Hi,

Is it common that to regard a month as 30 days? So would I be rebilling my clients every 30 days? Other there any alternatives to this?

Thank you.
Joe

you can always do it manually :)

1st solution: If signup is done on 5th. Charge on every 5th.

2nd solution: Charge for 25 days. And make the billing cycle to 1st.

2nd solution is easy to manage, but requires one month of adjustment.

Hope this helps :)




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Billing Guru :stickout

Thanks for the replies.

Yes I intend to do either one of your solutions, either to prorate or to bill the client on the day they signed up. If the user signedup during the 31st of Jan, how would I handle the billing next month? Bill them on the 30th of Feb? This confuses me.

Well back to my original question, I asked this because I noticed someone doing this way, instead of the other two you listed. Do you think this is another way of doing recurring billing? Is there anyone out there doing something like this? Using this approach, the user will be billed after 30 exact days from the last billing.

Again any suggestions and help would be kindly appreciated.
Thank you

Joe

If the user signedup during the 31st of Jan, how would I handle the billing next month? Bill them on the 30th of Feb?

I bill my clients on the same day every month (sign up on the 5th, get billed the 5th of every month).

However, in the example you noted above, I usually go by 30 days. If a client signs up on Jan 31, I will bill on March 1, and from then on bill the 1st of the month.

I don't know if that's the best way, but it hasn't caused any complaints and seems easy enough for me. :D

Well, I was in a big trouble following fix 30-day solution. I developed an ISP billing software a few years ago and it was a lot of pain. Customers used to complaint how come their a/c closed a day earlier? (monthly packages with advance only)

We used to call it 30-day package (in fine-print) instead of monthly :stickout

I had put some checks here and there not to let anyone go out of hand :)

The best solution I find is to prorate the billing to 1st of every month. Easy to manage and understand. Less administrative cost.

If I were a customer, however, I wouldn't mind being billed on the 30th of February. :P

- James

Hmm James, I actually meant Feb 28th :)

Lurleene,

However, in the example you noted above, I usually go by 30 days. If a client signs up on Jan 31, I will bill on March 1, and from then on bill the 1st of the month.

What problem do you see if we bill them on the 28th of Feb, 31st of March, 30th of April, and so on?

Masood, in fact I'm also writing a billing software which is flexible enough to change the billing options. Do you think 30 days billing could be considered as another option?

Anybody has any idea on how paypal recurring billing works? It seems to me that there bill every 30 days.

Thanks
Joe

What problem do you see if we bill them on the 28th of Feb, 31st of March, 30th of April, and so on?

No problem, really, just confusing and not uniform.

If you bill by counting the days from the end of the month, how do you decide when to bill someone who signs up April 1? Since it is 29 days before the end of the month, would you bill on May 2 (29 days before the end of May)? Then, in the following February, would you bill on January 31 (29 days before February 28)?

If not, where do you draw the distinction between counting from the first or the last of the month? The fifteenth? Therefore, if a client signs up on April 16, you will then need to bill 14 days before the end of every month, but a client that signs up on April 14 needs to be billed 13 days after the first of the month? What about the fifteenth? Etc. etc. yadda yadda blah blah blah :eek: :eek: :eek:

:)

30-day billing is an option, but I will consider it not good :(

I think if you want to follow the easiest, just note down the day and bill it on that. Say every 5th.

Now for 31st and 30:

Let's take the extreme case. Today is March 1st. How to bill January 29, 30 and 31 signups? (29 on non-leap year)

Just put a check on 1st day billing cycle to check for any "left-over" bill from the past few days, not yet billed. There you can catch all 29, 30, or 31. :) Bill them on 1st.

They will receive next bill on March 29, 30, or 31 resepectively. :D

I've figure out a way that works for me. I've had to program a system to do this for me tho.

Customer signs up during 1st - 15th..
...billing sent out next month on the 1st

Cusotmer signs up during 16th - 31st
...bing sent out next month on the 15th

They pay for 28, 29, 30, or 31 days depending on the amount of days in the month.


So if customer A signs up on March 10th for $X/month. They pay for $X amount. Than in April, a bill is sent out on April 1st for $X amount. So their billing is now from April 1st, but their service is from April 10th-May 10th.

The service and billing are on different time tables. This has made collecting payments easy because if they dont pay by the 10th than I can send them all message and say "pay now, or you'll be shut down" and they pay. Than by the 15th, accounts go in to suspend mode. Same timetable for second half of the month... 15th bills out, 25th warnings, 30th suspend.

Seems simple to me. The script I wrote does all the confusing stuff for me. Hopefully most use some sort of script to sort out the billing, because I know it can get crazy without something helping you out.

Goodluck!

Originally posted by littlest

Seems simple to me. The script I wrote does all the confusing stuff for me.

:) Very good! I like it. :cool:

Thank you everyone for their help. I will study this thread thoroughly to determine a billing solution for my web hosting company.

Joe:cartman: