Quote Numbers

[kennerty]

Is it possible to modify the quote number, like you can with invoices?

For example, I'd like my quotes to begin with the year & month. 202105001

If that's not possible, how about just changing the starting number?

[MrGettingRatherFrustrated]

You can change the starting number directly in the database in tblquotes - I couldnt see anyway to do it from the interface, you will need to create a first dummy quote with nothing on it and then you just change the id to the number you want as a starting point

If you change any existing quotes here you also need to change the corresponding entries in tblquoteitems.

This is what seems to be the classic WHMCS development thought process (or lack of)  in that they implemnted this for invoices but it seemingly didnt register that applying the same to quotes would be useful/a good idea -  I mean, what company wants to send a customer quote number 1??

Edited June 2, 2021 by MrGettingRatherFrustrated

[brian!]

On 25/05/2021 at 10:00, kennerty said:

Is it possible to modify the quote number, like you can with invoices?

sadly, not in the same way.

On 25/05/2021 at 10:00, kennerty said:

For example, I'd like my quotes to begin with the year & month. 202105001

if memory serves, the quote number will be used in 4 places - on the html/print quote template, the PDF quote template, relevant email templates and in the url link to the quote itself.

• in the html/print template, you could change the quote number with a hook (ClientAreaPageQuotes), e.g concatenate the creation date with the original quote number - depending on date format, you might have to pull it from the database, remove hyphens etc, but that's simple enough.
• in the PDF, it's the same again - you're just modifying the $quotenumber variable - by default, it's going to be the ID value from the database table, but it doesn't have to be as changes here are just cosmetic.
• in the email templates, then it's either a EmailPreSend hook to modify the $quote_number variable (as per above), or you do it in the template itself using Smarty (though that might require a change to theSmarty Security Policy depending on how you do it).
• the url link itself would still use the ID field from the database - I suppose you could setup a redirection, but that would be a lot of faffing about.

On 25/05/2021 at 10:00, kennerty said:

If that's not possible, how about just changing the starting number?

you could do it using SQL, e.g via phpmyadmin, to change the auto increment value.

ALTER TABLE tblquotes AUTO_INCREMENT = 10000;

as with all SQL update/altering queries, remember to backup the table/database as a precaution. ⚠️

that would make the next quote to be created be given an ID of 10000, then the one after that would be 10001 etc

12 hours ago, MrGettingRatherFrustrated said:

If you change any existing quotes here you also need to change the corresponding entries in tblquoteitems.

true, but I personally wouldn't bother unless you really had to... it would probably be easier to hide accepted, or old (after x months) from the client area.

12 hours ago, MrGettingRatherFrustrated said:

This is what seems to be the classic WHMCS development thought process (or lack of)  in that they implemented this for invoices but it seemingly didn't register that applying the same to quotes would be useful/a good idea -  I mean, what company wants to send a customer quote number 1??

I see you're still enjoying the inconsistencies within WHMCS.... oh this is how one feature works... move on to another related  feature, and it doesn't work in the same way... scratch head.

I doubt either feature (invoices & quotes) is this respect has fundamentally changed in 10+ years... if I go back to 2013 and v5, then it's exactly the same then as it is now... jump forward 5 years, and I wouldn't imagine that I would see anything vastly different.

[MrGettingRatherFrustrated]

On 3/06/2021 at 1:19 PM, brian! said:

I see you're still enjoying the inconsistencies within WHMCS.... oh this is how one feature works... move on to another related  feature, and it doesn't work in the same way... scratch head.

I doubt either feature (invoices & quotes) is this respect has fundamentally changed in 10+ years... if I go back to 2013 and v5, then it's exactly the same then as it is now... jump forward 5 years, and I wouldn't imagine that I would see anything vastly different.

Yeah, and yes you did warn me 🙂

It has served my purposes for the brief initial period but I am actively looking to move away (after less than 6 months)

The product is simply too unwieldly and cumbersome, sloppily coded. poorly tested and carries too high a maintenance overhead - as the 3rd party module developers move on to a product that has a growing rather than shrinking customer base it is going to become an increasingly unviable solution especially for non developer customers like me as modules we have bought stop working with a WHMCS upgrade.

8.2 looks like a great example of how the focus from WHMCS is pure short term financial self interest - as far as I can tell the only changes in it are to enable them to act as a reseller for more products and services rather than provide anything that existing customers actually want and even promised features remain missing.  John has repeatedly told me that they are addressing the issues with translations/multi-lingual shortcomings - ie configurable options dont support dynamic translation and despite partially reworking add-ons in 8.2 you still cant have discrete products as add-ons despite god knows how many requests. It isnt just the price increases where they show contempt for their customers - it is their whole culture from obstructive support and refusal to acknowledge defects and bugs through to the utterly pointless feature request "system" and failure to deliver any real improvements to the product and instead just tinkering on the edges.

When was the last time they actually delivered a feature that customers were asking for?

Edited June 5, 2021 by MrGettingRatherFrustrated