Best way to handle this scenario

[Nahuel]

Hi there

I'm trying Blesta for a project I'll be launching in a few weeks. Although it involves hosting, it's mainly a web design service (it's advertised as "managed websites"). What I'm about to ask is not how to do it. I know Blesta can handle it and I can do it with some manual work, in fact I just tested it with one new customer but it took me a lot of time and clicks (and somethings had to be done manually and they're not working as expected) so I would like to know the best way to optimize this scenario and handle it, which will be a frequent one.

The services I'm selling have an annual cycle. Each year I charge my users $100 (for example) for designing and managing their websites. Since they're linked to a hosting account, one could say "great! just treat your customer as a hosting customer and that's all", but it's not that perfect.

To summarize, this is what I need to do in the most efficient way possible:

• I create an account and set a new hosting package, which costs $100 every year.
• The first payment is $50. If paid, everything is activated and the welcome mail* is sent.
• The second payment has to be done 30 days later. If not paid, then the hosting will be suspended.
• I need this process, or some part of it, be automatized for the next year when the renewal happens.

What's the best course of action here? Having 2 invoices? If I create both invoices, I didn't found how to link them to a service without creating a third invoice -the one generated by the system at the time of the order-. On the other hand, if I create the service for $100, then I have an invoice for 100 which I can't divide. I saw that a customer can apply a partial amount to pay an invoice. Although this seems like an elegant solution, is not the ideal one for me. I don't want that my customers manually enters how much they pay. I just want to send them a link with a $50 invoice so they can go straight to my payment processor. Most of my customers are non-techie and having a complex billing system can lead me to more troubles than solutions, so I want that everything in their end is as simpler as possible. Bear in mind that this scenario will be repeated year after year.  I didn't find an option to associate a created invoice to an active service (which then could trigger a suspension if it's due), maybe I overlooked something. What would be the best way to handle this?

* The other thing is the welcome email. Is there a way to have custom fields in the welcome email outside the cpanel details? I want to give them their login details for the CMS and the Blesta client portal.

Hope I made myself clear. Thanks in advance 

 

 

 

 

[Paul]

You probably want a custom plugin that will create a 2nd invoice for the second amount.

• Order, pay $50.. plugin automation task creates a 2nd invoice for second $50 x days later and links it to the service. The plugin would create an automation task / cron that would run say once per day and check for services created X days ago (or renewed x days ago if for a renewal) that match and invoice them for that second amount.
• Service would be for 1 year, the client would see $50 and pay $50 during checkout and then later get another invoice for $50 per the plugin above. This could present a challenge to the clients expectations during checkout, unless you show the total in the description or someplace.

[Nahuel]

2 hours ago, Paul said:

You probably want a custom plugin that will create a 2nd invoice for the second amount.

• Order, pay $50.. plugin automation task creates a 2nd invoice for second $50 x days later and links it to the service. The plugin would create an automation task / cron that would run say once per day and check for services created X days ago (or renewed x days ago if for a renewal) that match and invoice them for that second amount.
• Service would be for 1 year, the client would see $50 and pay $50 during checkout and then later get another invoice for $50 per the plugin above. This could present a challenge to the clients expectations during checkout, unless you show the total in the description or someplace.

Hi Paul, thanks for your reply!

I don't mind if this doesn't work for the order page, as this is a special treatment I will do for some customers, I can enable it manually. Is there a way to link an invoice to a service in Blesta and trigger a suspension if it isn't paid without having to create a custom plugin? (Outside the one generated by the order) 

Also, is there a way to have custom fields for the welcome mail?

 

Thanks again!

[Paul]

On 11/27/2018 at 3:55 PM, Nahuel said:

Hi Paul, thanks for your reply!

I don't mind if this doesn't work for the order page, as this is a special treatment I will do for some customers, I can enable it manually. Is there a way to link an invoice to a service in Blesta and trigger a suspension if it isn't paid without having to create a custom plugin? (Outside the one generated by the order) 

Also, is there a way to have custom fields for the welcome mail?

 

Thanks again!

There isn't a way in the interface to link a manual invoice to a service. We actually talked a bit about this today, would be nice to be able to do that. I can find out what has to be done in the database if you want to manually link them up there. The alternative is to set it to a 1 month service, let it renew once then change the renew date out a year. That could become difficult to manage pretty quickly I imagine though. Or they order for a year, and you change the renew date for the 2nd invoice and then change it back after it's invoiced.