Invoice not being cancelled after automatic termination

[LittleCreek]

I must have missed something somewhere. Many times after a service is suspended for non payment the service then gets automatically terminated after a few days but the invoice for that service does not get cancelled. The client for some reason thinks he can pay the invoice to get the service back and pays it. But of course the service is already terminated. Now I have to manually refund the invoice.

How come the invoice does not get automatically cancelled when the service is terminated?

[bear]

Because the invoice was due regardless of the state of the account. 
That being said, a few years ago some folks worked on a hook to do this. Can't say for sure it will still work?

 

[LittleCreek]

11 hours ago, bear said:

Because the invoice was due regardless of the state of the account. 

But the invoice was for future service that they did not get. The invoice should be cancelled at that point. So when I look at all the unpaid invoices you are telling that many are for services that have already been cancelled? How long will those invoices stick around? Forever?

[bear]

33 minutes ago, LittleCreek said:

But the invoice was for future service that they did not get. The invoice should be cancelled at that point. So when I look at all the unpaid invoices you are telling that many are for services that have already been cancelled? How long will those invoices stick around? Forever?

You said terminated, not canceled. There's a choice in the settings to cancel the invoice upon cancellation, which will take care of the existing invoice. It covers cancellation, not a terminated account missing that cancellation. Services generally have a due date. When the system sees it's missed by a certain period, it will suspend (if set that way), and eventually terminate the service (again, based on settings). By the point of termination, it's assumed they've used the service past the original renewal date so still owe "something". 

To simply kill that invoice at that point would disrupt things like collections, late fees and more. It's on you to change that behavior if it doesn't suit your business. 

[LittleCreek]

22 hours ago, bear said:

By the point of termination, it's assumed they've used the service past the original renewal date so still owe "something". 

The service may have been used past the due by a couple of days before it was suspended. It just sees there should be an option to cancel invoices for terminated services since its not work my time to go after somebody for a $5 invoice of which they only used maybe 3 days worth.

Quote

It's on you to change that behavior if it doesn't suit your business.

But WHMCS does allow me to do that since there is no option to cancel invoices for terminated services. I may as well go back to manually cancelling services since auto termination doesn't finish the job.

 

[bear]

1 hour ago, LittleCreek said:

The service may have been used past the due by a couple of days before it was suspended. It just sees there should be an option to cancel invoices for terminated services since its not work my time to go after somebody for a $5 invoice of which they only used maybe 3 days worth.

What about a case where they had a credit, and partially paid one, but then gets suspended/terminated after? Causes a negative balance and other headaches. 
I found lots of addons people are selling to handle this invoice on auto termination issue (and discussions going back a dozen years), so clearly it's not something WHMCS will manage for you without creating/buying something to do it. 
It's up to you to go down that road or not, but for me personally, unless it was a regular occurrence and being left unhandled as a result, it may not be worth the cost and effort. 
Terminated accounts on our servers generate an email. That would likely trigger someone here to look at the account, see if they can be nudged into coming back (we keep running backups, so restoration isn't difficult), and at least cancelling the invoice. 

[LittleCreek]

I used to not use the auto terminate function. I used to to once a week check for suspensions and manually cancel the services which would also cancel any unpaid invoices. I started to use auto terminate thinking I wouldn't have to deal with this anymore. But I still have to manually cancel the unpaid invoices so the auto terminate really doesn't help me at all. I do understand now that terminate and cancel are 2 different functions. I thought it was just different so that I would know if it was a client or me that took action. But now I understand that I need to go back to the way I was previously handling the suspensions. Thank you.

[LittleCreek]

I kept search and found the built in solution:

https://docs.whmcs.com/releases/8-10/8-10-release-highlights/#Cancel_Accumulated_Overdue_Invoices_Automatically

Apparently I had set it for 30 days when it really should be set for the same number of days as the auto terminate function.

Edited November 27 by LittleCreek

[wandery]

How come the invoice does not get automatically cancelled when the service is terminated?

[bear]

Good to know, even if that link REALLY was about promoting Sitejet (again). The good news about invoices was a little buried. 🙂

[LittleCreek]

I do see what you mean now after doing some more investigating.

Say I have my system set to terminate after 10 days of no payment and the invoice will be cancelled at the same time.

If a customer says he needs 2 more weeks in order to make payment I can set his service to not suspend until 2 weeks into the future. 12 days go by and he is now ready to make payment but the invoice has been automatically cancelled so he cannot make payment. Not only that but the service will not get suspended even if he doesn't come back to make payment because the invoice is no longer unpaid.

So yes there can be some complications. However I would rather have it than not because when I extend the service beyond the due date its a manual process and I can always make a not to myself at that point to fix the invoice when the time comes. But I can see why other people wouldn't want to do this. But I do believe in allowing us to make choices which WHMCS has done in this case. 

I now wish there was a way to exclude and invoice from auto cancelling.