Automatic Duplicate Clients - URGENT ISSUE

[graceful]

About 3 weeks ago, my WHMCS started automatically creating duplicate client accounts.  So far, to date, there have 70 duplicate clients created.  This is an almost daily basis.  It sends out a confirmation email for each new account it creates, and my clients are receiving these emails, but they are already registered.

Unsure if anyone else is experiencing the same thing, but this seems to be a bug of some sort, unless there is a configuration which I have overlooked which is causing this to happen.

What I don't understand is that it duplicates each one of my clients more than once.  So for Client A, there are 10 or so duplicates. 

[brian!]

9 hours ago, graceful said:

About 3 weeks ago, my WHMCS started automatically creating duplicate client accounts.  So far, to date, there have 70 duplicate clients created.  This is an almost daily basis.  It sends out a confirmation email for each new account it creates, and my clients are receiving these emails, but they are already registered.

then my first question is what changes did you make to your WHMCS installation three weeks ago - did you run a WHMCS update? did you install an addon module or action hook ??

9 hours ago, graceful said:

Unsure if anyone else is experiencing the same thing, but this seems to be a bug of some sort, unless there is a configuration which I have overlooked which is causing this to happen.

it's certainly not a common occurrence - off-hand, I don't even think there is a feature in WHMCS to duplicate a client... so a guess would be that it's a script of some sort (addon or hook) that is either misbehaving or malicious.

9 hours ago, graceful said:

What I don't understand is that it duplicates each one of my clients more than once.  So for Client A, there are 10 or so duplicates. 

from the outside, it sounds like a script being triggered by the daily cron, that is running an update query / API function on the client database table... WHMCS by itself shouldn't be doing this, so something that you have installed is probably creating this issue... so that then comes back to my first question about what you have installed or changed 3 weeks ago that may be causing this.

if you can figure that out, then you're more than halfway to solving the issue yourself... if you can't, then it might be worth opening a ticket with Support and letting them have a look.

[graceful]

So, no changes have been made to WHMCS since it was installed about a year ago.  Nothing done to the server either.  Have 2 cron jobs running, which were the ones installed when we set up WHMCS.  Nothing new.  Submitted a support ticket request.  Will post resolution here, in case similar occurs to someone else.

Thanks for response.

[itristanjason]

We are experiencing the same thing – have created a ticket.

For use the pattern appears to be tied to manual invoice creation; automated, time-based (renewals etc), and other new-product orders don't appear to cause this (so far).

1. manual invoice created, completed, published, and emailed on 2019-02-17 12:43
-- normal results and system feedback
-- emailed invoice received by test user

2. review client list and activity logs; "new" duplicate client auto-created by WHMCS on 2019-02-17 13:00

precisely on cron cue; always at the 30m mark - :00 and :30

We're in a similar boat to you as we haven't made any major changes and are testing WHMCS upgrades but on a totally separate staging server.

 

 

[brian!]

20 hours ago, itristanjason said:

We are experiencing the same thing – have created a ticket.

it might be useful for you to post the ticket ID in case one of the support staff comes across this thread and wants to check it.

[itristanjason]

Of course : #YXT-541503 - is the ticket ID
We have made some progress - turns out the only cron that runs on the same 30m schedule as the duplication behaviour is a Quickbooks integration sync from MyWorks. It's not a fully critical sync so we are going to turn it off for now until we can review and resolve this with the module people.

[brian!]

23 hours ago, itristanjason said:

We have made some progress

some progress is always welcomed ! 🙂

23 hours ago, itristanjason said:

turns out the only cron that runs on the same 30m schedule as the duplication behaviour is a Quickbooks integration sync from MyWorks. It's not a fully critical sync so we are going to turn it off for now until we can review and resolve this with the module people.

thanks for updating the thread - it might be helpful to others who run into a similar issue with the addon.

[steven99]

Is the myworks module to sync both ways?  (WHMCS clients -> Quickbooks clients/customers AND Quickbooks clients / customers -> WHMCS clients)  If so, have you contacted myworks on this issue as that would explain the duplication.

[itristanjason]

yes, 2-ways

/

but not-entirely intentionally original config was only to sync invoice/payment status changes back from QBO

/

yes we are contacting them

I believe this was a version thing - meaning that our original implementation/config only had 2-way return syncing set to do some updating. This was a 0.02 version upgrade but apparently quite a lot had changed.

What was actually happening was that in the return sync it was *somehow* seeing new order/change events as requiring a client-CREATE event as well. We believe there were deprecated crons still running and unwittingly making this happen. Documentation wasn't exactly clear about what to remove from cron, but we're working it out by process of elimination.

So far our tests are no longer creating duplicate clients and we'll confirm all of this with MyWorks.

[Charles Combs]

Same issue here...   seems it happens once a week here...   I have deleted the ones that were duplicated and now again they are back...  also some of the ones that were duplicated was charged twice that month also???