Reoccurring PayPal Giving Credits

[undergroundhosting]

Hi,

    So I have customers on automatic payments with PayPal through WHMCS. The problem that I'm having is that when the next month comes around and the payment is made with PayPal WHMCS thinks that it's an overpayment to the last months Invoice and it gives the customer a credit. How can I fix this? Thank you. 

[steven99]

That credit should be used when the invoice is due and the daily billing run is done.  Are you not seeing that behavior or do you want the subscription payment to go to the current invoice before it is due - thus paying it before it is due?

[undergroundhosting]

So what I am seeing is that PayPal is charging the subscription then on WHMCS under manage credits for that customer it says invoice overpayment. That's what's confusing me because I don't know why it thinks it's over paying it. 

[WHMCS John]

Hi @undergroundhosting,

This typically happens if the client's invoice was paid before the subscription payment came in. Could be via another payment method, a one-time PayPal payment or credit on the account.

As the invoice is already paid, the subscription payment is an overpayment, and so is handled elegantly and credited to the client's account.

Next month the invoice is automatically paid by the credit, but the PayPal Subscription sends payment anyway. This is another overpayment so a new credit is added.

 

To find out why this happened originally:

• Take the invoice number from the oldest credit log entry.
• Examine the transactions on the invoice.
• You might see two transactions on this one invoice, indicating an over payment by the client.

 

[Kian]

55 minutes ago, WHMCS John said:

As the invoice is already paid, the subscription payment is an overpayment, and so is handled elegantly and credited to the client's account.

Elegantly? I'd say horribly since it screw ups invoices! Say that an automatic payment of 10 euro for blabla.com domain arrives and the proforma doesn't exist yet for a number of reasons (eg. cancelled services, postponed next due date...). Here is what happens. WHMCS looks for the most recent invoice of blabla.com and finds Invoice #2018-500 of previous year. Obviously I have already registered this invoice in 2018 and paid my income tax but WHMCS has other plans!

• It adds the transaction to #2018-500 updating its amount. Illegal ❌
• The balance of #2018-500 is now 20 euro but what about taxes? What if tax rate has changed in 2019? You can't assume that every year is the same. Illegal ❌
• The date of our #2018-500 invoice moves from 14-05-2018 to 14-05-2019. This is crazy! I've seen invoices going from 2012 to 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019! Can you explain me how am I supposed to register them? The funny thing is that in Italy we have electronic invoicing and if fail to spot any of these invoices "elegantly" handled by WHMCS, Revenue Agency not only expects 22% VAT based on a payment of 80 euro but even thinks that I earned 80 euro while I just got 10! ❌❌❌

I'm not the kind of person who blames WHMCS for everything. When I find an issue I always code my own solution but there are exactly two things in WHMCS that I can't overcome. I'm talking about this "elegant" solution and invoice items that disappear from invoices (you know why). Could you please give me an hook to suppress these two elegant solutions? I'd pay 2000$ to see them burning in hell 😍

 

 

[WHMCS John]

I remember a time where billing solutions preceding WHMCS (now defunct) would just ignore PayPal overpayments, such payments would go into the void and not be accounted for at-all. So yes, this was considered revolutionary. I'm pleased to hear that we have been able to set your expectations so high.

@Kian have you opened a feature request to suggest changes to the overpayments system which would better suit your needs? I did a quick search but was unable to locate one.

[Kian]

Don't get me wrong, I understand your intentions. You solved two problems but in the same time you created new ones. Frankly I prefer having unknown payments instead of invoices moving from 2012 to 2019. I also prefer having customers paying twice for the same domain instead of invoice items that disappear even on paid invoices that I have already sent to Revenue Agency. This causes very dangerous troubles to my customers.

For overpayments you should register the transaction not on the most recent invoice issued years ago but on a new invoice with the following item "Overpayment for Invoice #2018-500 credited to client's balance". I've already coded such solution years ago and it works for other kind of overpayments but it cannot handle Automatic payment. I've a script that detects them on a daily basis 99% of times.

I didn't open a feature request since I'm a bit scared of the possible outcome. Considering that with your best intentions I've seen things getting worse I prefer to live with an issue I know ☹️