Invoice generation question

[LukeDouglas]

I am completely confused as to what is happening to my Next Due Date and how it might impact generation of invoices as I have had to manually generated a few invoices this year that were not generated.

 

Here is a Next Due Date set to a date prior to the current unpaid invoice due date:

 

https://webbering.com/images/troubleshooting/whmcs-next-due-date-prior.jpg

 

Here is a Next Due Date set to a the same due date as the current unpaid invoice due date:

 

https://webbering.com/images/troubleshooting/whmcs-next-due-date-current.jpg

 

Here is a Next Due Date set to a the same due date as the current paid invoice due date:

 

https://webbering.com/images/troubleshooting/whmcs-next-due-date-current-paid.jpg

 

Here is a Next Due Date set to a the next months due date after the current paid invoice due date:

 

https://webbering.com/images/troubleshooting/whmcs-next-due-date-next-month.jpg

 

So you can understand my confusion!!!

 

Now can someone tell me 'which' one is the correct Next Due Date as well as how something like this can happen?

[WHMCS John]

Hi,

When an invoice is paid, the Next Due Date will increment forward by 1 billing cycle from the current value, therefore you need to take that into account. When the unpaid invoice is paid, you want to be sure the Next Due Date will increment froward to a date in future.

https://webbering.com/images/troubleshooting/whmcs-next-due-date-prior.jpg - The date should be 10/01/2017

https://webbering.com/images/troubleshooting/whmcs-next-due-date-current.jpg - This looks to be correct

https://webbering.com/images/troubleshooting/whmcs-next-due-date-current-paid.jpg - The date should be 10/09/2017

https://webbering.com/images/troubleshooting/whmcs-next-due-date-next-month.jpg - This looks to be correct

 

 

 

[LukeDouglas]

WHMCS John,

 

Thanks for the clarification.  I have checked all of my clients products/services versus their invoice list and had to change the 'Next Due Date' on about a dozen.  I'm going to monitor this until the end of the year to ensure it is working as designed as I have no clue how the 'Next Due Date' got changed, some appearing not to be updated when an invoice was paid and even had two that put a "Next Due Date" TWO cycles ahead instead of one, ie: showing due in two years instead of one year after the current year was paid.

 

[splaquet]

i don't want to sound stupid, but... actually, i totally do after writing that  

so here's my question... if they don't pay their invoice on time, as in they paid late and in the next month, is it going to skip a month?  check out my screenshot to see my dilemma... and if this isn't what's happening, then can someone maybe chime in as to what might actually have happened?  my worst fear is that i have to manually search through to double check that this hadn't happened with even more client's  

i had no idea that this even happened, but found this when i was randomly tweaking some of his server settings in the backend.

at first, i was thinking that maybe the dates were off, but the invoices were correct... but that wasn't the case.  

invoices for service dates are:

Inv Date ~ Service Date Range
7/2/17 ~ 8/1/17 - 9/1/17
8/2/17 ~ 9/1/17 - 10/1/17
** missing month **
10/2/17 ~ 11/1/17 - 12/1/17

[LukeDouglas]

Splaquet,

I actually had one client who had indicated on his check which invoice he was paying and there was one prior invoice that is still unpaid.  The 'Next Due Date' was incremented one payment period without regard to the older unpaid invoice.     Looking at your screenshot, I had 2 different clients with this exact same problem where it didn't generate an invoice due to the 'Next Due Date' not being set properly and I had to manually bill my clients.  Now this appears to have happened because the 'Next Due Date' was not updated properly form a previous payment but, the issue for me, why does it not increment the 'Next Due Date' when it should.

Technology is great....when it works!!!

[brian!]

@splaquet my first thought would be to wonder if you have Continuous Invoice Generation disabled in general settings -> invoices ?

https://docs.whmcs.com/Invoicing_Setup#Continuous_Invoice_Generation

Quote

Take for example a hosting account paid monthly. The user places their order in January. They receive an invoice and they pay their invoice. In the following month, the user gets their next invoice and they pay that. Then in March, the user receives their invoice but they don't pay it because they no longer wish to use the account or simply because they miss the emails about it. With continuous invoice generation disabled, the user would not receive any further invoices until the March invoice has been paid. However, with continuous invoicing enabled, the user would receive invoices every month until the account is set to terminated, regardless of whether the item has been paid for or not.

With Continuous Invoice Generation enabled, any product that is Active, or Suspended will continue to invoice regardless of the status of its previous invoice(s). Pending, Completed, Cancelled or Terminated services will not generate invoices.

if it were disabled, that would be one possible reason for a ungenerated invoice.

[splaquet]

nope, continuous invoice generation is enabled.  nothing knowingly was changed. 

i think that the issue stemmed from failed cron jobs.  i haven't gone back through my emails to see which dates failed, but i do recall that i had a handful of them that randomly started to for some reason.  i then fixed them and i'm pretty sure that it's been okay since.

my assumption was always that even if a cron job failed, it would pick it back up the next time that it ran.  so apparently, after reading another post as well, that isn't the case?  

[brian!]

hmm... just spotted one of my crons never ran on 30 Sept 2017... how weird... not concerned, just curious to the reason... perhaps there was an issue with the server at cron time.

anyway, you can view the activity log to see if the cron started/completed on a particular day.

https://docs.whmcs.com/Invoicing_Issues

for your own peace of mind, i'd recommend checking on any invoices that should have been created on those days when the cron failed to run... and also check the activity log to see where the cron was failing (assuming it even started) on those days.

[LukeDouglas]

It's enabled for me also so that isn't the issue.