Estimate taxes? What a load of rubbish!

[Chris74]

Just updated to version 7 and I've found this bizarre "Estimate taxes" tab on the order form that suggests you can have a look at what the tax will be before you enter your actual address details. Very strange.

I've honestly never seen such a stupidly designed order process in my life.

Apart from the fact that it asks you to enter your "state" before you choose your country, which is moronic in itself,  there is no indication that you're actually committing to anything before you go a step further to enter your details, yet this is fixed once you've decided to use the option and changing your country later does nothing. Of course, you can totally ignore this option - it's not forced on you and it's actually very easy to miss. You can continue without supplying the info, so if you ignore it, tax will be applied I'm guessing at the default country rate, regardless of your actual country. When you enter your details, if you  choose a different country - the totals are not adjusted - its just awful. So many people are going to be paying the wrong amounts!

There is no other shopping cart system in existence that does it this way. It's so crap I can hardly believe it. This is supposed to a billing system and they can't even get the  basics like VAT calculations right.  I would be embarrassed to release a product with problems like this, the process is so badly thought out and poorly implemented. What on earth is wrong with calculating the tax at the end, once the customer has entered their details?

At the very least, if tax must be calculated at this stage, rather than at the point the customer would normally enter their country, there should be a more prominent section asking them to enter their country and then their state and submitting it so tax can be calculated. They must not be allowed to continue with the order until they have done so - and once they have submitted this, they must not be allowed to change the country and state on their information at the next step without going back. At least this way they are correctly prompted.

The way this has been designed, you can pay tax for whatever country you want, then change your country before you've completed your order, paying the incorrect amount of tax, or none at all. There might as well be a check box that says "click here to pay no tax".

I don't know what the devs at WHMCS spend their time doing, but it's clear they are not putting any effort into making the basics work properly. I can't put this out to my customers like this. I'm either going to have to revert all my changes, or find a way of modifying this so it works out the tax based on the customers details. What a farce.

I've had a WHMCS license for ten years and I can honestly say that in all this time they still have not learned the basics of interface design or workflow. It's like a ten year old has designed this form.

There's just no excuse for it. A company of this size should easily be able to afford industry leading designers and developers to make their product, although to be fair, anyone with any decent programming skills wouldn't make such a massive mistake. What the hell is wrong with this company!? This kind of sloppy, illogical design makes them look like amateurs. What a joke!

Edited December 17, 2017 by Chris74

[WHMCS John]

Hi @Chris74,

I'm sorry to hear that the invoices generated by WHMCS aren't as you expect.

To help us understand more about what might be going on here, could you please share your Setup > Payments > Tax Rules, and an example of the invoice being generated in error?

[Chris74]

Invoices? Who said anything about invoices?

Please see this...

 

[WHMCS John]

Hi @Chris74,

The tax on the order summary is calculated based upon the matching tax rules for the Default Country setting in the Setup > General Settings > Localisation tab.

Tax is re-calculated when the order is placed based upon the state and country the client selected on the checkout page. So the actual amount invoiced (and therefore the client is required to pay) will be the correct amount.

[Chris74]

I'm aware of how it works. Obviously you don't see it as a problem that the customer never gets to see the total amount due calculated correctly before they go to pay. In my opinion, for any billing system, that's a fundamental requirement. You don't see it that way?

You've designed it so that VAT is calculated before the client enters their location. That's a mistake.

You think it is appropriate to calculate VAT (for display on screen) at the default country rate, all the way up until the client gets to the payment gateway, even after they have entered their country and state. It's just not appropriate to do that. VAT should be displayed based on their tax zone.

You've provided a pretty useless workaround that suggests to the customer they might want to "estimate" their tax. tax isn't an estimation  its an exact thing. As I said, this is easily missed and not enforced, so it doesn't really do anything to help this problem.

When they get to the checkout, displayed on screen is the order total, but even if they change their country on that page, the order total stays the same - with the wrong total due to pay.

You are consistently providing the incorrect due amount to the customer. They need to know how much it will cost before they choose a payment method - not afterwards! So what if the invoice is correct - they won't get that far!

You've added some javascript to the checkout page that automatically updates the phone code in real time, based on the country. Why don't you think that it is important to do the same thing for the total due amount - which is specifically dependant on the tax rate of the country selected?

You said...

Quote

Tax is re-calculated when the order is placed based upon the state and country the client selected on the checkout page. So the actual amount invoiced (and therefore the client is required to pay) will be the correct amount.

Yes but as I have explained above, this is calculated in the background and you don't tell the customer that.  They don't get to see the revised amount until after they have chosen payment, so they are given the wrong amount to pay displayed on screen. The total displayed on the checkout page lists the amount due to pay. This is just above the payment method selection. It is there for the customer to check the amount they are being charged before deciding to pay - but for anyone that is outside of the default country,  this total will be incorrect, even after they have entered their country and state, so it is hugely off putting for the customer and will easily result in lost sales at that crucial point where they are entering their card details to pay.

A prime example is an Australian customer clearly being shown that they are paying 20% VAT when they shouldn't be paying any. Do you think that they will just get their card out any pay, when faced with the info on screen that they are being charged 20% more than they should?

If you can't see how obvious that is, then there is no hope!

 

 

Edited January 3, 2018 by Chris74

[Chris74]

Also, just to add to the above. Your form fields are the wrong way around and that javascript you added is pointless...

You put the telephone field at the top of the form, so it is filled out by the customer early on. This means the customer will manually select the phone country code.

When the customer selects the phone country code, this does not automatically update the country field further down the page.

When they eventually get to the country field, it is below the state field, so they are asked to choose the state  before choosing the country - but the state dropdown doesn't appear until after the country has been chosen.

When they choose their country, this will automatically update the phone country field at the top of the page - but they already entered that manually anyway, so the javascript you've added to do this will never be used.

A school child could design this form better than you have. There is a simple logical workflow required here that you have completely ignored. It's very basic stuff done very badly.
Sorry if that's offensive to you but it's just true.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Chris74

[WHMCS John]

Hi @Chris74,

I understand that you would like to see a change to the order form workflow; whereas currently the order summary is displayed before checkout, you'd prefer the opposite way around.

That is an interesting proposition, I don't recall this being suggested before. If there were a demonstrable demand  I don't see any immediate objections to such a change. At present the top order-form related feature request is for the addition of a one page order form.  I encourage you to submit a new request for this  proposed change to the order flow, and if it's something that other WHMCS users want, it's potentially something we can consider for the future.

Alternatively if you'd prefer to create your own replacement for cart.php to meet your specific requirements, that is certainly something the WHMCS platform empowers you to do.  Data can be collected on your own order for and then passed to WHMCS for billing, provisioning and management purposes via the API: https://developers.whmcs.com/api/

Thanks for your feedback, it's much appreciated.

[Chris74]

Just now, WHMCS John said:

Hi @Chris74,

I understand that you would like to see a change to the order form workflow; whereas currently the order summary is displayed before checkout, you'd prefer the opposite way around.

That is an interesting proposition, I don't recall this being suggested before. If there were a demonstrable demand  I don't see any immediate objections to such a change. At present the top order-form related feature request is for the addition of a one page order form.  I encourage you to submit a new request for this  proposed change to the order flow, and if it's something that other WHMCS users want, it's potentially something we can consider for the future.

Alternatively if you'd prefer to create your own replacement for cart.php to meet your specific requirements, that is certainly something the WHMCS platform empowers you to do.  Data can be collected on your own order for and then passed to WHMCS for billing, provisioning and management purposes via the API: https://developers.whmcs.com/api/

Nope. You seem to have misunderstood completely.

What I'd like in the short term is for the amount due to the customer to be accurate, before they go to pay it.

But it is very clear that the whole order process is very badly designed and the forms are laid out in an illogical and confusing way. On top of this, you make redesigning these impossible without using a whole lot of PHP to get around the inflexibility -which then takes a lot of upkeep when WHMCS is updated. that's why most WHMCS templates still use this awful standard cart. But of course, you are fully aware of all of this and you're just being pedantic with your reply. You know full well how badly designed your product is.

What you need to do is go look at some good billing systems and see the way the order flow works  - get an idea of how it should be done, then re-design your order forms. Of course you should really have done this properly in the first place. I would recommend that you hire a designer /developer who has a good understanding of user experience and user interface design because you clearly have nobody in your company who is capable of doing this properly at the moment. Constructive criticism.