Invoicing in two languages / creating two invoices

[Vix]

Hello,

We will use WHMCS as the billing platform for a new project.

I need a little help with invoicing, since I could not find an answer to my question.

 

We are a business registered in Bulgaria but we will sell mostly to customers from the USA.

Since in Bulgaria the law requires all invoices to be in Bulgarian, we basically have to find a way to do one of the following:

1. Create bilingual invoices which would look ridiculous and contain information in both Bulgarian and English, so we don't really want to do this unless we have no other choice.

2. Create two invoices for the same sale, one in Bulgarian and one in English, and only send the English invoice to the customer.

 

The second option is the one we are after. I am trying to figure out if I could prepare two templates and trigger the creation of two invoices in two languages, so we can use the Bulgarian one for our accounting needs. If that is possible, we will then only need to program the Bulgarian template to convert USD to BGN according to a daily rate and we should be good. However, if it is not, we would basically have to translate all invoices, which may work with small amount of customers, but is definitely not scalable.

 

Could you please share if WHMCS could be configured for this functionality and if that is not possible out of the box, please point me to what would be the basic steps for us to implement it?

 

Regards,

Victor

[brian!]

Hi Victor,

 

We will use WHMCS as the billing platform for a new project.

I need a little help with invoicing, since I could not find an answer to my question.

 

We are a business registered in Bulgaria but we will sell mostly to customers from the USA.

Since in Bulgaria the law requires all invoices to be in Bulgarian, we basically have to find a way to do one of the following:

1. Create bilingual invoices which would look ridiculous and contain information in both Bulgarian and English, so we don't really want to do this unless we have no other choice.

2. Create two invoices for the same sale, one in Bulgarian and one in English, and only send the English invoice to the customer.

ironically, 1) would be easier to do than 2) as it would just require a tweak to the invoice template - 2) would definitely require a custom solution as there would be no way to do it from just the settings.

 

The second option is the one we are after. I am trying to figure out if I could prepare two templates and trigger the creation of two invoices in two languages, so we can use the Bulgarian one for our accounting needs. If that is possible, we will then only need to program the Bulgarian template to convert USD to BGN according to a daily rate and we should be good. However, if it is not, we would basically have to translate all invoices, which may work with small amount of customers, but is definitely not scalable.

what happens by default with WHMCS is that the invoice is sent to the client using the language/currency of their choice (determined by the client's profile settings) - there is only one PDF invoice template for all clients.

 

to create two PDF templates, but only send the non-Bulgarian one to the client, would certainly require a custom solution - it's possible that you may be able to use an existing third-party addon, such as "Billing Extension", but I don't think even that could do this without some tweaks.

 

even the most basic manual solutions would probably require some additional coding... I mean you could let WHMCS run as normal and just send the invoice to the client in the language of their choice; but then later use the Bulk Invoice PDF Export Report to generate the same invoices as one large PDF file, but with a change of language to Bulgarian - but even something as minor as this would require additional coding.

 

Could you please share if WHMCS could be configured for this functionality and if that is not possible out of the box, please point me to what would be the basic steps for us to implement it?

I suspect that you're going to need a developer to help you with this - because there are no "basic" steps to describe as the required solution would involve PHP coding (hooks, addon etc) of some kind... it's not a minor tweak to the settings!

 

to get quotes from developers, you'd need to post in Service Offers & Requests - i'd certainly suggest determining the cost of such a custom solution first before committing to using WHMCS for your billing.

[Vix]

Thank you Brian!

Actually your idea abut the bulk export is not bad at all!

I will look into it and will code a PoC to see if it will work out.

 

Best,

Victor