Merging invoices sets the new invoices due date to latest due date not not earliest

[bluesteam]

Hello,

I never really used to use the merge invoices feature until recently where a client has been asking me to merge certain invoices together in to one.

What I have come to notice about this feature is that if you have 4 or 5 services that are all merged together, the due date that is now set on the new merged invoice is always taken from the service that is due last and not first.

So for example, if we have the following services:

Service 1 - Due on 5 March
Service 2 - Due on 14 February
Service 3 - Due on 9 February
Service 4 - Due on 6 February
Service 5 - Due on 3 February

Now you merge these invoices in to one invoice as per the clients request and the new invoice becomes due 5 March instead of 3 February. This is a problem because the other services are actually due earlier.

The intention of the request from the client to merge them all is because the client asked to merge them all so that only one payment can be made.

But recently I was faced with a client that asked me to merge a bunch of invoices together.
He then saw that the due date was only 5 March not 3 February so he refused to pay the invoice now to settle the services that are due much earlier.

So sent the client a polite text and mentioned to the client that he needs to pay it now as the other services are due much earlier than Service 1 and if he doesn't pay it now, the system would see that these services had not been paid and that they were going to be suspended.

The client call me in an absolute rageful vengeance and accused me of trying to force him to pay the invoice earlier than its due date.  I tried my best to calm the client down and explain the situation but he was having NONE of it at all.

So to keep the client happy, I had to go and manually override the suspension dates of each service to be 5 March to avoid further chaos from the client but this should NEVER be the case because I should not have to give the client a free service just because an invoices due date was not set correctly when merging.

Is this the standard practice of WHMCS to set merged invoices due dates to the service that has the latest due date?  If this is the case then I am VERY worried about using this feature going forward.

Is there a way to rather use the service with the earliest due date as the due date instead so that if the client queries why it is due now, I can explain to the client that it is because of the specific service that is due now and if he wants that one split out to settle it now, we can do that.

I hope I explained things clearly
Thanks in advance

Edited February 8, 2022 by bluesteam

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

Yeah invoicing and billing is a bit wonky with whmcs in my humble opinion! Search for vat and lose a day of your life and 13 IQ points if you'd like to better understand that point! 

What you're describing is actually not that bad in the general scheme of things - but the ideal scenario is to pro-rata them to the 1st of the month as an example and bill from there! 

Side note, your client sounds like a nightmare - what was he expecting to happen? Maybe you could do something that appeases any future people with the option of a merged invoice or pro-rata billing 

Alternatively, if they're really insane tell them to add credit to the account and leave you alone 😝 

[bluesteam]

1 minute ago, Bigol'tastynuggets said:

Yeah invoicing and billing is a bit wonky with whmcs in my humble opinion! Search for vat and lose a day of your life and 13 IQ points if you'd like to better understand that point! 

What you're describing is actually not that bad in the general scheme of things - but the ideal scenario is to pro-rata them to the 1st of the month as an example and bill from there! 

Side note, your client sounds like a nightmare - what was he expecting to happen? Maybe you could do something that appeases any future people with the option of a merged invoice or pro-rata billing 

Alternatively, if they're really insane tell them to add credit to the account and leave you alone 😝 

The solution would simply be to set the due date of the invoice to the earliest due date out of the services in the list.  That would make the client see that there are services that need to be paid now and paying the invoice with other services on the invoice that are due later is just a consequence of requesting multiple services to be merged in to one invoice.

but setting the merged invoices due date to that of the LATEST due date from all of the services on the invoice is a big problem for the services that are due earlier.

It messes with them badly.

Yes, he is a bit of a nightmare and I did suggest that he adds credit but he refused outright and said that it was not the solution.  He said I must get a better system!

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day 😛

I actually disagree from a billing perspective- the only way to do it fairly is to work out the difference and bill that, followed by singular bills on the regular cycle. 

Personally, I would advise them of the options available and let the client pick  -  We no longer use whmcs for our hosting and servers but we'd sometimes run into it with customers who have a lot of servers everything else is pretty straightforward and it's not often we get it anyway but I don't think I've ever been told off by a client 🤣 Infact most offer to pay the required amount to bring them in line initially with it being a proposal from them - others don't really care just want to simplify the billing and will do whatever we advise! 

It's been a few months since doing it on whmcs however so I can't remember how it acts! I am curious on my colleagues view on that as we've always just done it that way! With only one installation left that it'd never be needed on I can't see me having that issue on whmcs again! Most others handle the billing in what I perceive as much better 

[bluesteam]

Ask your colleague to merge a few invoices in his dev environment that have different due dates.  he will see that the new due date on the merged invoice is set to the LAST due date of all the services.

Then ask him to see if he would be happy with the client only paying that invoice on the NEW due date seeing as though the other services will now be suspended because they werent paid for.

It's crazy to think that this is normal.

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it's not that bad for the usual interpretation of flow whmcs seem to implement! 

I'm quite shocked that it's not based of of the clients favourite colour and what they had for lunch a week ago! 

The sane approach for me would be to bring the early services up to the last date (5th of March in your example) and then bill for them all from that date - however depending upon locality this may not be an option and it could be a case of whmcs finding a middle ground to appease as many as possible (Again I'm not sure, just guessing) 

The only whmcs we have now is a live install and I'm pretty sure the dev installation is gone now as we've done the groundwork for migrating away- I'm just offering some alternatives for your conundrum with your client, I've lost all motivation to meddle with whmcs and wonder where it went wrong. 

I suspect they'll ask you to open a feature request and tell you it works "as intended" on this specific topic! 

[bluesteam]

yes, that would also work to bring the other services in line with the last due date by allocating a pro-rata amount but the alternative is just to make the due date the earliest instead of the latest.

Yh, feature requests just go in to a black hole void and almost NEVER get implemented.

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

You never know, they might hold a special raffle to pick one per decade 😝

[bluesteam]

So true!  😆

It can be frustrating when you have something that could really change WHMCS or improve it and it just gets passed over.

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

Yes, I think over many years we saw whmcs do the total opposite of what seemed "right" or "popular" and tell us it was highly requested lol 

Each to their own, we certainly don't control what they do - we just pay to use the software! It's diverged beyond where we feel comfortable to trust it is still suitable and/or that we can afford to remain. Funnily enough, within 3 weeks of swapping one service we realised we hadn't been collecting VAT anywhere nearly correctly and we spent about 30 man hours sorting this years invoices in addition to the usual routine. It was also embarrassing explaining to customers why the invoice amounts had gone up by small amounts since changing billing systems.

 Will try and have a look at the invoices later when I get chance but I'd say that'd probably be the path of least resistance personally- I can't see whmcs chiming in to say it'll be changed or anything other than submit a feature request to be honest. 

[yggdrasil]

On 2/8/2022 at 3:26 AM, bluesteam said:

Hello,

I never really used to use the merge invoices feature until recently where a client has been asking me to merge certain invoices together in to one.

What I have come to notice about this feature is that if you have 4 or 5 services that are all merged together, the due date that is now set on the new merged invoice is always taken from the service that is due last and not first.

So for example, if we have the following services:

Service 1 - Due on 5 March
Service 2 - Due on 14 February
Service 3 - Due on 9 February
Service 4 - Due on 6 February
Service 5 - Due on 3 February

Now you merge these invoices in to one invoice as per the clients request and the new invoice becomes due 5 March instead of 3 February. This is a problem because the other services are actually due earlier.

The intention of the request from the client to merge them all is because the client asked to merge them all so that only one payment can be made.

But recently I was faced with a client that asked me to merge a bunch of invoices together.
He then saw that the due date was only 5 March not 3 February so he refused to pay the invoice now to settle the services that are due much earlier.

So sent the client a polite text and mentioned to the client that he needs to pay it now as the other services are due much earlier than Service 1 and if he doesn't pay it now, the system would see that these services had not been paid and that they were going to be suspended.

The client call me in an absolute rageful vengeance and accused me of trying to force him to pay the invoice earlier than its due date.  I tried my best to calm the client down and explain the situation but he was having NONE of it at all.

So to keep the client happy, I had to go and manually override the suspension dates of each service to be 5 March to avoid further chaos from the client but this should NEVER be the case because I should not have to give the client a free service just because an invoices due date was not set correctly when merging.

Is this the standard practice of WHMCS to set merged invoices due dates to the service that has the latest due date?  If this is the case then I am VERY worried about using this feature going forward.

Is there a way to rather use the service with the earliest due date as the due date instead so that if the client queries why it is due now, I can explain to the client that it is because of the specific service that is due now and if he wants that one split out to settle it now, we can do that.

I hope I explained things clearly
Thanks in advance

Seems that customer is just not worth the trouble. You did him a favor while merging invoices and then refuses to pay when services are due? If you don't respect your own due dates, then he will try to game you around next time with other things. In my experience you should never break your own policies and rules.

[bluesteam]

23 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

Seems that customer is just not worth the trouble. You did him a favor while merging invoices and then refuses to pay when services are due? If you don't respect your own due dates, then he will try to game you around next time with other things. In my experience you should never break your own policies and rules.

I agree that he is very difficult and I did push him to pay it but I still feel that the system should be fixed.  It should NEVER take the last due date for the new merged invoice.  It should either pro-rate the services and add this on as an additional cost as @Bigol'tastynuggets stated or it should always take the earliest due date.

Edited February 9, 2022 by bluesteam

[Remitur]

On 2/8/2022 at 10:36 AM, Bigol'tastynuggets said:

The sane approach for me would be to bring the early services up to the last date (5th of March in your example) and then bill for them all from that date

You can do so just for few services you manage on your own (i.e. an hosting service on your own server)

If it's  a third party service (i.e. SSL certificate, domain registration, some kind of hosting service provided by a third party) you can't: you need to renew the service (for one year, one month or whatever...) before the expiring date, and there's no way you can  postpone it of days or weeks ...

Should exist some kind of hook point for invoice merging, it should be easy (take all the expiring date for every involved invoice, choose the lower, change expiring date of every involved invoice with this date, let's go on merging it...)
But such a hook point does not exist... 😞

 

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

6 hours ago, Remitur said:

You can do so just for few services you manage on your own (i.e. an hosting service on your own server)

If it's  a third party service (i.e. SSL certificate, domain registration, some kind of hosting service provided by a third party) you can't: you need to renew the service (for one year, one month or whatever...) before the expiring date, and there's no way you can  postpone it of days or weeks ...

Should exist some kind of hook point for invoice merging, it should be easy (take all the expiring date for every involved invoice, choose the lower, change expiring date of every involved invoice with this date, let's go on merging it...)
But such a hook point does not exist... 😞

 

Yeah, I wasn't really including 3rd party stuff - I suppose that'd fall into the same category as domains really but if the client wants one invoice then annual services existing would mean its all becoming annual i.e you'd work everything out to be the same date

I must admit I don't target the lower end market so I'm comfortable with a few quid being risked - if I was involved in the race to the bottom like many hosts a few quid is probably a large % of the profit