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  1. #1
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    WHMCS Credit Notes (EU)

    If you use WHMCS in the EU and need Credit Notes, please vote on this feature request:

    https://requests.whmcs.com/topic/cre...at-legislation

    It's amazing how awkward WHMCS is to use in the EU considering they're registered in the UK themselves and use WHMCS for their own billing.

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by NgageMike View Post
    If you use WHMCS in the EU and need Credit Notes, please vote on this feature request:

    It's amazing how awkward WHMCS is to use in the EU considering they're registered in the UK themselves and use WHMCS for their own billing.
    thats not even half of it.
    legally you cannot use whmcs in uk or anywhere else in the EU
    if you ever have a tax audit youre screwed, simply by using a software that changes invoice dates is a really big problem.

    not that you can do it if you want but that is by design that those things change is a big bummer
    also customers can edit their details and reprint invoices - seriously thats a heavy liability for anyone using it for billing.

  3. #3
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    Hi,

    Already voted. I live in EU so this is really important for me.

    Still regarfidng this, does anyone knows if Blesta.com has the same EU billing problems or does Blesta meet with EU billing laws?


    Thanks

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by pedrojose View Post
    Still regarfidng this, does anyone knows if Blesta.com has the same EU billing problems or does Blesta meet with EU billing laws?
    There's lots of talk about EU VAT handling on the Blesta forums. I think they have addressed many of the feature requests to improve tax handling in the EU. I'm not sure if it's perfect but should be in better shape than WHMCS for VAT/invoice handling.

    We chose WHMCS because:

    • It's widely adopted
    • There's lots of community modules
    • Seemingly good development team (vs. some years ago)
    • Improvements being shipped regularly
    • Backed by cPanel, which is good for the security of its future plus integration with cPanel
    • UK company (it's nice to support other businesses here in the UK)


    Sadly I believe they're more interested in shipping the more interesting features over the necessary ones. cPanel do a good job of handling feature requests and shipping improvements; perhaps WHMCS should take a page out of cPanel's book in that regard.

    Quote Originally Posted by NgageMike View Post
    It's amazing how awkward WHMCS is to use in the EU considering they're registered in the UK themselves and use WHMCS for their own billing.
    I made a comment similar to this on the feature request thread but unfortunately the comment was declined without reason. I had to DM them on Twitter to find out the reason (apparently it doesn't add to the discussion). It does leave me wondering just how many genuine comments are declined. I'd honestly have thought, as a UK company, they would understand the importance of handling VAT invoicing properly.

    On the flip side, to be fair, this request and similar ones don't have many votes. I do wonder how businesses in the EU accurately handle VAT invoices when using WHMCS. I recently reported a bug where refunding a full invoice will result in it being labelled as a proforma invoice again (keeping it's full number, e.g. begins as "Proforma Invoice 123", becomes "Invoice 57", refunded and becomes "Proforma Invoice 57"). I was told this is intended behaviour, they don't plan to fix it and to vote on some buried feature request with a few votes if I want it resolved (essentially, it's never going to happen unless WHMCS want to make it happen).

    Although WHMCS is the 'de facto standard' of the hosting industry, I believe this can change over time when you have other systems such as Blesta maturing and taking things such as VAT invoicing more seriously. For us, I don't think having a knee jerk reaction and hopping between billing systems is the right solution. I'll pester WHMCS to take care of this stuff for much longer before resorting to migrating billing systems.

    WHMCS handling of VAT invoices simply isn't valid in the EU. I understand it's not a simple task to correct but for a business over 10 years old, I'd expect them to have the issue on their radar and be working towards resolving these things one by one. After all, billing (and invoicing) is at the core of their product, plus they even issue VAT invoices themselves using their own software.
    Last edited by HostingMike; 04-22-2016 at 08:36 PM.

  5. #5
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    What's stopping EU businesses from syncing their invoices to say Xero or another cloud accounting solution and using that as the official invoice record for local tax authorities?

    Surely that would meet compliance?

    You can also stop clients from editing details and you can remove links to re-download invoices etc.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cloudarama View Post
    What's stopping EU businesses from syncing their invoices to say Xero or another cloud accounting solution and using that as the official invoice record for local tax authorities?

    Surely that would meet compliance?
    Sure but the problem is with the invoices being issued to clients from WHMCS.

    There are some really basic issues here. For example full invoices should never be reverted to being labelled as a proforma invoice, unfortunately WHMCS does not want to acknowledge this as a bug.

  7. #7
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    Lightbulb

    Quote Originally Posted by NgageMike View Post
    Sure but the problem is with the invoices being issued to clients from WHMCS.

    There are some really basic issues here. For example full invoices should never be reverted to being labelled as a proforma invoice, unfortunately WHMCS does not want to acknowledge this as a bug.
    Gotcha! Could a simple edit of template files or the lang file change this behaviour?

    In Australia we have to have the words "Tax Invoice" on our invoices or they aren't legal to claim GST tax credits (everyones charged GST tax, business just claim it back or offset it what they collected).

    A simple language override file changes every phase in the client area from "Invoice" to Tax Invoice and we're compliment.

    I by no means understand your local challenges and WHMCS seem to have let down their EU clients from what your saying, but I think workable customisations can be made to make it work.

    I'm aware of at-least 1 large host that has managed to develop an internal WHMCS reporting and scripts to handle accrual accounting where invoices can be broken down into periods (e.g by phasing invoice item lines (e.g 01/01/2015 - 31/12/2018) and they are able to break down the invoice amounts into the relevant "prepaid periods" in addition to flagging one off invoices (e.g setup or late fees) and group it as a whole and manually enter summaries for revenue amounts (this was a $15m business).

    I'm sure similar things can be developed for the EU customisations, surely there's a market here for coders to exploit

  8. #8
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    You know what, there may well be ways around certain issues. Problems such as proforma invoices not being labelled properly could perhaps be fixed with a template change. Deeper issues such as not supporting credit notes are going to need proper integration.

    In all honesty, it would just be nice if the software did its job properly in the first place. That's what thousands of people are paying £160/year for, right? I don't feel I should have to customise the software to handle a core feature (invoicing) properly. Besides, customisations are a pain to keep track of between upgrades.

    Handling invoicing properly worldwide must be a difficult task. But as a UK company, I'd expect them to deal with EU VAT invoicing properly from the outset. If they were a US company, I might understand their lack of enthusiasm to deal with issues over here. Realistically though, any invoicing software vendor with a sizeable portion of their customers operating from or selling to the EU should surely be taking care of this.

  9. #9
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    Ok first of
    Proforma invoices are not a legal way to operate. proformainvoices are by definition not an invoice,
    and are legally not to be used to accept payments. period. there is no argument about that, there no country in the western hemisphere where this is different.

    second, alone the option - by the software itself, to alter invoices, change invoice date is actually more then a big problem for whoever uses this. but it gets worse customer can change their details tehmself and generate new invoices with updated data.

    and that is actually more then a big problem, it can cost you your business.
    this is illegal, even in US, canda, Europe and australia.


    Now it is not hard to have at least the basics for proper invoice handling.
    those are:
    1# serialized invoice numbers, never having any gaps,
    2# no changeable date. invoice numbers and dates have to correspondent
    3# no changes or altering withing the invoice aerea -
    that means between beginning of customer data (name, date, ...) and the sum nothing in between can be changed.
    however according to most laws i know of you can ass something outside that aerea like a customer account info where all current
    payments or open invoices are listed.
    you even can add a payment field in case of reprint after the payment you can add payment details to that field
    however those additions can only be done outside the critical aerea.
    no prices, products, customer details, date or invoice number can be changed
    #4 MOST IMPORTANT - any invoice has to be stored with all its fields
    yes you double the data - thats fine - it is a journal
    yes it is possible todo that even with custom fields, a bit tricky but not really that hard


    ------
    refunding
    only proper way is to generate a credit invoice. it is identical to the oroginal but all positions are negative resulting in a negative
    sum.

    and thats it. it is that plain and simple and is basically the same anywhere in the world.
    even in countrys where rules are easier they dont hurt to use em as is.

    there is no real world application where changing invoices after the fact is really useful
    yes sometimes customer want a different name on it and so on.. well thats usually it
    anything else should be refunded the proper way not only for legal tax resons but also in case of legal action you might have with your customer


    also it is really wierd that invoice numbers are database IDs. ive never seen someone doing that
    there is no need to index invoice numbers, its a simple sql select to pick the next number. that way you can freely customize the numbering in a clean manner


    seriously the amount of people clueless about tax and criminal laws in businesses are way way way to high
    it is really stunning, then again solar freaking roadways got over 2million in funding so i should not wonder about anything anymore

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by terrorfrog View Post
    there is no real world application where changing invoices after the fact is really useful
    Actually, there are quite a few reasons to change invoices after the fact.

    Adjusting service pricing
    Removing services
    Adding services
    Adjusting service dates

    Before you speak in absolutes, make sure you understand the 'real world' you speak of. Of course, that's all I could come up with in just a couple of minutes.

    As far as 'legality' and 'law', that's a grey area. You can't seriously expect WHMCS to force the laws of one province on the hundreds of other provinces of the world, can you?

    One of the amazing things about WHMCS is it's flexibility. Want to add something? Hey, get out there and do it. Seriously, it's not that hard to do
    Tom Whiting, WHMCS Guru extraordinaire
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  11. #11
    Guys let's face it, WHMCS will never do anything about it. I'm using WHMCS since its first release and I've always seen threads and requests like this one leading to nothing. Every country has its own rules not to mention that in every single country there are tens of exceptions. From my experience, being a web developer who works mostly in WHMCS with over 8 years of experience, I have worked for many hosting providers and web agencies that were using WHMCS and trust me when I say you that I haven't seen a single case where two companies of the same country and legal entity were using the same exact rules. In fact also accountans have multiple different interpretations of the same exact laws.

    That said, since I have been asked to fix the billing part of WHMCS so many times, more than 1 year ago I decided to develop a module that can adapt to every single possible need. WHMCS is not responsible for the billing part of its software since they simply cannot make it work with the rules of all countries of the world with all their exceptions and requirements of millions of accountants including crazy ones. You have all resources needed to make WHMCS work in line with your tax regulations or, alternatively, there are modules that can help you with this in few minutes.

  12. #12
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    We can't expect WHMCS to cater for every single rule in every country, that would be a nightmare. However I don't think paying a bit more attention to VAT invoicing is too crazy. There are certain rules which span across many regions, WHMCS could implement optional support for some of these rules (allowing them to be toggled on/off from settings).

    To keep things on topic, implementing native support for Credit Notes would be useful in many countries (not just within the EU). It's a basic part of invoicing. Modules can then be used to take things further, expanding on the generic features and handling more specific rules on a per-country basis.

  13. #13
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    @NgageMike
    its less about the vat, its about basic rules that apply to any country.
    katamaze has no idea what he is talking about.

    there are some basic simple rules. like never change an invoice after the fact
    never use proforma invoices for money transfer
    those rules apply to any civilised country in the world.

    we are not talking about bookkeeping rules or something, but very real very basic principles.
    if you dont understand those rules you cannot make a billing software.

    it really become sclear to me that whmcs is a kindergarden solution.
    many many blinky addons but when you look closer not a real solution for a business.

    hell they didnt even understand their own business. generating just recurring cycles instead of giving your products real living periods
    splitting billing into ordered and billable items, non adjustable contract perdiods and the list goes on and on


    btw ngage your problem might be solved with this one
    http://katamaze.com/whmcs/product/Billing-Extension

    it does fix many of the issues that shouldnt have ever occured in the first place
    however i see one problem with it.
    not only raises the complexitity level and possible compability nightmare but youre then also depending on another company keeps existing. not to mention if you buy all the addons whmcs already should have you endup at 150€/month
    and there we already in the pricerange of professional plattforms

    personally i just gave up on whmcs
    while most of my legal problems should be solved with above extension
    the deeper evaluation showed that whmcs is only strict useable for a very narrow defined business and a certain workflow that wont do it for me.

    so iam going now to the bigger brothers like recurly. only small one in the race is wefact:hosting.
    well time will tell

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by terrorfrog View Post
    @NgageMike
    its less about the vat, its about basic rules that apply to any country.
    katamaze has no idea what he is talking about.

    there are some basic simple rules. like never change an invoice after the fact
    never use proforma invoices for money transfer
    those rules apply to any civilised country in the world.

    we are not talking about bookkeeping rules or something, but very real very basic principles.
    if you dont understand those rules you cannot make a billing software.
    Like I told you in another thread, you are complaining about things that have been already fixed multiple times in during the last few years and in different ways (free and commercial). The specific problem that you are referring here for example has been already addressed and solved 4 years ago so there's no need to keep talking about it.

    Quote Originally Posted by terrorfrog View Post
    it really become sclear to me that whmcs is a kindergarden solution.
    many many blinky addons but when you look closer not a real solution for a business.

    hell they didnt even understand their own business. generating just recurring cycles instead of giving your products real living periods
    splitting billing into ordered and billable items, non adjustable contract perdiods and the list goes on and on
    Keep in mind that WHMCS is not a billing software. It's also a billing software so, since WHMCS is a multi-purpose software, you have to understand that it cannot be perfect like a software that is meant to handle just billing but of course, with the right knowledge, modules and developers (aka time and money - it's part of the game), you can make it perfect.
    Quote Originally Posted by terrorfrog View Post
    btw ngage your problem might be solved with this one
    http://katamaze.com/whmcs/product/Billing-Extension

    it does fix many of the issues that shouldnt have ever occured in the first place
    however i see one problem with it.
    not only raises the complexitity level and possible compability nightmare but youre then also depending on another company keeps existing. not to mention if you buy all the addons whmcs already should have you endup at 150€/month
    and there we already in the pricerange of professional plattforms

    personally i just gave up on whmcs
    while most of my legal problems should be solved with above extension
    the deeper evaluation showed that whmcs is only strict useable for a very narrow defined business and a certain workflow that wont do it for me.

    so iam going now to the bigger brothers like recurly. only small one in the race is wefact:hosting.
    well time will tell
    Then, according to your logic, I should never buy a server because I will depend on other comanies like Dell and HP and, consequently, I should never buy a license, product or base a project on (example) Microsoft, MySQL, PHP, Windows, Intel, AMD, Oracle, FedEx, Ferrari, Juventus FC, Amazon... For me all these companies are my parners and it's up to me when I have to chose the right one. I don't know how you can do business all alone in your office without depending from others. For my company I decided to use WHMCS, CloudLinux, cPanel, Cloudflare, Microsoft Exchange, Ioncube, Eclipse, vBulletin etc. and of course I depend from them and I pay them every single euro because they ease my job and I need them. This is also part of the game and frankly I don't know how to play without them unless I'm willing to develop my own operating system, hosting panel, CRM, provisioning platform, website with my own code, my own obfuscation script, mail server, forum and my personal global CND, DNS and ddos protection service. Of course I'm exaggerating but I don't know other ways to get rid of other companies.
    Last edited by Katamaze; 04-25-2016 at 06:14 PM.

  15. #15
    I voted on the feature request.

  16. #16
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    @Katamaze

    well look it hasnt really been fixed, it is fixed by third partys using addon modules.
    the problem here is that a lot of those module devs dissapear over time.
    and i have to disagree, it is in first line a billing software. thats the hole purpose. you dont need to provision anything if you dont make money of it.
    it laways starts as a pure billing solution then it becomes integrations to automate things not the other way around.
    also when you look, the automation part isnt the biggest part, it is mostly billing, payments, products and online sales. only a tiny fraction is naturally automation. ofc it is.
    therefore the billing has to work within the laws, and ideally in a realistic way and workflow.


    it is bad enough to rely on one company with your billing and integration.
    in this case specially because its a websoftware which needs steady attention and upgrade to new technologies.
    its very different to pure on premise offline software which ran often 30 years and longer after the vendor disapeared (speaking of good old mainframes, some are still running)

    and no its not the same, first of the companys you mention are multi billion dollar comapnys with real value behind their product in terms of technologie and development time. if those companys go bankrupt chances are great that their main products will be taken over.
    at the very least its the max security you can get.

    but even the smaller one like vbulleting aint matter that much. youre not depending on a single product there.
    if vbulletin disapears you find an replacement or you simply sell less. no harm done.
    if whmcs stops working OR your plugin then your odering, billing and managing cycle is broken for good.

    now we look at whmcs. if you look at it from a neutral standpoint well the situation is far from stable.
    i could elaborate the view i got deeper but well everyone can search themself and makeup thier own mind.

    but to make matters worse you then rely on a third party module. so not only you have to put your trust into one vender but 2 the same time, thats doubling a sinlge point of failure.

    that would be fine if whmcs not attemps to be such a integrated part of your system.
    which is one on hand exactly what you want but then again becomes a liability in itself.
    reports where modules just got broken becaue of an update aint helpt there either.



    look, this is nothing against you, never where, you where the only one providing a solution to current problems.
    the problem is whmcs and the missunderstanding of workflows, real world application and customer needs let alone tax laws.

    while it is indeed the only survivng relativly cheap solution with a real nice design and many nice features out of the box
    the core is just narrow designed and overcomplicated and in many things just plain wrong.
    you can clearly see that many features where stomped into on single requests without rethinking basic design flaws ending up in that monstrosity of options and undocumented correlations with a workflow thats only really stuited for pure online business and pure and only hosting.

    ok you can argue its designed for this so shut up, well then again, if it would be better designed in the first place
    it would not needed to be that way.

    but even for hosters it doesnt really see to be developed based on real world workflow
    yea shure you can adapt to everything but why to adapt to an unnatural workflow


    look, ive testet almost any solution out there below 50k
    in the ,lets call it small money sector, there seem to be only 2 solutions left
    1 is whmcs the other is wefact:hosting

    while the later has it flaws on its own and has less integrations (sadly) it is much better naturally designed.
    specially when its comes to workflow, and basic design of invoices and stuff. shure it lacks there some features
    but it comes out of the box with so many much easier solutions that renders most of the addons of whmcs useless

    just look at it yourself try the demo and youll see what i mean.
    you can do mostly the same things, but much easier and compliant with the laws.

    it can do a little bit less, but it clearly designed together with realworld isps.
    then again whmcs offers a lot of additional features that sounds nice, IF they work as expected or promised.

    but really at the end both solutions have its real downsides, for me wefact seems to small in many aspects so
    i probably go with a much bigger and more expensive solution there

  17. #17
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    Some people just want to complain to complain
    Tom Whiting, WHMCS Guru extraordinaire
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  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by twhiting9275 View Post
    Some people just want to complain to complain
    no the pain is real. i would love if thing where different.
    whmcs is very cheap but what does it help if it aint work for ya

  19. #19
    @terrorfrog I can understand and respect your point of view

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Katamaze View Post
    @terrorfrog I can understand and respect your point of view
    yea lets get drunk ^^

  21. #21
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    Thumbs up

    Good news! WHMCS have updated the feature request status from "Investigating" to "Planned".

    It would be a bonus if @WHMCS-John could drop some news on this one here. Is the feature simply planned for any point in future or is it on the roadmap for an upcoming release?

    I never thought I'd be excited about credit notes but it will be nice to have some compliance in this area.

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