Any way to prevent invoice changes?

[steph.hope]

From what I can see (here  and elsewhere) this is a difficult ongoing issue, but I thought I'd ask anyway before trying to explain to my boss and accounts person and potentially having to give up on WHMCS.

Has anyone come up with a way to prevent WHMCS from altering invoices? We don't want it removing line items or cancelling invoices if the client cancels a service or turns off autorenew on a domain. We don't use proformas (they don't seem to be a common thing here in NZ, I'd never heard of them before working on this), just invoices, and they shouldn't change - we need to issue a credit note and a new invoice if alterations are required.

I haven't been able to find a module that will do this, but does anyone know of something I've missed? Or know of any way to deal with this?

All I can think of is to save the official invoice data in another table, and use hooks to see when it's altered and put it back the way it was, and then either automatically create the relevant credit note or make a todo to do it manually. I imagine there are flaws in this plan that I haven't considered though, and it sounds like a lot of risky messing with invoices. But if the way it works by default is doing illegal things anyway I might not be able to avoid this mess.

(in addition - credit notes? I'm just displaying any invoices with negative totals as credit notes but that's a whole other issue...)

[steph.hope]

Somehow I'd missed that I could turn off the line item cancellation when a service is cancelled, so that's one fewer thing to worry about at least. I haven't seen any way to prevent the client changing the auto-renew settings though, and even if there were, the same would still happen when an admin changed them.

[brian!]

13 hours ago, steph.hope said:

From what I can see (here  and elsewhere) this is a difficult ongoing issue, but I thought I'd ask anyway before trying to explain to my boss and accounts person and potentially having to give up on WHMCS.

man the lifeboats - woman overboard. 🚣‍♀️

btw - it's a pity the request doesn't show when the status was changed to "Planned"... 

Quote

Planned indicates that a request has been or is already part of our future product roadmap and plans. This is no guarantee of future inclusion.

it's not marked as 'In Progress', so it's completion is not imminent, e.g this year.

13 hours ago, steph.hope said:

I haven't been able to find a module that will do this, but does anyone know of something I've missed? Or know of any way to deal with this?

the obvious suspect would be Kian's Billing Extension - that can "freeze" invoices...

Quote

Once an invoice has been issued, it can't be altered or deleted. Billing Extension makes sure that it doesn't happen.

though I wouldn't necessarily dive straight in with both feet - it has received poor reviews, both here and in Marketplace, so tread  very carefully before making a bad situation potentially worse, e.g test it on a dev thoroughly before adding it to a production install.

frankly, if it were me in your shoes, i'd be looking at both that addon (if you're going to stick with WHMCS) and alternatives to WHMCS too - because there are a lot of basic things missing from, or wrong with, invoicing within WHMCS that users have complained about for years and I see no indication of those fundamental billing issues being addressed by WHMCS anytime soon.

i'm not aware of any others third-party options, but you could always check in  Marketplace if you haven't done so already.

13 hours ago, steph.hope said:

(in addition - credit notes? I'm just displaying any invoices with negative totals as credit notes but that's a whole other issue...)

Billing Extension can issue credit notes.

[steph.hope]

Thanks for the thorough reply @brian!

I had a look at the live demo of Billing Extension when I posted this, even though I'd already seen some of the negative reviews. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to prevent domain renewals from being removed from the invoices when autorenew is turned off (I'd hoped that this would be included in 'freezing' invoices, but no luck apparently).

I found a mention somewhere in these forums of an open-source credit note module so I'm playing with that at the moment to see if it can be altered to meet our needs.

A complicating factor in all of this is that we are syncing invoices and payments through to our accounting software using the Xero module from Edgehosting, so any solutions for credit notes etc need to play nicely with that. Which is another reason I'm leery of Billing Extension, it seems it'll add a lot of complication while not letting me see what exactly it's doing.

So basically the situation is exactly what I thought it was, but it's nice to have confirmation that it's not just me 🙃

[Kian]

8 negative reviews vs 300 companies using it every day. 6 years of coding and 215 updates. Solves problems that no on dares to face but yeah stay away from that module 👍

[brian!]

14 hours ago, steph.hope said:

I found a mention somewhere in these forums of an open-source credit note module so I'm playing with that at the moment to see if it can be altered to meet our needs.

that would have been me posting that link originally...

.. but it is now marked as not working with the latest versions, hence why I didn't mention it again as an off-the-shelf option.

11 hours ago, Kian said:

8 negative reviews vs 3 companies using it every day.

users can only judge from those who leave reviews - there will be more users that don't bother to give reviews - good or bad... way of the world.

I have never used the addon (and will never have any need to), so I can't give it a ringing personal endorsement - i'm commenting based on those reviews for BE & CM and also what many users have told me privately over the last year or two... now granted that nobody is likely to tell me privately that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread (why should they?), but i'm working on a sense of direction of the comments i'm reading (that I didn't used to get years ago).

in any event, I didn't tell Steph not to use or buy it, just to test carefully if she was going to - that's hardly the most objectionable statement to be posted in this place - even you'd have to admit it's good general advice!

11 hours ago, Kian said:

6 years of coding and 215 updates.

*yawns*

11 hours ago, Kian said:

Solves problems that no on dares to face but yeah stay away from that module 👍

don't try to make it sound like an act of courage that you've bravely sacrificed years trying to address those problems (anyway if they were really solved, methinks you wouldn't be getting complaints and poor reviews!) - maybe other developers don't "face" most of the billing issues because it would take far too many coding hours compared to any potential returns - a logical decision in many ways, but if you have chosen to take a different path than the others, then that's down to you.

in many ways, the very fact that BE even exists is really a condemnation of WHMCS core invoicing functionality in itself - but it's your baby, and you seem hypersensitive to criticism about it, so i'll pause there to ensure I don't needlessly increase your levels of work stress too much. 🙂

[Kian]

You can say whatever you want. That's fine. I'm talking about the other side of the story. Can I? Yes of course.

[brian!]

16 minutes ago, Kian said:

You can say whatever you want. That's fine.

I will anyway, but thanks for the permission. 🙄

16 minutes ago, Kian said:

That's fine. I'm talking about the other side of the story. Can I? Yes of course.

absolutely... if you don't, who will ?

[Ithiel]

On 9/2/2020 at 11:03 AM, Kian said:

8 negative reviews vs 300 companies using it every day. 6 years of coding and 215 updates. Solves problems that no on dares to face but yeah stay away from that module 👍

Just wondering, am I one of the 8 negative reviews, the 300 companies using it, or both? 🤯

It's been nearly a year since I purchased BX/CM, and it still doesn't do the thing I bought it for... not that my tickets, PMs, reviews, complaints to WHMCS and stalking you across the forums hasn't *ever so subtly* alerted you to that...

Seriously mate... what's it going to take for me to get your attention long enough for you to fix this thing?

[Kian]

BX and CM have thousands of features that you're using on a daily basis without even noticing. You write a bad review (followed by tens of posts) because one of the hundreds of feature doesn't work as expected. And we are talking about a feature we created exactly for you (it took us 4 weeks of coding) without charging anything for custom-development (that's not about money anyway).

It feels so great that I personally lost interest in fixing that thing. I have already gave you a free renewal for both CM and BX. I'll ask to my colleague to take a look at your issue because personally I don't want to see anything related to GST, ABN, Statement by Supplier, 49% withholding etc. for a very long time.

I completely understand you but what can I say? At the moment I'm an * for a number of reasons (v8, WHMCS in general, crazy accountants, competitors stealing contents and scripts like nothing, silly ideas, people cracking softwares, the gigantic lazyness of some customers, the stigma of 8 negative reviews against hundreds of companies using BX without any problem from years, providers willing to pay me to steal information about their competitors...). Nice stuff.

On 9/6/2020 at 1:20 PM, brian! said:

absolutely...

Thanks for the permission 🙄

[Ithiel]

2 minutes ago, Kian said:

BX and CM have thousands of features that you're using on a daily basis without even noticing.

While I appreciate the effort you've put into the platform, most BX features have been disabled because I specifically didn't want it doing most of what it implemented. It does some useful things, but nothing big enough to warrant the effort of implementing in the past. BX and CM were purchased for stringly one reason only - to help our affiliate program become GST compliant.

2 minutes ago, Kian said:

You write a bad review (followed by tens of posts) because one of the hundreds of feature doesn't work as expected. 

A bad review, 10 posts, 4 tickets to Katamaze, 1 ticket to WHMCS, several private messages, and a few social media messages over the course of 10 months.

Again, while only one feature, it is the only feature I purchased it for. Anything else was unintended (some with positive outcomes, some not).

6 minutes ago, Kian said:

And we are talking about a feature we created exactly for you (it took us 4 weeks of coding) without charging anything for custom-development (that's not about money anyway).

I appreciate the work that was put in to get it this far, but a house without a roof is not a house.

For the record, I also offered money to fix the issue ("What do you need to make this a priority for you and to get this fixed?"), but this was also ignored.

7 minutes ago, Kian said:

I have already gave you a free renewal for both CM and BX.

I was not aware of this until now (it had not been communicated to me previously), but it is appreciated.

9 minutes ago, Kian said:

the stigma of 8 negative reviews

It is noteworthy that most of the reviews relate to customer service. In my case, so much of the animosity could have been avoided with even the most basic level of communication.

Never the less, I will remove my negative reviews once the matter is resolved.

13 minutes ago, Kian said:

I'll ask to my colleague to take a look at your issue

Thank you.  🙂

2020 has been a right-royal prick of a year, both personally and professionally, and this matter has been an ongoing thorn in my side that continually adds to my base stress level. I (and my blood pressure) will greatly appreciate having it resolved.

 

[Ithiel]

On 9/14/2020 at 9:12 PM, Kian said:

I'll ask to my colleague to take a look at your issue

Hi @Kian,

Just touching base to check if/when your colleague will be able to look into this issue? We haven't heard back from either you or them in the 6 weeks since this message.

Thanks,

Ithiel