BuffaloWeb Posted July 16, 2010 Share Posted July 16, 2010 (edited) Sorry, but my experiences to date in converting from ModernBill to WHMCS have been very disappointing. MODERNBILL REFUGEES BE FOREWARNED - as WHMCS does not currently do a very good job of advising you of this: The import script failed to take into account any product or service that had a "quantity", so if you previously sold ty of 7 of a $100 item, WHMCS does not calculate the recurring bill as $700, it calculates it as $100. Qty is a standard field in ModernBill, and you guys should update your import script to take that into account. The import script also does not play nice with one-time charges. It reads the standard ModernBill renew date for this type of product ("n/a") and seems to set it to 12/31/1969. If I have it right, this is what then causes WHMCS to re-bill EVERY SINGLE ONE-TIME CHARGE ON YOUR FIRST RUN!!! Have fun explaining to thousands of customers why... Also, I have found the support ticket queuing practices to be annoying. DO NOT EVER add more info to a ticket, as WHMCS sends you back to the bottom of the queue. After our new WHMCS system overbilled *hundreds of thousands of dollars* because of the one-time billing snafu above, it took us a long time to hear back with an answer. Per WHMCS, the delay was because we unknowingly were pushing this high priority ticket down in the queue every time we added info to the ticket. As I'm sure you can imagine if you've ever been there - in a crisis, you come across increasingly better information as time goes on, and you have the choice to either share the info with your support staff, or sit back and wait until they ask. If you choose the first, you blow your queue position. So, my feedback as a new customer is simple: if someone enters a high priority ticket, treat it as such. This was an issue with real dollars behind it, and you left me to hang because of a very ill-advised policy. Hopefully, this serves as advice for other ModernBill refugees regarding what specific problems to look for in converted data, and serves as an opportunity for WHMCS to prove that they listen, hear, and react positively based on what their customers are saying. PS - And by the way, please do not take this as a slam against WHMCS. It is OBVIOUS TO ME that this is truly wonderful software, and I can see that it will make things a LOT easier than ModernBill ever could have. It is ONLY the getting started part (and the support system) that I would like to see improved! Edited July 16, 2010 by BuffaloWeb 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GORF Posted July 17, 2010 Share Posted July 17, 2010 Why would you have gone live with *hundreds of thousands of dollars* of billing on the line without testing first? Backup the WHMCS database, TURN OFF EMAIL, test and look at the results. If the results are not up to par, restore the database or repair the imported data. (No one's fault but your own.) If High Priority tickets get pushed to the top, then everyone would simply submit tickets that way. There is no easy solution to that one. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mylove4life Posted July 17, 2010 Share Posted July 17, 2010 I agree... should have tested more before doing anything.... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuffaloWeb Posted July 17, 2010 Author Share Posted July 17, 2010 right... well, the point of my feedback is that there are improvements that could and should be made to the ModernBill import scripts. They are simple changes to make, and would eliminate the chance of these particular problems occuring in the future. Specifically, the import script needs to properly account for quantities in client packages (which is a standard feature in ModernBill and very commonly used); and properly convert ModernBill's "n/a" to "00-00-0000" in one-time packages. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MediaPlayStudios Posted July 18, 2010 Share Posted July 18, 2010 I also agree... you should have tested more before doing anything.... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuffaloWeb Posted July 20, 2010 Author Share Posted July 20, 2010 really - enough with the armchair quarterbacking. Get over it and find something else to do.... The feedback suggests improvement to the import scripts. "More testing" would not have meant that the script doesn't need improvements. It would have saved me some aggravation, but I'd still be asking that WHMCS make improvements for future users. WHMCS - you already suggested code to convert the one-time dates correctly (in my support ticket). Why not use that in the import script in the first place? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuffaloWeb Posted August 4, 2010 Author Share Posted August 4, 2010 Another bugaboo - it looks like many past invoices got imported and marked as paid via paypal when in fact they were paid via credit card for example. I think it has to do with whichever payment method was used for the last paid invoice? or what the client's default billing method was? I'm not sure, but this part of the import script may need some work also. (I suppose it may be more important to some folks to have the imported history reflect payment method accurately). FWIW, if anyone out there is still using ModernBill and is considering a switch to WHMCS, I HIGHLY recommend it. The benefits, ease of use, etc. compared to MBill are amazing. Admittedly, it IS a big change, and so far we have found a few glitches in the import script that IMO should really be fixed. But once we got past the conversion issues (which the staff here have been very helpful with), there is no doubt that we are happy as heck that we made the switch... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
webfreakeric Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 I see what you mean by adding more info to the tickets... I've had a Modernbill CC conversion ticket in the WHMCS support queue for days, it takes them 24 + hours to get back to me just to ask more info. Meanwhile, we have 2000+ clients in our system without credit card info, we can't run our cronjobs, we can't allow customers to login and make the change. WHMCS support is turtle slow, and you may have answered my questions on why.. We're a multi-million dollar hosting company ON HOLD until they get back to us for a service we paid for. Kind of disheartening. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laszlof Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 I did this same migration a few years ago for a hosting company I worked for. We planned ahead and scheduled a time with WHMCS support to do the CC conversion. We were able to bring down modernbill after its cron run, and have WHMCS up and running within 2 hours. This is with over 30K clients and all associated credit card data. While I can understand your frustration on the support response times, you have to remember that each of their clients is treated relatively equal. They likely have a number of tickets to handle in front of yours which is why the slow response. A bit of pre-planning ahead of time may have saved some of the problems you're having. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
webfreakeric Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 Yes, I agree this was my fault on the scheduling. I'm thankful for the info on how the ticket system works. I'm gonna wait in queue and not bump the tickets thanks to this post. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tripler Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 (edited) I am not trying to be arrogant here but the first rule of thumb is dev environment > live environment. It sounds like you have a nice customer base so maybe its time to hire a good dev that would probably have saved your temporary insanity. Also, you got to incorporate ad redevelop the back end and front end of whmcs into your existing site, removing the old cms.. this is the same time you have someone else working on dev migration. BTW.. its not a bad thing to tell your clients about a system change. PR Spin blablah we have blahblah developed a new more efficient platform so that we may provide you with better support and control over your services. % date we will be down for % time and will be working non stop in case any problems occur. then email this out and a reminder email closer to the live date. Is this you? http://www.buffaloweb.com/ I seriously hope not... talk about a bad user experience Edited February 15, 2012 by tripler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcncnc Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 I'm just getting ready to switch from MB to WHMCS soon. I'm just curious if anyone from WHMCS can respond to this ticket and let me know if these guys suggestions have since been incorporated into the update script? And by the way, I agree with him, it's good he brought this up. It doesn't matter if he should have, would have or could have planned better. These are problems that need to be addressed. I'm hoping since two years have passed that they have been. And I'm very thankful for the heads up before I did anything! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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