Switching to Prorata Billing - and its consequences for existing customers

[slim]

I have been reselling some products in WHMCS that I am thinking about switching to prorata billing.

Here is an example:

Office 365 mailboxes:  Exchange Plan 1, and business Standard are setup in WHMCS as products.

Some clients have say a dozen Exchange Plan 1 products and say 2 dozen business standard products. 

Most of these started on different days of the month. Some are billed yearly, and some are billed monthly. You can imagine that after a while it gets a bit crazy - Lots of invoices going to the client throughout the month.

I was thinking about switching on prorata billing - however there is no documentation to explain what happens after enabling it. How are the existing customers effected? Can someone explain what happens if I enable prorata on these products?

 

Edited April 6, 2022 by slim

[yggdrasil]

12 hours ago, slim said:

I have been reselling some products in WHMCS that I am thinking about switching to prorata billing.

Here is an example:

Office 365 mailboxes:  Exchange Plan 1, and business Standard are setup in WHMCS as products.

Some clients have say a dozen Exchange Plan 1 products and say 2 dozen business standard products. 

Most of these started on different days of the month. Some are billed yearly, and some are billed monthly. You can imagine that after a while it gets a bit crazy - Lots of invoices going to the client throughout the month.

I was thinking about switching on prorata billing - however there is no documentation to explain what happens after enabling it. How are the existing customers effected? Can someone explain what happens if I enable prorata on these products?

 

I did not tested this but I suspect changing it on the product setting will not actually change the billing period on your customer side. This would only affect new purchases as far as I know, the product period, pricing is not coupled to the customer once the product is already active, this allows to set different prices and dates for each individual customer. You would need to change the billing period manually on each customer product as well. Again, I can't confirm this, you better test this out first.

[Evolve Web Hosting]

Here's the scoop:

Switching to pro rata now will only effect new orders

If you set it up to invoice a partial month, plus the next month, it works great for monthly billing cycle. If you have an annual order placed, it's only going to charge for the remainder of the month and 11 more. Ex. Customer places annual order on April 15, 2022 for an annual license. WHMCS will invoice them for the rest of April and their next renewal date will be April 1, 2023

Personally, I'd rather the renewal data be for May 1, 2023

The pro rated calculation does not work the same for monthly vs. annually

For your existing orders, you'd need to manually invoice your customers a pro rated amount and manually adjust the next due date

[slim]

Thanks - Thats great. It will allow me to start offering simpler billing to new clients straight up while allowing me to slowly switch everyone else across.