Issue in domain auto-renewal billing

[Remitur]

I'm experiencing following issue which, I guess, is some kind of bug in WHMCS.

 

A user has a domain example.ext , expiring i.e. 20/05; ordinary renewal price is 10, no grace period, redemption fee 50 

• for this domain autorenew is enabled
• in "general settings" the "Domain Grace and Redemption Fee Billing" is set to "Generate a new invoice for the domain renewal including any Grace and Redemption Fees"
• at 05/05 the user has an available credit of 6

What's happen?

 

1. 05/05 WHMCS tries to renew the domain; there's no sufficient credit, so WHMCS issue a proforma invoice (#1234) for 10, applies to it the credit of 6, and then sends it to the user, who should so pay just 4.
2. 6/5: the user does a credit refill of 100, but he does not apply it to the existing proforma #1234
3. 20/5: the domain example.ext expires
4. 20/5: WHMCS removes it from existing invoice #1234 (which remains empty, but still the credit of 6 remains applied to it, so the "total due" of this invoice is -6 (minus!!!)
5. 20/5 WHMCS issues a new proforma invoice #1456 for renewal of example.ext in redemption period at 10+50=60, applies to this invoice 60 of the available credit of the user, and renews the domain

  So:

• the user paid 66 instead of 10
• the user has an "unpaid proforma invoice" of -6

@Kian, I know you loves this kind of matter, so it's impossible for me not to tag you...  :D

 

[Kian]

It's 100% correct (according to WHMCS, not me 😅)

For WHMCS the domain was already expired hence it triggers the redemption fee issuing a new invoice. Now there's a problem. There are two invoices:

1. Original invoice with the unpaid domain (yeah, it was partially paid but for WHMCS it's always black and white)
2. Newly issued invoice with redemption fee +  domain renewal but keep reading

The customer is supposed to pay invoice #2 but what if he pays #1? WHMCS would renew the domain even if the customer still owes you 50 euro of redemption fees so what's the solution? As John would say «the problem is handeled elegantly» by WHMCS. How? WHMCS permanently deletes from invoice #1 the "Renew domain example.ext" without any notice apart from a cryptic entry in Activity Log.

Pros:

• There's no risk for customer to pay the wrong invoice

Cons:

• Invoice items disappear from existing invoices that you have probably already recorded
• If it occurs between 2020 and 2021 good luck with taxes
• Good luck with electronic invoicing
• If the only item in invoice #1 was the "Renew domain example.ext" you end up with an empty invoice that has credit applied, amount, subtotal 😵
• If more items are involved,  amounts will be wrong and need to be recalculated. If there was already a transaction you're in trouble since you have to "split" things

As I said in other threads I'd pay 2000$ to deactivate this feature that does more harm than good. I prefer customers risking to pay things twice instead of having invoicing errors that I can hardly spot and require me 30+ minutes to fix.

Before you ask, in my opinion there's no way to prevent this. I have already tried to play with hooks and "porc-around" (you know what I mean 😛) for like 3 weeks non-stop. Mission failed.

 

Edited April 22, 2020 by Kian