Renewal of expired domains

[oldbrit]

We're using AWBS - which we really like except for a minor quirk or two.

 

But, today we discovered something that we think is, well, beyond belief.

 

Our primary registrar is Reseller Club.

 

When a customer domain expires, can the customer renew the domain from their control panel? (In this case it was a .com and it had expired less than 24 hours ago.)

 

Customers cannot renew expired domains from their AWBS control panel So, we have to manually renew the domain from the Reseller Club control panel. Then we have to manually adjust the settings in AWBS to reflect the renewal and manually create an invoice.

 

Can customers renew their expired domains from their WHMCS control panel?

 

Also, a common situation for us is a customer who buys hosting and transfers in the domain. Most customers pay annually, so we have a lot of accounts where the hosting renews on one date and the domain expiration is months later. (For example, the hosting will renew on October 14th, 2010, but the domain will renew on December 20th, 2010.)

 

When the domain is hosted and the renewal is a different date, this creates problems for AWBS. How do you handle this?

 

As long as your solution is easy for the customer and doesn't require manual intervention, we don't really care how it is done!

[GORF]

Yes, the customer can still renew expired domains (if they have not gone into redemption) from their Client Area without manual work on your part.

 

WHMCS treats the hosting and domain as 2 seperate invoicable items. Therefore, 2 invoices will be generated. If the customer doesn't mind losing a few days on the domain, you could adjust it's due date back to December 14. Then WHMCS will generate 1 invoice on Dec. 14 with 2 line items.

[oldbrit]

OK. But, in this case, the domain has expired, and the hosting doesn't need to be renewed, so the customer only wants to renew the domain and not the hosting. Your answer is exactly what I wanted to hear.

 

You do have a very good suggestion, though. Can I set WHMCS, so that a transferred domain renewal is automatically set to the same date as the hosting?

 

When we used to manually provision and invoice, that's what we did and I've never had a customer object -- They don't lose any time on their registration, they simply renew a few months early.

[GORF]

There is no functionality to automatically set the domain renewal dae to the same date as the hosting.

[oldbrit]

If the renewal date of the domain were changed to match the hosting renewal date:

 

Hosting renewal date: June 1st, 2010 - Domain EXPIRATION date: September 15th, 2010.

 

Change the domain renewal date to: June st, 2010

 

Customer renews domain and hosting on Junes 1st, 2010.

 

NOW: Will the domain renewal date now be June 1st, 2011 (same as hosting)?

 

OR: Will the domain renewal date now be September 15th, 2011?

 

IN OTHER WORDS, If we set the domain renewal date to the hosting renewal date, will that stick or do we have to reset the domain renewal date back to hosting renewal date each year?

[Matt]

WHMCS has 2 fields - one for the expiry date and one for the next due date of a domain. Therefore if you changed the next due date to match the users hosting package, the expiry date would still be the true expiry date and when renewed, the next due date and expiry date would both increment by the renewal period, and next due date would stay as June 1st same as the hosting.

 

Matt

[oldbrit]

Matt:

 

Just to be clear: There is not an option to automatically set the domain next due date to match the hosting date when the customer purchases hosting. (Someone above said you don't have that feature. I just want to verify that.)