Katamaze's Billing Extension new issue in simplified invoicing

[Remitur]

being not very easy to get support from the developer, I hope there's here anyone else using Billing Extension module (https://katamaze.com/modules.php?module=billing-extension ) and experiencing same issue: finding a fix or a walkaround (if any) may be easier working in two...

The issue I experienced is using the "simplified invoicing" option ( = mass billing at the end of the month).

When this option is enabled, it happen that:

• customer pays a proforma invoice
• Billing Extension take note somewhere of this paid proforma, and delete it from the database
• WHMCS try to send by email the paid proforma to the customer, but it fails (the proforma has beeen just deleted...) and so return an error

Before WHMCS 7.5 this error was manageable: you had only to modify the "invalid invoice ID" message in "processing..." (or anything else...) and the customer did not realized of any error.

After the update of WHMCS to 7.5 the error message is worst, because you get a full blank screen with the terrible message "OOps! Something went wrong" 

So a lot of customer opening tickets: "What's happen?" "I'm not able to renew my domain" "I tried 5 times to renew my domain, always getting an error message", and so on ... 

So: anyone has any idea for any trick to fix this?

I don't understand why this error message changed so... I guess (but not for sure!) it's an error message coming from Laravel, but know no way to bypass it... 

 

Edited April 18, 2018 by Remitur

[brian!]

6 hours ago, Remitur said:

After the update of WHMCS to 7.5 the error message is worst, because you get a full blank screen with the terrible message "OOps! Something went wrong" 

did you enable "Display Errors" in general settings -> other - that should give you more details than just "Oops".

also, i'm wondering why you upgraded to v7.5 without first testing to see if this module would still work - especially when you know that this is currently a dead project...

[Remitur]

1 hour ago, brian! said:

did you enable "Display Errors" in general settings -> other - that should give you more details than just "Oops".

It's not necessary toenable "display errors"... the error message is displayed also if that display errors is disabled (the detail is "invalid invoice id"... because WHMCS is trying to sent an invoice which no lenger exists)
For this reason i think that it's a Laravel's error message... (BTW: being so: any idea to bypass it?) 

Quote

also, i'm wondering why you upgraded to v7.5 without first testing to see if this module would still work - especially when you know that this is currently a dead project...

This is a very good question... my answers are not so good:

• it was the lesser evil
• in 7.5 there're features which I need since... I don't remember when. Too much time.
• it could have been worse: pther functions of Billing Extension are running no worst than before...

BTW: I don't know if take it as a full dead project... according to Katamaze, it's not:  https://katamaze.com/news/6/dear-customers

But he writes about a "refactored Billing Extension", while the refactoring of Billing Extension is only a project, still running: and the version available is the same of september, with same bugs (a new version has been released few days ago, but only to grant compatibility with  PHP 7.1 and 7.2 ... using still PHP 6, I didn't ever tried to install it)

The refactoring of Billing Extension is still a project:  https://katamaze.com/lab/1/refactoring-billing-extension
He writes:

Quote

for now do not expect any minor release or new features for Billing Extension since we going to redesign it from scratch. Below we'll keep an up do date list of activities we are performing.

No one but katamaze knows when will it be available. And how much time, after released, will be necessary to debug it and have a stable version.

 

 

[brian!]

3 minutes ago, Remitur said:

TW: I don't know if take it as a full dead project...

I meant dead with regards that it hasn't been updated in 7+ months... but even Lazarus supposedly came back from the dead, so there is hope!

17 minutes ago, Remitur said:

No one but katamaze knows when will it be available. And how much time, after released, will be necessary to debug it and have a stable version.

... and how much his reputation has been damaged by his previous problems... time will tell.

[Remitur]

5 hours ago, brian! said:

... but even Lazarus supposedly came back from the dead, so there is hope!

And... about any walkaround to the (Laravel ?) error message... any suggest? 

[Kian]

On 4/18/2018 at 9:55 AM, Remitur said:

being not very easy to get support from the developer

Sorry for necro posting but yeah, we had troubles. As you have already said we published an official statement about all the recent issues with our customer care (Dear customers... - here is the Italian version).

On 4/18/2018 at 6:58 PM, brian! said:

... and how much his reputation has been damaged by his previous problems... time will tell. 

I agree with this. We don't want to escape from responsibility. We failed to deliver a good customer service and we have to face the consequences.

Now back on topic I think that it's time to give clear answers about Billing Extension (BX). The error you reported in this thread is not an error in strict sense. When BX removes the invoice from system WHMCS can't send the email notification since the related invoice no longer exists. This causes no harm but just an entry in the Activity Log "Invalid invoice ID". Let's move on to the second issue.

On 4/18/2018 at 9:55 AM, Remitur said:

After the update of WHMCS to 7.5 the error message is worst, because you get a full blank screen with the terrible message "OOps! Something went wrong"

This issue has been fixed in version 1.5.8 released on 19/04/2018 (changelog). Let me quote the relevant part:

«When an Administrator adds a payment to a proforma from WHMCS back-end now there's an "Oops!" error stating that the invoice ID does not exist. This happens because in version 7.2+ this event has been elevated to "Fatal error". In this release we addressed this issue to finally show an info box instead of a forceful fatal error.»

So now you can finally see the old-fashioned page:

Or the new one in case you are running the BETA of the refactored Billing Extension:

Lastly I want to underline that Billing Extension has never been a dead project. A module with 67 releases (1 every 21 days) since 2014 can be anything but dead. It was our support that was dead. Months ago we decided to focus on corrective releases for BX because this module became gigantic. There are too many features, pages, confusing settings. Moreover we are forced to stay with an old architecture because we are still supporting all versions of WHMCS including v5! That's why we decided to refactor BX. Last month we published a preview of the new module (English: Preview the new Billing Extension, Italian: Anteprima del nuovo Billing Extension). Now it's even greater.

It's taking so long because before focusing on the refactoring of BX we had to develop our new website that is based on WHMCS. While we were developing it we realized that WHMCS was missing a lot of core features we needed (changlogs, decent news section, decent documentation section, lab, feature requests, ratings, bug reporting...) therefore we had to stop in order to complete another module (Mercury) that was not planned. The funny thing is that our unplanned module now is our best one Anyway very soon the new BX will be ready for download.