I have created an invoice, now i'd like to make it recur once a year. I can't seam to find an option to do that. Am I missing something?
I don't use the billing module myself, but from a quick look at http://appsdemo.ispconfig.org, it seems like there is a special menu "Recurring"
Yea, there is a recurring section but it only seems to relate to one recurring item as opposed to an invoice with multiple items. Maybe it is not possible???? Anyone?
Create a recurring item for whatever you want to be invoiced yearly and not an invoice. The Billing Module will then create an invoice for that once a year automatically or as often as you configured it to recur. The benefit of recurring items over recurring invoices is that it's much more flexible to use, with a recurring invoice, it can happen that you send a customer several invoices a day when you would have multiple recurring invoices while the recurring item system ensures that all due items are grouped into a single invoice.
I'll have to play around with the module a bit more to see how it works. The way I have my invoicing setup now is that I create an invoice, select the services (items) that need to be billed, and then send out that invoice once a year on a specific date. Its been working well for me. I offer 9 different services and I'd rather not geneate an invoice for each seporate service because that would just be too much. plus the customer wouldnt appreciate being bombarded with a bunch of invoices. You mentioned that you are able to group multiple recurring items into one invoice. This may be what Im looking for. I will play around and see what I can configure. Thank till.
That' the way many traditional billing systems works, but this is not really suitable for web hosting billing, that's why we developed the Billing Module. Think of this scenario. A customer has let's say 50 domains at your service, this customer then deletes some domains every year and buys some others, plus you do some paid services for him from time to time. With a traditional billing system that supports only recurring invoices, you have the problem that the invoice is always wrong in the next year as only some of the old domains still exists, some others have been added and there might be services that need to be billed as well, so you would have created a new and different invoice anyway or largely edit the old one. With recurring items, you don't have to care about that as it's all fully automated. You add a new recurring item when the customer buys a domain, if he cancels one, all you do is deactivate the matching recurring item or set a cancellation date. the system then takes care that only active and uncanceled domains make it on the invoice. Ind if you do a service, then just create a new invoice, add the service to it, and save it as a draft. The system will pick up the invoice draft automatically on next invoice run, adds the due recurring items to it, and sends it to the customer.
ahhh, ok, i see the logic behind it know, that makes sense. It would be nice if there was a choice though... choice is always good. For us small time folks working with less than 15 domains a traditional billing system would suffice while we transition into a larger portfolio. I can imagine how the items would be beneficial though. Thanks for clearing that up.
