I have used Quickbooks (or insert your fav accounting app here) for non hosting related activities in the past.

I have been using Modern Bill (or insert your fav host billing solution here) for hosting related activities currently.

We also charge development/consulting and non Internet related things. Often we are caught between what we should enter into Modernbill, Quickbooks, or both.

I think it is important to have hosting customers represented individually in Quickbooks.

I am starting to resent carrying dual books and paying dual fees for these applications. Additionally I have a bad feeling about relying on an app like ModernBill. I have it working but I can't help but get the feeling I'm right around the corner from some major screw-up happening.

Suddenly the desire to consolidate all of this is becoming huge.

How many of you JUST use Quickbooks (or another similar accounting package)?

I'm toying with the idea of moving everything to Quickbooks. I will need to think about how to handle extended information that is hosting related. I.e. servers, logins, passwords, domains, etc.
Right now I think this can be handled by having a customerID field in Quickbooks that references records in a simple MySQL database I wouild externally maintain. This database would hosting specific information. Potentially this could be a more flexibile setup that would adapt to different business areas.

Our helpdesk setup currently uses piped email and is external to Modern Bill anyway.

The only thing I can see missing from Modern Bill is the client Access area where they get to see their invoices and update billing information. This may be a mute point for us if we email invoices and just deal with updating billing information on a case-by-case basis.

Sorry if this sounds fragmented, just going from the top of my head right now. There's got to be a better way...

Yes. There is better way. On modernbill forums you have hack to export data to quickbooks, so you can have both updated at any time. Keep in mind that this hack is preliminary version, and is being updated.

The problem is that ModernBill doesn't store transactions properly. Invoices are saved as a HTML chunk. The current methods for exporting to Quickbooks leave quite a bit to be desired.

I'm asking myself what is it I really need from ModernBill at this point.

I don't do automatic signup. I don't do automatic account setup (the control panel integration modules). I feel the time saved for setting up a user account isn't worth the potential headache.

We just started accepting credit cards so current clients who wish to change from check to credit card (and obviously new clients) are the only ones we keep in ModernBill. Everyone however, is in QuickBooks for accounting. ModernBill is great for billing, but it sucks for accounting. :)

Hopefully the ModernBill QuickBooks export will be polished up soon so I can automate things a bit. Until then, some duplication is unavoidable, but again, it's only the clients who pay by credit card.

NxTek,

You must have a non-Quickbooks merchant account. Have you considered getting one so that you can handle client credit cards from Quickbooks and then have the whole thing under one roof?

We actually had a merchant account from Quickbooks setup a while back (non-hosting related), this is just another reason why we are caught between using ModernBill or just making the plunge to only Quickbooks.

For the export feature to capture everything possible, ModernBill has to be fixed at the DB level as it doesn't have the proper fields setup. Since version 4 was just released I would imagine this is a long time off.

Thanks for sharing your setup btw its helping us find anything we may be missing.

Originally posted by rracer99
You must have a non-Quickbooks merchant account. Have you considered getting one so that you can handle client credit cards from Quickbooks and then have the whole thing under one roof?Nah that's a huge ripoff. :) Our merchant account is through Authorize.net

We're also in the same boat with you keeping dual books. Modernbill is great for automating signups, domain registrations and CPanel account creation, however its pretty useless as an accounting package.

There's been a Modernbill bug (one of many) for over 4 months that displays each client's transaction register totals incorrectly when the client register spans more than one page. What good is a billing application that has a buggy register? And what trust can you place in a product as essential as a billing/invoicing package when it's full of so many bugs? Honestly, I think you're not alone in thinking you're only a few steps away from a billing disaster at any given moment. Check the Modernbill forum and you'll see what I mean. If Quickbooks had a bug that displayed incorrect register entries, there would be a public uproar.

Now before all the Modernbill die-hard loyalists start to flame me, I'll note this rather serious bug has been confirmed with Michael since early August. If you haven't noticed it, you must not be looking at Moderbill's register. It's also noted in the release notes for 4.1 as a known issue, and still not resolved. Modernbill has many strengths though, which is why we've been using it for almost a year now.

We find ourselves asking this question of Quickbooks/Modernbill often. It would be great if the Quickbooks export module can be completed in a reasonable timeframe, it would surely make our lives easier. I'll definitely be watching this thread for any useful ideas.

Well, finally someone else with my issues :)

I have been going over the same issues for the past several years without resolving anything yet.

Currently I am not using ModernBill but a home made database/billing app. It works great, but it is not an accounting app. Basically I do my payables in QB and my receivables in my app. I then take a weekly summary and add it to QB. No individual tracking of clients needed in QB.

There are drawbacks, I need to print sales report in my App. There is not just one program to go to for my bookeeping which is a pain.

Now, when you say you keep dual books, are you actually generating invoices in QB as well as modernbill? If so are you manually doing it? Also are you adding payments to both systems?

If you went with Quickbooks alone there are alot of drawbacks.

- No customer access to the data online
- No auto account creation (if you want that)
- No way to email your invoices without using QB's paid service and their servers -or- buying an external program that connects to QB's database and emails your invoices directly with your smtp server.
- No way to track domains, email addresses, passwords, etc..
- Recurring billing sucks in QB. You have to create an invoice then memorize it. That is fine if you have one domain that is being billed monthly. If you have 7 domains for one client being billed at different intervals than you needs 7 invoices? That doesn't sound good...
- I am sure there is more.


Now getting to all the "Billing Scripts/Programs" for web hosting..

I haven't found one yet that will do billing properly. When I say properly I mean:

- Able to track multiple domains for one client and bill each domain at different recurring cycles. Also be able to add these to one invoice if they happen to fall on the same months cycle.
EX.
I have 3 domains, 2 are monthly on the 1st and the third domain is quarterly also on the first. I want my invoice to read:

domain #1 $10.00 1/1/2004 - 1/31/2004
domain #2 $10.00 1/1/2004 - 1/31/2004
domain #3 $30.00 1/1/2004 - 3/31/2004

currently I don;t know of any of these billing software that does this, except for Optigold(digitalpoint.com) which only works with filemaker and doesn't support any control panels that I know of, plus it is expensive.

Now another issue is payments... Payments need to be taken and applied to an invoice so that it could be marked paid in full. Now what about under payments? Over payments? None of these programs really address these issues correctly.

Don't even get me started about refund/bouced checks/chargebacks or the big one sales tax. If you sell other stuff beside hosting you are supposed to collect sales tax. Now you need to remit this tax but only on the invoices that are paid in full (if you are using the cash method of accounting). None of these programs handle this correctly either.

Now lastly even if any of them did, you would still need a way to get the data out of the program and into QB for accounting purposes, unless you could pull enough reports that were accurate from your billing program.

Adding payments daily/weekly/monthly to QB is not wrong, it is just a grouping that you can break down in your billing program if you had one that did it.

Well I have rambled on enough about this... I am interested to hear how others are handling this. Not just the small guys, but how are the big guys doing it as well?

Having two programs is probably going to be the only way, but we really need a billing (A/R) program that works well for the hosting industry.

Maybe we should all pitch in together and write an open source one that will work! After all if we are hosts we know what we need. But then again, everyone always wants something different.

Regards,
Phil

Phil,

Man these issues are as annoying today as they ever were. You hit everything on the head.

It's funny how you caught how Quickbooks forces all email through their servers, what a great feature....

Im starting to face the fact that to do this right you need to develop a db/app/ w/ gateway (like authorize). Of course you have to support your own system if anything funky happens.

How are the 200 account + guys doing it?