Unnecessary account suspension

[slim]

Today, when my normal daily cron ran, WHMCS suspended a clients account for being overdue.

 

I checked his invoices - he has infact paid his invoices early, via paypal (as he normally does)

 

Date of Suspension: 15 - Dec - 2013

Last invoice date: 24 - Nov - 2013

Due date: 1 - Dec 2013

PAID DATE: 25 - NOV 2013 - Paypal

 

Here is the payment info:

 

25/11/2013 PayPal 4SS9274XXXXXX5 $16.95AUD $0.00AUD

 

The only odd thing I can see is that it doesnt list the paypal transaction fee.. But other than that, the invoice is 100% paid, and has been since the 25th.

 

Why on earth would WHMCS suspend this account today? VERY CONCERNED!!! What if tomorrow it decides to suspend other accounts?

[slim]

No one ever seen this?

[atcynthia]

Did the account have a cancellation pending (e.g. the auto-terminate was checked)?

 

We are an ISP and have been dealing with issues with suspend and 'auto-terminate' combined as follows:

 

We sometimes need to put a customer on ‘vacation hold’. In the ISP world we call these suspends. Well we ran into trouble with suspending accounts because it does not stop billing and it causes late notices and suspend for non-payment emails to be sent.

 

I am thinking the solution is to use the 'auto-terminate'. This stops the billing from cycling, leaves the account in 'open cancellations' and the service active. The problem is the automated suspend. Oddly, WHMCS will suspend the service at the selected automation time period and send a suspend email even when an account has a zero balance. The only solution to this that I can see is to do the following:

 

- Set the account to 'auto-terminate' at the end of the cycle with the reason 'vacation hold' & thus preventing future invoicing.

- Disable the account from receiving late notices in profile.

 

These accounts will appear in 'open cancellations' where we can monitor them.

 

When the client wants to reactivate:

- remove the auto-terminate

- set the next billing date to the appropriate date to start new invoicing

- remove the disabled late notices in the profile

 

I'm still exploring this issue and hope this will work. I don't think it will be much good for us once we get into scripting service activations, suspensions (what we consider vacation hold) and terminations.

[WHMCS John]

Hi,

What's the client's Next Due Date? If it's a date in the past this will be why the account was suspended.

 

As for why the date is in the past, please post the Utilities > Logs > Activity Log entries at the time the renewal invoice was paid for us to review.

[Lemni]

I canceled an invoice for a customer, as a courtesy, and had this problem. Although the next months invoice generated and was paid, it didn't add two months of service to the due date. This eventually resulted in an automatic suspension of a good customer. Better policy is to add a credit and then apply their credit to the invoice, despite a lot of extra work.

 

 

Hi,

What's the client's Next Due Date? If it's a date in the past this will be why the account was suspended.

 

As for why the date is in the past, please post the Utilities > Logs > Activity Log entries at the time the renewal invoice was paid for us to review.

[Kian]

I canceled an invoice for a customer, as a courtesy, and had this problem. Although the next months invoice generated and was paid, it didn't add two months of service to the due date. This eventually resulted in an automatic suspension of a good customer. Better policy is to add a credit and then apply their credit to the invoice, despite a lot of extra work.

You did a mistake. Let me try to explain with an example.

 

1. Bruce Lee orders an hosting account on 01/01/2014 with monthly billing cycle and he pays it. Next due date is now 01/02/2013 and you go to sleep
   
2. You wake up on 25/06/2014 and you notice that Bruce is regularly paying invoices so you decide to give him one month free
   
3. You delete the pending invoice and here's the problem. In fact by doing this WHMCS will suspend his service on 02/07/2014. Why? Next due date is still set to 01/06/2014. It doesn't matter that you have manually deleted the invoice of june because for WHMCS there's still next due date set to 01/06/2014
   

 

So what's the right way to "skip" june? First delete the invoice even if it's not relevant. You could also leave it unpaid and tell to Bruce "Hey men you can ingnore the invoice of june" or set it as cancelled. It's important that you update next to date from 01/06/2014 to 01/07/2014. In this way the service can't be suspended before 01/07/2014. It can be suspended on 02/07/2014 only if Bruce doesn't pay the invoice of july.

Edited January 10, 2014 by Kian

[Si]

I just had a customer's hosting account suspended for being overdue on payment. Dates were correct on the invoice.

The invoice raised was paid automatically from the credit balance in the customer's account the moment it was raised. But two weeks later (14 days, as per my cron setup), the hosting account was suspended with 'Overdue on Payment' listed as the reason.

 

There was no manual involvement in this, but when I read this thread and looked at the next due date on the account, it had not moved to 2015 (it's annual). So the issue here is that the date did not advance when the credit was applied to the invoice.

 

Is that a bug or a one-off?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Further investigation shows, this was not a renewal invoice, but a new order invoice. Customer's credit paid the invoice when the order was raised, but did not advance the renewal date. Bug?

Edited October 27, 2014 by Si

[Kian]

If they order a new service instead of paying the renewal invoice is obvious that their service will be suspended. I mean if I have to renew "apple" paying its related renewal invoice but I order "pears" of course I didn't renew "apple".

[Si]

apple never existed before they ordered the pears. (Come to think of it, I'm not really sure what it is you're saying in riddles there) - but to clarify. They ordered a brand new service with a new domain that was unrelated to any other service.

[WHMCS John]

Hi,

What entries do you see under Utilities > Logs > Activity Log at around the time of ordering and payment please?