Invoice Creation

[MACscr]

I really hate how invoices are not created every month or whenever a persons payments cycle is setup. It only creates an invoice if the past invoice was already paid. This does not work out well at all for importing accounts that are past due or maybe just giving the users some slack and not suspending their account because its 2 months past due or maybe your wanting to unsuspend an account, but they are 2 months past due.

 

There are multiple reasons, but i really do not think the current setup automatic invoice creation is correct. Your thoughts?

[Dominic]

Does cancelling the unpaid invoice and manually editing the client's next billing date work (as in, cause the invoice to be correctly generated for the next due billing period)?

[MACscr]

I think so, but why would you want to cancel their invoice?

[Dominic]

Presumably if they haven't paid it, and you're cutting them slack, it'll never be paid so it might as well be cancelled

[MACscr]

Presumably if they haven't paid it, and you're cutting them slack, it'll never be paid so it might as well be cancelled

 

ROFL, not cutting them that much slack. =P

 

Actually some of my issues with non payment has been because of them nto receiving emails or just accounting problems on my end. Either way, they were a customer up to this point and were receiving services, thus they should be invoiced for those services, not just invoiced for the first billing cycle.

[Dominic]

Ah I get you

 

If a client pays the latest invoice, they might assume their account is up to date if their renewal date is then shown as (invoice date + billing period length) - there needs to be a way to prevent that, too - interesting one for sure

 

What our old system does is not invoice people until they've paid their first overdue invoice, at which point on its next run it sees people still have an overdue account (since, say, they paid for Jan but it's now March, so Feb needs invoicing as well), and then sends another invoice for the next due billing period

[MACscr]

Ah I get you

 

If a client pays the latest invoice, they might assume their account is up to date if their renewal date is then shown as (invoice date + billing period length) - there needs to be a way to prevent that, too - interesting one for sure

 

Here is an example. I have a client that signed up in November and paid with CC and signed up for monthly billing. For his december invoice, the payment failed, reminders were sent. I tried manually running it again in early January, still issues. More reminder emails sent. I suspended the account in late january. The customer needs to pay for December and January to be up to date, but only 1 invoice was created and that was December. Lets say the monthly rate is $50. He should have to invoices with a total for $100. The January invoice should reflect that December was not paid, thus $100 is due. That way they dont have to make payments twice for the two invoices.

 

Does this make sense and am i using good logic an how ideally the invoices should work?

 

 

What our old system does is not invoice people until they've paid their first overdue invoice, at which point on its next run it sees people still have an overdue account (since, say, they paid for Jan but it's now March, so Feb needs invoicing as well), and then sends another invoice for the next due billing period

 

Which is a horrible concept dont you think?

[Dominic]

Ah I get you

 

If a client pays the latest invoice, they might assume their account is up to date if their renewal date is then shown as (invoice date + billing period length) - there needs to be a way to prevent that, too - interesting one for sure

 

Here is an example. I have a client that signed up in November and paid with CC and signed up for monthly billing. For his december invoice, the payment failed, reminders were sent. I tried manually running it again in early January, still issues. More reminder emails sent. I suspended the account in late january. The customer needs to pay for December and January to be up to date, but only 1 invoice was created and that was December. Lets say the monthly rate is $50. He should have to invoices with a total for $100. The January invoice should reflect that December was not paid, thus $100 is due. That way they dont have to make payments twice for the two invoices.

 

Does this make sense and am i using good logic an how ideally the invoices should work?

 

 

What our old system does is not invoice people until they've paid their first overdue invoice, at which point on its next run it sees people still have an overdue account (since, say, they paid for Jan but it's now March, so Feb needs invoicing as well), and then sends another invoice for the next due billing period

 

Which is a horrible concept dont you think?

Yes, good logic - I agree

 

Also, yes, it was a horrible & messy concept - so confusing, for all involved

[Adam]

Hey,

 

I agree. I had to deal with this a few months back and was looking at the invoices and then to the gateway log and banging my head on the table way to many times.

 

I finally had to open up my Microsoft Access database to find out that yes, my client did have another invoice that was not paid...

 

From,

Adam

[Matt]

Unfortunately, you can request all you want, but this one won't be changing anytime soon Mac! It's just not possible with the current logic and would require a complete overhaul of the whole invoicing logic. Take this case for an example, if a client signs up but never pays their first invoice, you don't want invoices generating each month do you? After 12 months, there you have 12 unpaid invoices wasting space and resources if it worked how you suggest. You then have to manually set the client to inactive to stop anymore from generating. Just more work. Ok, if the client does genuinely forget or fail to pay for a whole 2 months! then bringing the account back up to date on payments will take two payments on two seperate invoices but I think overall it does seem more logical to not invoice endlessly if invoices are not getting paid.

[MACscr]

Unfortunately, you can request all you want, but this one won't be changing anytime soon Mac! It's just not possible with the current logic and would require a complete overhaul of the whole invoicing logic. Take this case for an example, if a client signs up but never pays their first invoice, you don't want invoices generating each month do you? After 12 months, there you have 12 unpaid invoices wasting space and resources if it worked how you suggest. You then have to manually set the client to inactive to stop anymore from generating. Just more work. Ok, if the client does genuinely forget or fail to pay for a whole 2 months! then bringing the account back up to date on payments will take two payments on two seperate invoices but I think overall it does seem more logical to not invoice endlessly if invoices are not getting paid.

 

Which is why invoices are bills, not receipts. So if they owe money, they have invoices to pay. If a client signs up and gets services for 12 months, they most definitely should have 12 months of services invoiced.

 

I know i can request this all i want and most likely wont get it, but my logic is correct and yours is wrong. If this billing solution isnt going to make my billing easier, then its not doing its job. The amount of work that you need to do to correct the poor logic is not my concern.

[MACscr]

Ok, if the client does genuinely forget or fail to pay for a whole 2 months! then bringing the account back up to date on payments will take two payments on two seperate invoices but I think overall it does seem more logical to not invoice endlessly if invoices are not getting paid.

 

The main problem with that logic is that your system does not even create two invoices, it only creates the first month.

[Dominic]

my logic is correct and yours is wrong

But only in the case that you don't suspend clients for their overdue period, which is probably the crux of the matter

 

Edit: You can edit invoices - how about that? Edit the invoice to add in the extra necessary payment.

[Matt]

Yes, the client by not paying would not get 12 months of the service. If they don't even pay the first invoice, why would you ever set them up in the first place?!?!?

 

my logic is correct and yours is wrong.

In your opinion, maybe...

[MACscr]

Yes, the client by not paying would not get 12 months of the service. If they don't even pay the first invoice, why would you ever set them up in the first place?!?!?

 

my logic is correct and yours is wrong.

In your opinion, maybe...

 

Because they did pay for the first month. Maybe they have been customers for years and i dont want to just cut them off right away. My point is that this is a billing system, so it should bill for services tendered. Not tell me that i should have canceled their account or suspended them (since i have the option to turn that off in the admin).

 

I also would think that my opinion would carry some weight around here. As you can see above, this post has only been up for a small amount of time and many people already agree with it.

 

Matt, i am not trying to make your life harder, just trying to help improve the system so that it is appreciated by a larger audience, which of course means more money in your pocket.

[cbtrussell]

I know i can request this all i want and most likely wont get it, but my logic is correct and yours is wrong. If this billing solution isnt going to make my billing easier, then its not doing its job. The amount of work that you need to do to correct the poor logic is not my concern.

I have to agree. I am desperately seeking an alternative to MB, and thought WHMCS might be the solution... until I ran across this thread. This isn't how real/enterprise billing systems work and is a deal breaker for us.

 

It makes no sense not to generate the next invoice at the appropriate time just because the previous invoice is unpaid. Most of our customers pay by check, it's not uncommon to receive those payments a few days late. This would be a disaster for us.

 

Here's hoping Matt rethinks this policy.

 

Brandon

[amnesia]

This feature is not really needed by me... but, MACscr has a point that this IS a wanted feature...

[brianoz]

Perhaps it might be possible to have a setting where one can specify that a number of months invoices are OK to be generated before putting a user into suspension. No doubt the correct logic isn't trivial but I'm sure Matt is up to producing something that works.

 

I guess if you ask what I want, I'd like to be able to choose on a per invoice basis. I think!!

[addeacher]

If a customer doesn't pay 12 months they should have 12 invoice of course its not receipt its invoice and they don't take that much space now does it. So far the systems i have used did this so if one client miss 3 payment he or she has 3 invoice unpaid then it would be up to you what to do suspend set it to suspend if not paid or whatever the case is.

[ozzie]

I know i can request this all i want and most likely wont get it, but my logic is correct and yours is wrong.

In your opinion, maybe...

I don't always agree with MACscr, but this time he is absolutely right.

(For that matter he is also right in wanting and invoice for the paypal subscription method. The concept of and "invoice receipt" is rather strange. Also in this case an invoice should be produced when the service is billable)

 

It has nothing to do with when a service should be suspended or not after a month of non payment and all these arguments.

Invoices should be produced when the service is billable irrespective of an earlier invoice being paid or not. It's simple business logic and an accounting practise worldwide. I'm disappointed that we are actually having this discussion. I should have tested the system a bit longer...

 

May I suggest that you give a review of the billing logic some priority over some of the obscure requests for more modules, log-in shares and other nice-to-haves. We are talking about the core system logic.

 

Regards, Ozzie

[oempire]

hmm,

 

I must admit i didnt realise this.

 

Its not really going to be a problem as i can see aslong as you keep ontop of your billing, send reminders etc and ensure payment is made before the next cycle is due to generate.

 

But i do agree that it should keep invoicing even if one isnt paid, i would have thought this was a given, ima little dissapointed, i made the final move from MB only a few days ago. The trial being 15 days doesnt really allow you to see this.

 

As ozzie said im also in agreeance with the paypal subscriptions. The way we and every business ive ever encountered operate is you issue an invoice --> cust pays -- receipt given (if needed) whether or not paypal is going to make the payment automatically.

[rbro]

Wow. I am blown away by this. Good thing I caught the link in another thread on WHT. This may be a deal breaker for me. I've been putting so much time and effort into getting ready to import all my clients from MB, but now I'm stopped dead in my tracks. MACscr is 100% correct here and so is Ozzie. If you are SELLING a product or service, there must be some type of BILL or INVOICE generated for the product or service. I could care less about "resources" being wasted by unpaid invoices floating around the system. Let ME decide what to do with clients that have multiple unpaid invoices, but don't stop the invoices!! I really do not understand this logic. Ugggg.........Man I was sooo pumped to be rid of MB. Good thing I caught this before the migration......

[qps]

We were also considering moving to WHMCS before we saw this. Invoices must continue to be generated for a customer, regardless of their payment status, until we say otherwise by deactivating the customer or by deactivating their specific billing package.

[rbro]

So what happens in WHMCS currently in the following example:

 

A customer signs up on January 1 for a shared hosting plan at $20 per month. In February his card is declined, but for one of many reasons he is unaware. He goes on vacation for March and April and returns in May to see he can't bring up his site (suspended). He now owes the host for feb-may ($80). How would the customer know how much he owes? What would alert the host to the fact that he has been hosting this account for free for the last 4 months? Under the current "logic", I assume, it would show 1 outstanding invoice for $20?

[oempire]

yep, because the site is suspended (and not accessible) the customer would not be charged for anything.

 

If you have suspensions disabled, i guess he continue to get the next months free, until you notice, then you would need to back charge him. - lots of hassle if you dont stay ontop of the billing and suspend non payers straight away.