Forcibly Generate Service's Next Invoice

[Jonathan]

For one reason or another, we do get a lot of requests to go ahead and generate the next renewal invoice for a service early.  The ability to forcibly generate these from an admin standpoint would be excellent!

[Darin]

+1

 

I'd like to add that I think clients should be able to renew any recurring service at any time on demand from their portal. Upon payment, the system would then send them an invoice marked paid, and the service term would be extended by the selected amount from their current renewal date.

 

For those that need a bit more control over renewals, perhaps provide a new setting in the package to allow/disallow customers from renewing until they receive the renewal invoice. In other words, the ability to toggle each package between the current Blesta behavior and this new proposal.

[Michael]

+1

[PauloV]

++1x99.99+1

This is a must have on blesta

[Blesta Addons]

+1

add button under manage to renew .

very very usefful for all .

[Jonathan]

Yeah having a client side button for this too would be nifty.

[Joseph H]

++1

[Daniel B]

+won

[electric]

+1

 

Customer should be able to renew their service early (at any time) if desired. 

 

For example, if customer knows they'll be away on holiday when their package normally renews.. then they must contact us to manually create an invoice and modify their package expiry, etc.  It would be better if they can just click a simple "renew now" button and do it themselves.

[Michael]

+1

 

Customer should be able to renew their service early (at any time) if desired. 

 

For example, if customer knows they'll be away on holiday when their package normally renews.. then they must contact us to manually create an invoice and modify their package expiry, etc.  It would be better if they can just click a simple "renew now" button and do it themselves.

 

+1 for client side option to renew early.

[PauloV]

Paul is this enought ++1 ?

[Paul]

Currently this would be done in 2 steps as an admin

 

1. Manually create the invoice

2. Manually bump the renew date

 

In this case, the invoice is not physically linked to the service though, so the service would not be suspended if unpaid. The advantage of this method is that it allows the customer to pay however far in advance they want. It's not limited to a single additional term. The downside is that there's more work, and that it's not self-service for a client.

 

How would you see such a feature being implemented, both as an admin, and as a client? What would this look like?

[Jonathan]

Yes, it is more work hence this request as many competing systems do have this and it's pretty automated.

 

Implementation would be similar to the following:

 

Admin:

• Text box to accept a number.  This number will represent the number of invoice cycles to generate based on the package's billing cycle.  IE 12x 1 month would generate 12 1-month inovices.  12 x quarterly would generate 12 quarterly invoices, or 3-years worth.  This makes it a pretty dynamic way to generate as many or as few cycles as wanted/needed.
• If such flexibility is not possible a button for the admin identical to the client "renew now" button below would work.  This should have the ability to email the customer the invoice since directing the admin to the pay now page for the client would make no sense.

Client:

• Give the client the ability to go ahead and renew for their next billing term with a simple "renew now" button.  This should generate an invoice for the renewal of the term the package is on and take them to the payment page.

The "due" dates on either of these methods should be set as if the invoice was generated on the normal terms, per the actual renewal day when the package would normally be due.  If these invoices are generated, but not paid, and the service isn't due to renew yet, suspension should not occur as that would be erroneous and wrong.

[electric]

I agree with Jonathan on how this should work.

 

Client logs into their account area, goes into the package details of their hosting service, and clicks a big "RENEW NOW" button.  Blesta creates an invoice with a due date of whatever is the current expiry date of the service.  If the invoice is paid, then the expiry date is extended by whatever is the service/package billing term (annual/monthly/whatever).

 

Admin side doesn't need anything, because if we (admin) want to do this we can simply log into client's account and click the RENEW NOW button to create the invoice for them.  I think the box to create multiple invoices like Jonathan said is overkill and not especially useful.  In 12 years of hosting we've never had a single customer ask for multiple invoices to be created.  The do, however, frequently want to pay for the next year/month even if the current term hasn't auto-created an invoice yet. 

[PauloV]

@Paul:

 

My point of vew is better like this:

Admin Side:

a) In Services Widget, have an Multi Select (like in Tickets, mass operations), for what services you want create an earlier invoice (simple create one invoice with the selected multiple services), and then the cron will send by email the invoices to pay.

Client Side:

a) In Services Widget, have an Multi Select (like in Tickets, mass operations), for what services he wants to renew earlier, and then it will redirect to Payment Option to im to pay, (simple create one invoice with the multiple services selected), and then the cron will send by email the invoice to pay.

In both ways, , only after the xx days (defined in backoffice to suspend), after the actuall renew date, blesta cron will auto suspend the services, and not before.

 

@Jonathan: Dosent make sense select xx cicles, because cliente and admin side have an option to change the "Term" cicle, and in 14 years in hosting buisness it tells me that this is the eseast way to work both for Admins and Clientes

 

P.S- Is just my opinion

[Jonathan]

Hmm I do think I over-complicated the admin side, but I disagree with electric and I do think a native admin-side button is needed.  It can simply be "generate next invoice" or something and do the exact same thing as the client-side one except emailing the invoice instead of taking you to the pay page.

[Jonathan]

Just a friendly bump for more input so this one isn't forgotten about, especially given that it's implementation shouldn't be too hard

[DarrenShakes]

+1 to this, this is something that does happen frequently. at minimum an easy way for an Admin to generate and LINK the invoice to the service would be nice, but having a Client side function would be great too!

[ctalkington]

any chance of getting this an ID assigned for tracking? seems its come up a few times.

[WebhostingNZ.com]

+1  Old ticket but valid, was searching to see if it was already in the works before putting feature request in.

[Blesta Addons]

this feature can't be done if blesta cna't handle this other feature

 

http://www.blesta.com/forums/index.php?/topic/4769-renew-services-before-thier-end-date/?hl=attach#entry35548

 

and sorry to ad another +1 to this .

 

either add the feature or at least a dd a way that a plugin can work with it . (i code the plugin freely for the community).

[evolvewh]

+1

[evolvewh]

We are receiving more of these requests too. I think clients want to lock in a guaranteed rate and it's great to boost the revenue stream. Any updates on this?

[Abdy]

+2 (One of me and another of my cat )

[lukasP]

+1

 

Both admin and client should have the ability to generate service renewal invoice early (before it is automatically generated by Blesta).