WHMCS is skipping invoices and next due dates

[snake]

It is now 3+ years on since we originally discovered this issue and reported it to WHMCS support, even done a new installation on a new server, but this problem still exists, and support have been no help whatsoever and simply do not care.

All we ever get from them is "you must disable all addons", which would cripple our system even more or "let us know it next happens", which is just an indefinite delay response that has been dragging on for 3 years already.

I really do not understand this complete refusal to support the use of addons when it is one of WHMCS biggest selling points.

 

some of the issues include:-

Invoices do not get generated at all but the next due date is still updated

Items missing from invoices

Next due dates being updated incorrectly, several months into the future so that invoices get skipped completely

 

All of these issues result in customers not being billed correctly and considerable loss of money, we have already lost thousands due to these issues, and these are only the ones we know about, it could be a lot more.

The problem is that you can easily be unaware of these issues unless a customer tells you they never got invoices for something, or you just happen to notice it by chance, which is the case for us.

 

I would highly recommend everyone to go through all their customers and invoices and make sure this is not happening to you as well without you knowing.

 

But in the mean time, if anyone has any suggestions of how we can detect these issues so that we can deal with them, rather than just losing money ?

Edited April 25, 2015 by snake

[brian!]

It is now 3+ years on since we originally discovered this issue and reported it to WHMCS support, even done a new installation on a new server, but this problem still exists, and support have been no help whatsoever and simply do not care.

I would suspect that they're assuming the issue(s) aren't being caused directly by their software, but by third-party addons interacting with it - they're not responsible for supporting non-WHMCS written addons, so it's possible they may feel they've done as much as is reasonably expected of them.

 

All we ever get from them is "you must disable all addons", which would cripple our system even more or "let us know it next happens", which is just an indefinite delay response that has been dragging on for 3 years already.

but all they're responsible for is their software - and they can't check that if there is other software interacting with it (in unknown ways)... if you could remove the addons, and the problem still occurs, then they may be able to help.

 

I really do not understand this complete refusal to support the use of addons when it is one of WHMCS biggest selling points.

I can.

 

it's not their job to fix/debug third-party addons - if it were, it would be very time-consuming to examine multiple addons, determine their interactions with WHMCS etc.

 

as time is money in this respect, it would increase the total cost of providing support - which we would all end up paying for... and as that's the only thing I have to pay WHMCS for each year, i'd hate to see the support/updates price increase (especially as i've only contacted support about five times in two years!)

 

let me give you an example of possible problems of WHMCS supporting third-party addons... let's say a user has 3rd-party addons installed - the chances are they will be ioncube encoded... so in order for WHMCS support to see how they're interacting with WHMCS, they would either have to obtain the source code from the authors (who would be under no obligation to share) - or decrypt the files themselves.

 

under those circumstances, we would be entering a Twilight Zone of weirdness where WHMCS were effectively accepting payment (via support fees) to decrypt other people's software - whilst, at the same time, enforcing that nobody should decrypt theirs... I can see other potential issues down that road that aren't even worth mentioning!

 

if you could get someone else in to do that, it would probably break the terms of using the addons anyway.

 

even if the addon/hook files weren't encoded, it's really not WHMCS problem - if you've bought an addon from an author, it's their responsibility to support it (if agreed at purchase)... caveat emptor and all that.

 

although, I can appreciate that you'd like WHMCS support to at least take a close look and try to find the problem.

 

some of the issues include:-

Invoices do not get generated at all but the next due date is still updated

Items missing from invoices

Next due dates being updated incorrectly, several months into the future so that invoices get skipped completely

 

All of these issues result in customers not being billed correctly and considerable loss of money, we have already lost thousands due to these issues, and these are only the ones we know about, it could be a lot more.

from what you describe, it sounds like these addons (one or more of them), which you say would cripple your system if removed, are probably the cause of the issue.

 

if this has been going on for 3 years, does that mean the addons were originally written for v5.0 - I would hope they've been updated since then!

 

are there any addons that specifically change/generate invoices or dates? that's where i'd investigate first.

 

I can't recall any threads where WHMCS was off it's own back missing invoice items, incorrectly changing dates etc - it sounds like a badly-written (or not updated) addon module to me.

 

if it were me, i'd get to the bottom of this before considering moving to v6 - if it's an addon issue, it's very unlikely that v6 will solve it - probably the opposite... that might mean going back to the authors and asking them about your issues.

 

The problem is that you can easily be unaware of these issues unless a customer tells you they never got invoices for something, or you just happen to notice it by chance, which is the case for us.

do you bcc invoices to yourself?

do you have a widget in the admin area showing forthcoming renewals? though as something is messing with your invoicing dates, this would be of limited use!

 

But in the mean time, if anyone has any suggestions of how we can detect these issues so that we can deal with them, rather than just losing money ?

we use an excel spreadsheet as backup for our renewals - so at any time, we have an non-WHMCS reliable resource we can check against... we've had that for years (from before the billing software we used before WHCMS), but I guess would be difficult to setup from scratch.

 

have you considered getting a developer license; copying your database across; disabling the email on the server; not installing any non-WHMCS addons and letting the cron run as usual? that might give you a duplicate setup to see if any issues are being caused by whmcs directly rather than by the addons.

 

I wish you well in locating the source of the problem.

[othellotech]

Invoices do not get generated at all but the next due date is still updated

Items missing from invoices

Next due dates being updated incorrectly, several months into the future so that invoices get skipped completely

All of those are normally caused by you deleting invoices - check your whmcs logs

[snake]

All of those are normally caused by you deleting invoices - check your whmcs logs

Our billing is handled by one person and I can assure you 100% that she has not been going into WHMCS and secretly deleting invoices for the last 3 years just for fun.

 

 

I would suspect that they're assuming the issue(s) aren't being caused directly by their software, but by third-party addons interacting with it - they're not responsible for supporting non-WHMCS written addons, so it's possible they may feel they've done as much as is reasonably expected of them.

 

This may be true, but then if they do not support the use of addons at all on any WHMCS installation (which they don't) , they need to stop using it as a selling point and stop telling people to use addons to solve problems only to then tell them "sorry now that you have used the addons we told you to use, we now wont give you support", and need to make it very very clear to anyone even thinking of using WHMCS that they will not provide any support to anyone using addons. Addons are a core part of WHMCS and it just a cop out to avoid providing support to anyone using them.

It is like Microsoft saying "we won't support windows if you actually install and software on it".

 

Many people actually rely on many of these addons to run their business, and without them WHMCS is almost useless to them and disabling them for an undetermined amount of time would put them out of business.

 

Or the common sense solution, have a certified addon program, so that these addons will be certified for use with WHMCS and their use WILL be supported.

 

But this is moot as we were not using these addons we use now when the issue originally started and it was not stated as an issue back then.

 

but all they're responsible for is their software - and they can't check that if there is other software interacting with it (in unknown ways)... if you could remove the addons, and the problem still occurs, then they may be able to help.

As I pointed out above, may people rely on addons to run their business as these features do not exist in WHMCS otherwise, removing these addons permanently would effectively ruin their business. In our case for example say the "WebsitePanel Addon", turning this off would mean customers can no longer sign up for hosting as there would be no provisioning module, so we would get no new customers, and exisitng customers would lose all functionality from the WHMCS side.

The same would be true of any provisioning module, this is required and relied on to have an operating hosting business, and it cannot simply be turned off indefinitely.

 

it's not their job to fix/debug third-party addons - if it were, it would be very time-consuming to examine multiple addons, determine their interactions with WHMCS etc.

I never said it was, but it is their job to support their own software and its features, you cannot just say "if you use this feature of our software, which we actively encourage people to use, we will not help you anymore as we don;t actually support the use of this feature". If an addon is causing a problem, then they should be able to identify that addon so you can at least contact the vendor.

It is like Microsoft or Apple saying "we won't support our OS if you actually install and software on it".

 

It would help if you could at least get some premium paid support for WHMCS, but you cannot or even reach anyone on the phone, because their entire team seems to be contractors working from home, and thus don't really care about the product or the customers. Some of the contractors I have noticed also have other full time jobs, so just do the WHMCS support on the side, so it obviously doesn't even take priority.

 

 

do you bcc invoices to yourself?

do you have a widget in the admin area showing forthcoming renewals? though as something is messing with your invoicing dates, this would be of limited use!

 

Our billing dept gets copies of PAID invoices, but this would not help. Trying to use this as a solution would require knowing in advance every single invoice you are going to receive and what is on them, so that you would know if one did not arrive or if it had items missing. this would require incredible memory skills that normal folks simple do not have.

and relying on forthcoming renewals would not help where WHMCS says it has sent an invoice but hasn't, or has set the next due date incorrectly.

 

 

When we oriignally started using WHMCS, we were migrating from another system, so were just using for basic billing of non integrated services and did not have any of the addons we have now, and the problem was occuring even then.

[merlinpa1969]

Or the common sense solution, have a certified addon program, so that these addons will be certified for use with WHMCS and their use WILL be supported.

and then WHMCS and cpanel are on the hook with liability

 

Move a copy into a dev environment, with a duplicate DB turn OFF the Mods and let the devs troubleshoot it there,

See Best of both worlds

[brian!]

This may be true, but then if they do not support the use of addons at all on any WHMCS installation (which they don't) , they need to stop using it as a selling point and stop telling people to use addons to solve problems only to then tell them "sorry now that you have used the addons we told you to use, we now wont give you support", and need to make it very very clear to anyone even thinking of using WHMCS that they will not provide any support to anyone using addons. Addons are a core part of WHMCS and it just a cop out to avoid providing support to anyone using them.

they do say that on the front page of the App Store - granted it's in small print, but these things always nearly are...

 

https://www.whmcs.com/appstore

 

Disclaimer: The addons available here are provided by third party developers. WHMCS has not vetted the code in any of the addons listed here, and cannot be held responsible for any problems resulting from the use of them. We are also unable to provide support for any issues with third party code.

now, whether people get to the addons via the appstore is another story...

 

the same thing used to occur here in the forum - there was a brief time (probably a month or two) where whenever someone posted any code, one of the support guys would often chip in and say that WHMCS doesn't support such code and to use at your own risk.

 

that's what they are effectively saying about third-party addons - yes they can be added to WHMCS, but you do so at your own risk.

 

It is like Microsoft saying "we won't support windows if you actually install any software on it".

I was trying to avoid using such analogies yesterday - they very rarely work.

 

I don't think i've ever used MS support, but if I had an issue with PhotoShop (effectively an addon to Windows), Microsoft wouldn't help me - i'd have to go to Adobe... it sounds like WHMCS support are saying the same... the issue is not with Windows, it's with PhotoShop... in other words, it's the addons, not WHMCS.

 

note to self: this is a weird thread in which I feel i'm defending WHMCS - a very uncomfortable position to be in!

 

Or the common sense solution, have a certified addon program, so that these addons will be certified for use with WHMCS and their use WILL be supported.

i'm not sure if that would be a good solution - at the very least, it would increase the price of the addons... and support by the people who wrote the code should be better than from someone else.

 

if WHMCS have people who could solve these issues, i'd much prefer they be employed working on improving WHMCS code, getting through the backlog of feature requests etc rather than supporting 3rd-party addons.

 

if the glorious day arrives when WHMCS has less bugs, no security flaws, and you can see feature requests being suggested and implemented on a regular basis - then, and only then, should they consider expanding the support in this direction.

 

But this is moot as we were not using these addons we use now when the issue originally started and it was not stated as an issue back then.

interesting... so perhaps originally a bug within v5 - in my opinion, that would have been WHMCS responsibility to look into.

 

As I pointed out above, may people rely on addons to run their business as these features do not exist in WHMCS otherwise, removing these addons permanently would effectively ruin their business. In our case for example say the "WebsitePanel Addon", turning this off would mean customers can no longer sign up for hosting as there would be no provisioning module, so we would get no new customers, and exisitng customers would lose all functionality from the WHMCS side.

The same would be true of any provisioning module, this is required and relied on to have an operating hosting business, and it cannot simply be turned off indefinitely.

forgive me, but when you said support told you to disable all addons, I had assumed they meant just 3rd-party addons - that might be a logical step...

 

if they really meant all addons, including those written by WHMCS themselves, then that would be ridiculous.

 

I never said it was, but it is their job to support their own software and its features, you cannot just say "if you use this feature of our software, which we actively encourage people to use, we will not help you anymore as we don;t actually support the use of this feature". If an addon is causing a problem, then they should be able to identify that addon so you can at least contact the vendor.

but then we get back to them needing to see the source code of the addons...

 

It would help if you could at least get some premium paid support for WHMCS, but you cannot or even reach anyone on the phone, because their entire team seems to be contractors working from home, and thus don't really care about the product or the customers. Some of the contractors I have noticed also have other full time jobs, so just do the WHMCS support on the side, so it obviously doesn't even take priority.

some (most?) of them work for cPanel too - how their time is divided between the two, I don't know.

[Alex - Arvixe]

You state you have done a new installation, did you take the time to test it before installing any modules?

 

It might be worth setting up a test environment, testing the functionality and installing your customizations one-by-one and see if any break functionality within WHMCS as you describe. If it does, you will know exactly which mod is the cause of this.

[snake]

You state you have done a new installation, did you take the time to test it before installing any modules?

 

It might be worth setting up a test environment, testing the functionality and installing your customizations one-by-one and see if any break functionality within WHMCS as you describe. If it does, you will know exactly which mod is the cause of this.

 

Consider that this issue is completely random and there can be months between occurrences, your testing procedure doesn't really make any sense and would give completely false results and give the false impression that everything is working when it is not.

If it was as simple as you imply , then the issue would have solved long ago.

[snake]

I was trying to avoid using such analogies yesterday - they very rarely work.

 

I don't think i've ever used MS support, but if I had an issue with PhotoShop (effectively an addon to Windows), Microsoft wouldn't help me - i'd have to go to Adobe... it sounds like WHMCS support are saying the same... the issue is not with Windows, it's with PhotoShop... in other words, it's the addons, not WHMCS.

 

I am not sure how this applies in any fashion to my situation as I am not asking for support with any 3rd party software or addon and have not stated at any point that I am. Generating invoices is functionality built into WHMCS and it does this right out of the box, I cannot imagine a billing system being very useful if it did not do this.

My analogy was valid in relation to my situation and I would of course not expect Microsot to provide support for Photoshop either.

 

i'm not sure if that would be a good solution - at the very least, it would increase the price of the addons... and support by the people who wrote the code should be better than from someone else.

 

I would rather pay more for something that is officially supported. But your not getting the meaning of "supported" in this context. This does not mean that WHMCS themselves provide the support for the addon, simply that they support the use of it.

Just as Microsoft support the use of certified drivers and software, but that doesn't mean you can call them and ask them for support with it, but if you are having a general problem they will identify the cause for you. The same is true of other products with support addons or plugins, you still have to contact the original vendor to get support with the plugin after it has been identified as the cause.

 

but then we get back to them needing to see the source code of the addons...

If that is the case then then there is clearly a problem with the way that plugin architecture works as that should not be required to see the processing order and determine the source of an error.

Any decent debugging process will show code execution order and show which object/plugin caused a problem.

 

some (most?) of them work for cPanel too - how their time is divided between the two, I don't know.

That is even worse than I thought then, it means some of them are holding down a full time job, as well as running a hosting business, and working for WHMCS and cPanel as well on the side. No wonder the support is often so poor.

[brian!]

I am not sure how this applies in any fashion to my situation as I am not asking for support with any 3rd party software or addon and have not stated at any point that I am.

my apologies - your original post mentioned disabling addons and how doing so would affect your business badly.

 

I think we've been talking at cross-purposes and i've been confused by your use of the word "addon" - I would consider anything shipped with WHMCS, which doesn't have to be activated, as integral to the package as a whole.. in other words, it's not an addon.

 

so if you're using WebsitePanel included with WHMCS and its causing an issue, that would be down to WHMCS to solve in my opinion... but if you're using WebsitePanel's own module, that would be a 3rd-party addon, and for them to fix not WHMCS.

 

I understand your points though - I just think that WHMCS are not going to do what you want them to do on this.

 

I hope you manage to find a solution to your issues.

[WHMCS John]

Hi,

I'd like to clarify a few points if I may.

 

* We do support all the modules (provisioning, registrar, payment and addon) included with the WHMCS distro, as well as the paid addons available from http://whmcs.com/addons/

At no point in the support ticket has the client been advised to remove these, just the third-party after-market mods/addons. As we don't have the source code for these modules, we cannot see how they operate or how they may be affecting the core code. Even an addon designed to do something completely unrelated to billing could be malfunctioning and causing the problems described here.

 

 

* All WHMCS technical analysts are full-time employees working for WHMCS. Some are based in our office in Houston (come join us: http://s87.eu/3490) and some telework - marvellous thing the internet.

Staff may have their own hobbies and interests in the website/hosting arena which they pursue in their own time, which is why we're passionate and knowledgeable about our product. But I don't see how that could impede an analyst's ability to troubleshoot a problem.

 

I hope that clears up any confusion.

[snake]

my apologies - your original post mentioned disabling addons and how doing so would affect your business badly.

 

I think we've been talking at cross-purposes and i've been confused by your use of the word "addon" - I would consider anything shipped with WHMCS, which doesn't have to be activated, as integral to the package as a whole.. in other words, it's not an addon.

 

so if you're using WebsitePanel included with WHMCS and its causing an issue, that would be down to WHMCS to solve in my opinion... but if you're using WebsitePanel's own module, that would be a 3rd-party addon, and for them to fix not WHMCS.

 

I understand your points though - I just think that WHMCS are not going to do what you want them to do on this.

 

 

I simply use WebsitePanel as an example because that is one we use. The one that comes with WHMCS is very outdated and is for an old version of WebsitePanel, so you have to replace it with a new version, there is no choice.

But as a hosting provider in general, if you provide somehting WHMCS do not support out of the box, then you have no choice but to use a 3rd party plugin, whether it is for a control panel, a cloud platform or whatever.

Disabling that plugin for an undetermined amount of time would break your business.

 

I will also give Kayako as another example of a company that does it right. Their helpdesk product supports plugins, and if you have a problem, they will pro-actively provide you with support regardless, and if the issue is caused by a plugin, they will identify it and tell you which plugin is causing the problem.

They wont say "I see you use plugins, so you must disable them all before we can help".

[snake]

* All WHMCS technical analysts are full-time employees working for WHMCS.

 

I know several people who work on your support desk who do run/work for other companies at the same time. Logic dictates you cannot be working full time for one company if you are also working for/running another company at the same time during business hours. This is one of the problems with teleworking, you have no idea what people are really doing with their time.

[wintech2003]

Hi @snake,

 

For the particular products you experience these issues for, please check out (using phpMyAdmin for example) the 'tblhosting' table, and more specifically the 'nextduedate' and 'nextinvoicedate' columns.

 

When an invoice is issued but has not been paid yet, the nextinvoicedate column gets updated with the date the *next* invoice should be issued on, but the nextduedate column will not get updated until the invoice is marked as paid.

Consequently, if you cancel/delete an unpaid invoice, and then try to reissue a new invoice for the same product, it will fail (giving you a '0 invoices created') because nextinvoicedate will already be updated. This is why the you either have to change the due date (which will affect both columns afaik) or go into your WHMCS database via phpMyAdmin for example, and set nextduedate and nextinvoicedate to the same date.

 

Regardless, this shouldn't be considered an issue - it's just how it works. Maybe WHMCS could revert the previous value to nextinvoicedate whenever an invoice is deleted/cancelled, but this can be tricky since a single invoice can hold multiple items from different products etc.

[snake]

Hi @snake,

 

For the particular products you experience these issues for, please check out (using phpMyAdmin for example) the 'tblhosting' table, and more specifically the 'nextduedate' and 'nextinvoicedate' columns.

 

When an invoice is issued but has not been paid yet, the nextinvoicedate column gets updated with the date the *next* invoice should be issued on, but the nextduedate column will not get updated until the invoice is marked as paid.

Consequently, if you cancel/delete an unpaid invoice, and then try to reissue a new invoice for the same product, it will fail (giving you a '0 invoices created') because nextinvoicedate will already be updated. This is why the you either have to change the due date (which will affect both columns afaik) or go into your WHMCS database via phpMyAdmin for example, and set nextduedate and nextinvoicedate to the same date.

 

Regardless, this shouldn't be considered an issue - it's just how it works. Maybe WHMCS could revert the previous value to nextinvoicedate whenever an invoice is deleted/cancelled, but this can be tricky since a single invoice can hold multiple items from different products etc.

 

NOBODY is cancelling or deleting these invoices, there would be no reason for anyone to do this as these are recurring invoices that are supposed to be paid each month and it would show up in the logs if this was done. Customers do not have the ability to cancel or delete their own invoices, so if this is the cause then WHMCS is doing it all by itself, and I certainly would consider that to be an issue even if you don't.

[merlinpa1969]

Snake, it sounds Like you have Issues that are not related to WHMCS, either staff, insecure server or some third party mod thats going haywire,

you going on and on and on about it being whmcs but there have been NO other issues of this kind reported,

[snake]

Snake, it sounds Like you have Issues that are not related to WHMCS, either staff, insecure server or some third party mod thats going haywire,

you going on and on and on about it being whmcs but there have been NO other issues of this kind reported,

 

I am not going on and on at all, I am responding to other people's responses, that is how forums work.

someone posts a question.

someone answers that question.

the op then responds to that.

so on and so forth.

discussion lists also work the same way.

 

There is no issue with staff or security, both are locked down very very well, only 2 people (1 of which is me) have access to invoices, and the whmcs admin is not publically accessible at all.

The big point you have failed to take on board to is that this issue is very easy to miss. How would you know an invoice did not get generated or an item was missing from an invoice unless the customer told you ?

We are lucky that we had some honest customers who told us, and then on investigation found other occurrences that had not been reported or noticed. For a large company with a lot of customers this issue could pretty go unnoticed for years.

 

You cannot report something you do not know about, basic common sense.

But I am interested to know how you know that no-one else has reported such an issue, I take it you work for WHMCS as well and have direct access to all their support tickets, which you search thoroughly before making that statement ?

[blakeh]

Could it be that the cron job is not finishing? We've found instances where invoices never got generated, and basically what we tracked down is that the nightly cron job was never finishing. It would bomb or crash. Not sure how we finally figured it out, but the nightly cron was the issue. Logging for it wasn't that great either.

[snake]

Could it be that the cron job is not finishing? We've found instances where invoices never got generated, and basically what we tracked down is that the nightly cron job was never finishing. It would bomb or crash. Not sure how we finally figured it out, but the nightly cron was the issue. Logging for it wasn't that great either.

 

I guess that is a possibility, I believe the logs to state when the cron starts and finsishes, so I will check that.

But I would have thought if that was the case then it would happen to a lot more customers.

So if customer 51 had a missing invoice then I would expect 52 onwards to have them misisng also if the cron had bombed. But it really is quite random, although is does seem to recur with the same clients.

There is also the fact that the next due gets updated, which is not even meant to happen till after the invoice is paid.

[Chrisw]

I've ran in to many cases where a plugin/addon/hooks (all custom and confirmed) to cause a problem with the WHMCS cron finishing - killing it. This is where the "modular" in WHMCS lacks, and I believe this is what WHMCS support has been telling you. In the end you need to debug what you can, or consider other options if you can't do it yourself. One process vs sub processes is what WHMCS lacks - in this regards, if it is your issue.