Functionality Questions

[mlungu]

Hi,

 

Time runs away with me so I haven't had a look at blesta since my last questions. I have now installed it as a demo but have some basic functionality questions before I really spend time on trying it out.

 

1. A number of our clients have signed a debit order with us. This means we have their banking details and we debit their bank account on the 1st of the month automatically. For this, we need to be able to run a batch on the first which should spit out an XML file with the required information (company name, bank details, reference, sum of all outstanding invoices, etc.

 

Can Blesta do this? Does it have fields to store the required information and can clients be "flagged" to be on a debit order so that when a batch is run it will simply do as above?

 

2. Can I run statements? For some reason this seems to allude me although admittedly I haven't spent a lot of time searching. Typically we would get a mail "Can you please send us a statement" which should include all invoices and payments made for X period.

 

 

I don't mind spending some time figuring it all out, as long as I know it can do this. If anyone has some information on this, it would be much appreciated

 

theo

 

 

[Michael]

You can get a plugin to do the XML file for you or a CSV file Eric did one for us to export the customers informations you could get it custom one to get the required information. Or you will need to do it manaully at the moment. 

 

I'm not sure what you mean sorry when you say statements but with Blesta anything is possible.

[Alexander Orlov]

The statement side of blesta im just getting signed of with a business partner then I will be getting a module built from someone of here, was priced within the budget we had.

[flangefrog]

Instead of sending them a PDF statement they could log in and see all their invoices, payments and account credit. Depends what sort of customers you have though 

[mlungu]

 

You can get a plugin to do the XML file for you or a CSV file Eric did one for us to export the customers informations you could get it custom one to get the required information. Or you will need to do it manaully at the moment. 

 

I'm not sure what you mean sorry when you say statements but with Blesta anything is possible.

Hi

 

Would that plugin be able to select only those clients that are indeed debit order ones, as well as collate the value of their outstanding invoices, and come to think of it, send an email with the total value of the debit order that will be run? I understand that with custom development "anything is possible", but cost would most likely be a major factor there? I often start getting palpations when I hear "it can be developed fairly cheaply" as the definition of affordability is different for some. 

 

Statements is simply a list of all invoices and payments, as well as a final balance for a particular client. It's customary here to send this to a customer and they forever request one. Nathan - you're having that developed, but the fact that it needed to be signed off means it's fairly involved? This is, at least in South Africa, the most basic of requirements of any invoicing system? May I ask you what sort of budget this entailed?

 

Flangefrog - as for logging in - people simply won't. They want to receive the statement and that's it. Send them links and the effort is too much for them. In the meantime they will not pay their outstanding balance because we haven't sent them a statement. Tell them "but you have been sent all your invoices", it all means nothing, they want the statement :-(

 

Cheers

[Max]

1. A number of our clients have signed a debit order with us. This means we have their banking details and we debit their bank account on the 1st of the month automatically. For this, we need to be able to run a batch on the first which should spit out an XML file with the required information (company name, bank details, reference, sum of all outstanding invoices, etc.

 

Can Blesta do this? Does it have fields to store the required information and can clients be "flagged" to be on a debit order so that when a batch is run it will simply do as above?

 

I have looked into adding support for direct debit the other day.

In particular the variant where transactions are exported to a SEPA P.A.I.N. 008 XML file, to be submitted to a bank directly (without a gateway in between).

Which might be similar to what you are looking for.

 

Writing a module that stores the transactions in a database and exports them as a batch is by itself not the problem.

However that the Blesta user interface for adding ACH accounts currently doesn't have all the input fields needed is a bigger problem.

 

For American ACH that is already supported by Blesta one only needs a bank account and routing number.

However for the European variant we need the (company) name of the account holder, bank account number (IBAN), routing (BIC), an unique identification number identifying the paper authorization form the customer signed and the date the customer signed it.

 

Created a feature request for extra fields in February:

 

Extra Fields For Sepa Direct Debit ("european Ach")

 

Naturally you can modify the Blesta source code to add those fields yourself.

However that involves modifying existing code that might change in future versions which is why I'm not a big fan of that.

[mlungu]

Hi Max and others

 

Our requirements are similar to the European ones. I am starting to get the feeling that Blesta is too focussed on particular markets and not versatile enough to deal with the various environments, without having to first do a whole lot of custom development. I could be wrong on that score of course. I am really looking for a solution that has most of what is considered basic functionality in our environment buttoned down in its core. What attracted us is the api which we would need to interface with our voip platform (that part I don't mind developing as a plugin), but at this point it seems that we'd have to do a whole lot of work just to make it work for us.

 

Any Blesta lovers who could tell me I am wrong in the above assumptions?

 

Cheers

[Cody]

Hi Max and others

 

Our requirements are similar to the European ones. I am starting to get the feeling that Blesta is too focussed on particular markets and not versatile enough to deal with the various environments, without having to first do a whole lot of custom development. I could be wrong on that score of course. I am really looking for a solution that has most of what is considered basic functionality in our environment buttoned down in its core. What attracted us is the api which we would need to interface with our voip platform (that part I don't mind developing as a plugin), but at this point it seems that we'd have to do a whole lot of work just to make it work for us.

 

Any Blesta lovers who could tell me I am wrong in the above assumptions?

 

Cheers

 

Sounds like all you need 2 things:

 

1. SEPA XML - See CORE-1164.
2. Transactions to appear on invoices, and liken this term to "Statements". That's not a feature request I can ever remember seeing, but it's super simple to do. Blesta supports what are called Invoice Templates. An invoice can contain whatever you want using a custom template. Because Blesta must support as many localities as possible, we sometimes have to work around issues which may produce legal compliance issues for our customers otherwise. This usually results in more generic default behavior, but if you play around with Blesta for a while you'll discovered that no other system is as flexible or customizable.

 

If you feel there's something you're missing, there's a good chance other people may feel the same way, so it's always a good idea to make a feature request.

[mlungu]

Hi Cody

 

I understand that Blesta is very customizable, and I have sent off a mail to the famous Eric around some ideas. The issue I have is that I cannot really test blesta until those features are there. Bit of a catch 22 situation.

 

I think the statement feature is misunderstood, or at least I do not understand your description of it. We simply need the ability of sending a "statement of invoices and payments". Invariably a client will phone us and ask "how much do we owe you". They then request a listing of all invoices for X period, together with all payments made during that period. We'd then have the ability to generate this, usually with a few options like "included closed invoices, include payments, from-to dates, etc."

 

We do currently try persuade our clients to log into their portal where they can see all that in our current solution, but most simply refuse to do this and we get asked "what kind of systems do you guys run that you cannot simply send us the statement". Old habits die hard.

 

We are looking into blesta indeed for its ability to customise it, so all good there. But I am not a developer of any sorts and half the time have no idea what is involved in that and would need to first have a system that can do the basics, see if that works for us and THEN investigate the parts where we need custom development to tie it into our other platforms. I cannot really justify spending money on getting it to do those basics, work with it to see if it fits us, and then finding out about the rest. That said, Eric's rates are really reasonable so I will await feedback on that for now.

 

Cheers