

If you delete an invoice, you need to move the product's Next Due Date forward by 1 day. Then another invoice will be generated.

[stardotstar]

Thank you John, I will test this out - Thank you!