Off Shoot of Reoccurring Payments

[earthrat]

I know this has been asked before but I cannot find an answer. I really don ??t need reoccurring payments but would like some way to send out an invoice on a monthly/quarterly/yearly basis. Is this possible to do with NBill and if so what are the steps to set this up?

[netshine]

If you want to do so as an administrator, just create a new order record and set auto-renew to 'yes'. If you want clients to sign up themselves using an order form, but don't want them to set up a payment schedule, you can set the payment gateway to 'not applicable', and 'pending until paid' to 'no'. You will also need a cron job to automatically generate the invoices.

[earthrat]

Thank you, it was easy and is probably why I could not figure it out...

[earthrat]

I am setting up a test and when creating the new order at the bottom it asks to set the Order Status. Does this have any bearing on setting up the reoccurring payment or should I leave it as Processing?

[netshine]

As long as the status is not 'cancelled' it will not affect invoice generation. For more info on order status, see http://www.nbill.co.uk/help/index.php?page=how-order-status-works.html

[earthrat]

One last question and I think I will have this all setup. I set the start date but there is also a Next Due Date. Should I leave that blank or setup the next month? So for example if I have an order that starts 25/08/2011 should I set the next due date to 25/09/2011 or leave it blank? Or should I setup the Last Due Date to be something say 100 years into the future?

[netshine]

If you are setting up a new order and want invoices to be generated regularly for it starting from today, you would just use the default values - ie. start date today, last due date blank, next due date today. If you don't want to start generating any invoices until next month, set start date today, last due date blank, next due date in one month's time. The last due date and next due date values will be updated automatically each payment cycle (as long as auto renew is set to yes).

[earthrat]

Perfect that should be all I need to make this thing work. Thanks for the fantastic support!

[earthrat]

So what do I do if I have an order that I need to create today but I want it to start in 15 days and then run every 30 days from there? I tried that and it does not work, the order remains but it does not create an invoice on the day I have set for the next due date.

[netshine]

If auto-renew is on and/or last due date is blank, an invoice should be generated on the next due date. See also http://www.nbill.co.uk/help/index.php?page=invoice-generation-requirements.html

[earthrat]

Did not work for any of my accounts...;(

[netshine]

How are you generating the invoices? Do you have a cron job running or are you using the toolbar button? If you are relying on a cron job, are you sure that is firing ok? Do you receive a confirmation email? What happens when you try to generate using the toolbar button and an invoice is due?

[earthrat]

It might be my cron job not firing right. I will revisit this and make sure I have it setup right.

[earthrat]

OK So I found a few issues with the cron and I did get it to send my messages. This morning I got my cron log and I have a message in it that makes me wonder if I am still missing something? Here is the message from that log file:


/home/#####/public_html/nbill_cron_scheduled_reminders.php:74:         //We don't have any Joomla functionality available, nor any language files, so use PHP mail function and hard-code English message
/home/#####/public_html/nbill_cron_scheduled_reminders.php:75:         mail($email_address, "nBill Scheduled Reminder FAILURE", "Scheduled Reminder script FAILED.  File '" . nbf_cms::$interop->nbill_admin_base_path . "/framework/nbill.reminder.sender.php' not found.");
/home/#####/public_html/nbill_cron_scheduled_reminders.php:76:     }
---
/home/#####/public_html/nbill_cron_auto_invoice_generator.php:77:         //We don't have any Joomla functionality available, nor any language files, so use PHP mail function and hard-code English message
/home/#####/public_html/nbill_cron_auto_invoice_generator.php:78:         mail($email_address, "nBill Auto Invoice Generator FAILURE", "Automatic invoice generation failed. File " . nbf_cms::$interop->nbill_admin_base_path . "'/administrator/components/com_nbill/framework/classes/nbill.invoice.generator.class.php' not found.");
/home/#####/public_html/nbill_cron_auto_invoice_generator.php:79:     }

[netshine]

That just looks like code from the cron scripts being dumped out - I have no idea why. What happens when you try to visit the URL specified in your cron job using a browser, ie:

http://www.example.com/index.php?option=com_nbill&action=cron_entry&Itemid=999999999&cron_file=nbill_cron_auto_invoice_generator.php