how to add new product Status

[zitu4life]

Hello there

I have some clients that have product bought one time, and these client do not have any subscription service. To avoid WHMCS count these clients as active client I would like to put those active products on other status which will delay license reach limit. I can anytime put these products as CANCELED, but it not sounds nice, because WHMCS helps me track every thing client bought from me. So having another status would be nice.

I guess at the past I have saw some post similar to this but at that time I was very newbie at WHMCS and do not remember title to search it on the community.

1. idea is if I could duplicate CANCELED STATUS and rename it with something more friendly:
OUT OF WARANTY 
STATUS NOT AVAILABLE
OFFLINE

etc, etc

If I just put it CANCELED to delay licenses reach limit in several years it could perhaps cause tracking issues.

 

[zitu4life]

Well I have set all those clients with a product that are not subscription. as a CANCELED products, which means they will become INACTIVE client on next automation.

1. But that do not sounds good put a product as canceled if a client did not canceled it.

2. After i reach over 250 active clients, means my license will be on range 251 to 1000 clients, and on that range needed to play cancel one time product not relevant as the way from 251 to 1000 is higher compared to 0 -250 clients.🤪

[yggdrasil]

That is correct, there is a setting to set accounts as inactive if the have no active products. It usually takes a day to change that status on the next cron run.

WHMCS does not let you change the order of status per what they say in the documentation this is fixed and cannot be modified. Sadly your only option is to set them as Cancelled.

You could try to do this by changing it on the database, but it's not officially supposed and could create bigger issues down the road when WHMCS does not recognize the new status.

I understand what you are trying to do and it makes sense from a business perspective. People paying things one time, should not cost you every month in terms of license. This was not a problem in the past but I guess with the new recurring per account billing from WHMCS they completely destroyed that model because now they will count towards your license. Your only option would be to upgrade to unlimited accounts so those accounts don't count towards your license which is probably what WHMCS wants people to do.

This license model per account actually hurts not only your type of business model but others as well. Imagine giving a free product or a free evaluation or just one user that purchases a single domain which is pennies of profit per year, now they all cost you more money in WHMCS licenses than what you actually earned with those customers. For that sort of companies their only option is to go with the unlimited license to have a fixed business cost instead of one per account.

[zitu4life]

Perhaps WHMCS thinks that reach 250 clients is easy and reaching 1000 they could think is even easier, because prices for license 251 -1000 clients will get much expensive on just +1 clients (when reaching 251) and we will pay this same price for years until we reach 1000 clients.

For my business reaching 1000 active clients is not over a night work.

 

[brian!]

8 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

WHMCS does not let you change the order of status per what they say in the documentation this is fixed and cannot be modified. Sadly your only option is to set them as Cancelled.

the point being that if you could switch them to a status that didn't count for active clients, then users would change to avoid the client levels!

technically, they can be modified using Language Overrides...

$_LANG['clientareacancelled'] = "Not Really Cancelled";

the pain is that affects the my domains area too.... frankly, you could write a hook so that it only affected certain pages as long as you could determine a way to determine when a service is cancelled and when it's to show a tweaked string for "Cancelled".

[yggdrasil]

5 minutes ago, brian! said:

the point being that if you could switch them to a status that didn't count for active clients, then users would change to avoid the client levels!

technically, they can be modified using Language Overrides...

$_LANG['clientareacancelled'] = "Not Really Cancelled";

the pain is that affects the my domains area too.... frankly, you could write a hook so that it only affected certain pages as long as you could determine a way to determine when a service is cancelled and when it's to show a tweaked string for "Cancelled".

Yes, that will work. Nice idea. If the OP only wants to avoid showing the cancelled status on customers pages, then he can just change the language to display something else but internally on WHMCS the products would be cancelled.

Edited March 25, 2021 by yggdrasil

[yggdrasil]

16 minutes ago, zitu4life said:

Perhaps WHMCS thinks that reach 250 clients is easy and reaching 1000 they could think is even easier, because prices for license 251 -1000 clients will get much expensive on just +1 clients (when reaching 251) and we will pay this same price for years until we reach 1000 clients.

For my business reaching 1000 active clients is not over a night work.

 

Well it's not that hard if you offer free products or very cheap one time products. As every account counts, even if they are not paying you anymore. I guess it depends on what you are offering and your market .

Brian's solution will work if your intention was not to show the cancelled status on the customer side from a visual point of view. If your intention was to skip those accounts from the license check, then it's not possible, even if it was, it would be violating the WHMCS license agreement as those accounts are indeed valid active customers and count towards your license check.

Edited March 25, 2021 by yggdrasil

[brian!]

what about using "Completed" instead of "Cancelled" ?

https://docs.whmcs.com/Clients:Profile_Tab#Status_Update

Quote

An active product or addon is defined as being in the Active or Suspended state.

as per above, you could rename Completed to be something else with an override - plus it's not a status used by domains.

[zitu4life]

3 minutes ago, brian! said:

what about using "Completed" instead of "Cancelled" ?

https://docs.whmcs.com/Clients:Profile_Tab#Status_Update

as per above, you could rename Completed to be something else with an override - plus it's not a status used by domains.

Completed shoud works nice for me if this status COMPLETE will not count

[brian!]

2 minutes ago, zitu4life said:

Completed shoud works nice for me if this status COMPLETE will not count

https://docs.whmcs.com/Clients:Products/Services_Tab#Status

Quote

Completed - Useful for one-time services to indicate they have been performed (no further invoices will be generated)

it might be worth opening a quick ticket with Support to double check that completed statuses don't count towards the client's status, but I don't think they do.

[zitu4life]

Another idea is perhaps javascrit...

1. setting those products as CANCELED

2. Using a javascript to overwrite and display it as other name from clients perspective (javscript for client area) CANCELED =>ONE TIME PRODUCT

3.  another javascript for admin side to display CANCELED =>ONE TIME PRODUCT

PS: javascript for admin side would not work for all clients but for certain clients (example: set on specific CLIENT GROUP)

 

 

[brian!]

if you wanted to go down that road, you wouldn't need JS for the client side... possibly for the admin side.... but I think you should consider alternatives before trying to overcomplicate this!

[zitu4life]

2 minutes ago, brian! said:

if you wanted to go down that road, you wouldn't need JS for the client side... possibly for the admin side.... but I think you should consider alternatives before trying to overcomplicate this!

I guess I decide to live with that as someday perhaps I grow up over 1000 clients ( UNLIMITED LICENSE). Today I reach 250 clients and get enforced to upgrade my license. So this means that the way to 1000 clients will take some time to get that... It will cost me some extra dollars\month for upgraded license, but I guess my business will survive with that😃

I like the idea that WHMCS track every single item a client bought from me, even if it is ONE TIME, because it give me some metrics and track from that client, related to warranty of products, etc

[steven99]

How about instead of using Cancelled, you use terminated?  Terminated isn't a domain status and so can override that with whatever label you want like @brian! suggested.   I'd imagine those would not count against the active status as uh its not active. 😉

Though, I sort of wonder if one can just inject a new status to the statues menu and it gets saved as the status in the database is just a string.  If WHMCS does validity checking on that status is a different story though. 

[brian!]

19 hours ago, steven99 said:

If WHMCS does validity checking on that status is a different story though. 

it's an enumerated field, so the values can only be from the prescribed list of options, e.g the seven product statuses.

[ManagedCloud-Hosting]

Hi,

What to do if I want to show only to clients. 

1. Active

2. Payment Due (Custom)

3. Suspended

A - In case the active service payments are not received by mentioned Grace period dates then can the product auto switch to -> Payment Due and still if payment is not received by No. Of Days it gets suspended automatically. 

 

B - I want to send two different emails for invoice creation and reminders - 

1. Monthly / Yearly below a certain basic amount say $ 5 (Invoice sent before 7 Days)

2.  Monthly / Yearly below a certain basic amount say $ 50 (Invoice sent before 20 Days)

 

Thanks 

[zitu4life]

On 3/25/2021 at 5:00 PM, brian! said:

double check that completed statuses don't count towards the client's status, but I don't think they do.

I made a test and completed status means ACTIVE client.

[WisTex]

I am glad that I read this before setting up WHMCS. I was planning on using WHMCS for a general billing platform, but if a one-time client that ordered from you 5 years ago is considered an active client and goes against your active client ceiling, then WHMCS simply is not suitable for one-time products. So, new strategy for me: WHMCS is only for reoccurring hosting and domain names.  All other billing will go through a competing company's platform. I love WHMCS, but it does not make business sense to pay a license for clients that do not generate reoccurring revenue. Especially if that one "purchase" was a free promotional item that they didn't even pay for.

I can understand if a one-time client or free item counted against your active client ceiling for a certain period of time, but after 30 days or 90 days, if the customer has not ordered again, they should not be considered an active client.

Maybe it already does this and we don't know about it. But it does not make sense for stale customers to be listed as active. Hopefully WHMCS can clarify whether stale accounts count against your cap forever or not.