Annual invoice for all domains

[blakeh]

How would one go about configuring the system if we want to send one invoice a year with the renewals for all the domains for that year? I know we can change the due dates on the domains, but the system wants to change them when it syncs.

Is anyone else doing billing this way?  We have some clients that just want the single invoice for the year to renew all domains.

Thanks.

[Cowboy]

I tried doing this with one client who had about 6 domain names. You basically change the renewal dates on all the domain names to the same time of year. The problem though is that it becomes confusing for your own registrar billing if you have sporadic names due and you haven't got notes - so make sure to place notes in the customer account file! 

[blakeh]

We kept the expiration dates correct, but we changed the due dates to all be the same and turned off due date sync in settings.

The issue is that the template for sending out domain expiration notices are triggered off the due date, not the expiration date, so we had clients get confused.  Not good.

[lulzkiller]

Unless you'r registrar offers month to month payment of domains, its almost impossible, unless you renew the domains "early" / "late" so the dates matches, but you most likely will end up either with a deleted domain, or a domain that have 1 year + 123 days before its due again.

[othellotech]

on the client summary page, tick the box next to each domain

click "invoice now" (or whatever your version calls it) 

no need to change dates

 

[blakeh]

2 hours ago, othellotech said:

on the client summary page, tick the box next to each domain

click "invoice now" (or whatever your version calls it) 

no need to change dates

 

I'm talking about it being automated, not having to do it manually each year.

[othellotech]

That's a standard feature - you just set the due-date to be the same on them all 🙂

[Evolve Web Hosting]

On 3/4/2022 at 2:05 PM, othellotech said:

That's a standard feature - you just set the due-date to be the same on them all 🙂

You also need to look at your Automation settings.

Domain Sync Enabled

Sync Next Due Date

Domain Sync Notify Only

I haven't tried to adjust these very much but I'd like to. I think to make it work, WHMCS would need to add more granular control to the 'sync next due date' by allowing us to set this on a per customer basis.

Does anyone have any further insight?

[blakeh]

12 minutes ago, evolve hosting said:

You also need to look at your Automation settings.

Domain Sync Enabled

Sync Next Due Date

Domain Sync Notify Only

I haven't tried to adjust these very much but I'd like to. I think to make it work, WHMCS would need to add more granular control to the 'sync next due date' by allowing us to set this on a per customer basis.

Does anyone have any further insight?

I've already done all that and have kludged a way to make it do what we need, but we basically give up the ability for domain invoice dates to sync to x days before expiration and we have to update that manually.

I agree with you that we need more granular control, I think one way might be to exclude a customer from the system sync next due date settings. That right there would solve the issue.

[Evolve Web Hosting]

2 minutes ago, blakeh said:

I've already done all that and have kludged a way to make it do what we need, but we basically give up the ability for domain invoice dates to sync to x days before expiration and we have to update that manually.

I agree with you that we need more granular control, I think one way might be to exclude a customer from the system sync next due date settings. That right there would solve the issue.

That's the problem. I don't want to give up that syncing feature for most of the customers. Another way would be to do it by client group but it also needs more granular controls. I doubt it could be done by writing a hook but maybe I'm wrong and it's possible?

[blakeh]

20 minutes ago, evolve hosting said:

That's the problem. I don't want to give up that syncing feature for most of the customers. Another way would be to do it by client group but it also needs more granular controls. I doubt it could be done by writing a hook but maybe I'm wrong and it's possible?

Something this basic shouldn't have to be kludged with a hook.

We acquired a company that had modded WHMCS with hooks and custom scripts to mess with and alter domain sync dates. It was a nightmare to deal with. Some of their mods were doing direct database edits to override domain date sync settings. (ironically, from what we could see, they were doing db edits to override the date sync instead of just turning it off in the settings)

Maybe a better idea is if they included a toggle option per domain that it's exempt from the date sync, that way it's as granular as you can get.

We have our fix for now, we manually set all our domain due dates to what we want.

[yggdrasil]

How do you think this is going to work when domains don't fall on the same date and most extensions only give a few days for renewal?

If a domain expires that year, it's very likely when they receive the invoice once a year its way too late to renew. I'm curious how you plan this to work.

Imagine the customer has:

Domain A

Domain B

Domain C

And each one expires 3 months apart or is there something I'm missing?

[Evolve Web Hosting]

8 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

How do you think this is going to work when domains don't fall on the same date and most extensions only give a few days for renewal?

If a domain expires that year, it's very likely when they receive the invoice once a year its way too late to renew. I'm curious how you plan this to work.

Imagine the customer has:

Domain A

Domain B

Domain C

And each one expires 3 months apart or is there something I'm missing?

I'm not a WHMCS coder but something along the lines of single_renew_date = mm/dd/ and expiration_date<= 365 days out ; however  that would be translated into workable code

[yggdrasil]

On 4/21/2022 at 8:52 AM, evolve hosting said:

I'm not a WHMCS coder but something along the lines of single_renew_date = mm/dd/ and expiration_date<= 365 days out ; however  that would be translated into workable code

Sorry but I don't understand. My question was not about how to do this in WHMCS but from a business perspective. How are you going to explain a customer he just lost valuable domain names because you did not billed him for renewal?

The OP is trying to send once invoice per year for all domains that expire in the year, but when? January? December? Before they expire? What about domains that expired before the invoice email? You still need to email and invoice them separately; I don't see how it's possible to have 1 single invoice for all domain names that fall under different months. Domain names will certainly not expire at the same date.

Edited April 25, 2022 by yggdrasil

[Evolve Web Hosting]

12 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

Sorry but I don't understand. My question was not about how to do this in WHMCS but from a business perspective. How are you going to explain a customer he just lost valuable domain names because you did not billed him for renewal?

The OP is trying to send once invoice per year for all domains that expire in the year, but when? January? December? Before they expire? What about domains that expired before the invoice email? You still need to email and invoice them separately; I don't see how it's possible to have 1 single invoice for all domain names that fall under different months. Domain names will certainly not expire at the same date.

If it's implemented properly, you don't need to worry about 'losing a valuable domain'. You'd set a date to send the invoice and the script would run a query on the database to fetch all domains with an expiration date within 365 days of the date to send the invoice. Am I missing something else?

[yggdrasil]

10 hours ago, evolve hosting said:

If it's implemented properly, you don't need to worry about 'losing a valuable domain'. You'd set a date to send the invoice and the script would run a query on the database to fetch all domains with an expiration date within 365 days of the date to send the invoice. Am I missing something else?

When would that query and invoice run? January or December? What happens in case someone does not want to renew some domains?

Edited April 26, 2022 by yggdrasil

[othellotech]

>When would that query and invoice run? January or December?

It wouldn't matter, just use today+1Y (or today+1Y+1d is 28th feb) - any domain coming up for renewal within the year will be on that, and any new registrations or gtld domains moved in will have dates of next year, so pickedup on the next  years' run

 

> What happens in case someone does not want to renew some domains?

 

They mark them as do not renew / turn off autorenew in the client area as normal and WHMCS takes them off the invoice automatically.

 

[Evolve Web Hosting]

9 hours ago, othellotech said:

>When would that query and invoice run? January or December?

It wouldn't matter, just use today+1Y (or today+1Y+1d is 28th feb) - any domain coming up for renewal within the year will be on that, and any new registrations or gtld domains moved in will have dates of next year, so pickedup on the next  years' run

 

> What happens in case someone does not want to renew some domains?

 

They mark them as do not renew / turn off autorenew in the client area as normal and WHMCS takes them off the invoice automatically.

 

Thank you for answering him. I couldn't figure out why he kept asking these same questions so I didn't answer.

[yggdrasil]

On 4/30/2022 at 11:18 PM, othellotech said:

>When would that query and invoice run? January or December?

It wouldn't matter, just use today+1Y (or today+1Y+1d is 28th feb) - any domain coming up for renewal within the year will be on that, and any new registrations or gtld domains moved in will have dates of next year, so pickedup on the next  years' run

 

> What happens in case someone does not want to renew some domains?

 

They mark them as do not renew / turn off autorenew in the client area as normal and WHMCS takes them off the invoice automatically.

 

And if I paid the invoice and later decide I want to renew other domains?

[Evolve Web Hosting]

6 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

And if I paid the invoice and later decide I want to renew other domains?

Why are you asking all of these questions?

You would go through and manually renew any other domains that you wanted through the client portal afterwards. If you don't want to renew for any longer at the moment, you'll do nothing and wait until your annual invoice arrives the next year to renew again.

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

6 hours ago, evolve hosting said:

Why are you asking all of these questions?

You would go through and manually renew any other domains that you wanted through the client portal afterwards. If you don't want to renew for any longer at the moment, you'll do nothing and wait until your annual invoice arrives the next year to renew again.

Nothing wrong with discussion, I don't see why it'd be done that way anyway but the site is pretty dead - I'm shocked whmcs haven't pulled the plug to be honest 🤣

Encourage discussion or there will be no 3rd advertising site left 😜

[bear]

3 hours ago, Bigol'tastynuggets said:

Encourage discussion

Like this does?
 

Quote

My views can upset those with a delicate ego, I promise to forgive tantrums from less emotionally stable people

 

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

I'm sorry if that view upset you, it was a humorous thing however. 🙄

There's a difference in questioning people's ability to ask a question.... and your quite hilarious given the context reaction to my sig 😜 

[bear]

It doesn't upset me, trolls, gotta troll. 😉

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

OK, well you do what you need to bear! I'm not overly sure what your intention was to be honest...... Me suggesting that others should be allowed to talk, is overruled by a humorous signature and then I'm the troll? 

Lay off the sauce bear, it's tiresome.