billing system can't add?

[ramjet]

admin, could you please check my accounts' customers biglove, tonyjohnston and dieter.
In the case of tonyjohnston the system failed to bill him on signup, but has billed him correctly since. (effectively the billing system has given him a free month.)
In the case of dieter and biglove the system has done the signup correctly, but billed them for some arbitary figure on their month anniversary (close to... but NOT my plan price - i assumed the system doesn't make prices cheaper on shorter months - but this amount is exactly my plan amount less one thirty-first).
More importantly, it has also tallied and carried forward into the next month an incorrect closing balance (effectively it has added the amount credited on payment receipt, but ignored the next months bill amount even though it has listed it) so that...hey presto... they also have a free month.
Also (i know this is petty but it shows the basic mathematical ability of the system) why does a $43.88 debit followed by a $43.88 credit equal a $0.01 credit balance?
The system also sent about 10 "account balance overdue" notices for a ficticious account number (not one of mine) that it attributed to tonyjohnston half the time and to another customer garygray the other half. It has stopped doing this for a few days, but i'm keeping an eye on it.
I have checked and checked to make sure i am not doing anything wrong before coming forward with this.
Effectively this makes the billing system completely useless as not only does it misinform me of who owes me what, it also misinforms my customers of what they owe me.
Admin, could you please look into this and let me know what you find?
I would also like to ask if anyone else has the same problem...
you may not notice it until you check.
I think that the main thing it is doing is not tallying its "balance to bring forward" correctly.
thanks, murray

[admin]

ramjet thanks for the report.. I have sent it over to Psoft to see what they say.. I took a look at it and all your plans seems to be setup right so its something funny going on in there.

[ramjet]

thanks Brad,
i'm beginning to think my account is haunted

[admin]

Was it your account that had that other odd problem as well?

[ramjet]

yip, but my old account (we deleted the whole thing and set up this one)...
see what i mean by haunted

which reminds me, my old nameservers still exist.....
ns.alphashock.net (216.157.128.129) and
ns1.alphashock.net (ALSO 216.157.128.129)

This IP can be freed up if you want as its not used by me.

[admin]

Some one else may be using the IPs now.. I will check to see who is on them for you..

[admin]

This is what Psoft sent me back just now..

I checked billing info for "biglove" account.
Please note, HSphere charges money for the next billing period at the end of the current billing period.
For example:
We have billing period (10/28/02 - 11/28/02 ) for biglove account.
We can see the following billing entry dated 11/28/02:
Monthly fee for the "WindowsHot" plan (11/28/02 - 12/28/02)


Did H-Sphere do it right or wrong still.. I hate messing with the billing in there..

[ramjet]

definitely still wrong Brad....
to take "biglove" as an example

in the first billing period 10/28 - 10/28 the system starts with balance $0.00, it bills him $39 plus tax and the balance to carry forward (closing balance) is -43.88.
This is all ok.

in the second period 10/28 - 11/28 the opening balance is -43.88.
It records me as having credited him $48.33 on 10/28 (this is just me being dyslexic, i've transposed the numbers) which then gives him a balance of $4.46 credit. All fine.
The system then bills him on 11/28 for $37.74 plus tax.

This is its first mistake (unless i've done something wrong in setup, but i don't think so). This amount i've worked out is my $39 plan price minus one-thirtyfirst... so its adjusting my monthly plan price to reflect the short (30 day) month of November.
I DON'T want it to do this.

But this here is the major problem:
The system then adds the credit (less one cent for some reason?) to its balance, BUT DOES NOT ADD THE DEBIT, and gives itself a total to carry forward of $4.45 credit.
It SHOULD have carried forward this total minus the $42.46 monthly fee ($37.74 plus tax) giving a balance to carry forward of -$38.01

His third billing period (11/28 - open) then has as its opening balance the incorrect amount of $4.45 credit, and i presume at the end of this period it will do its incorrect accounting again.

As a result the system has let the customer know that he has paid (it shows he's been billed in his CP statement, along with the fact he doesn't owe anything - he's still in credit).
Because he's still in credit as far as the system is concerned, it does not bother to notify me of his going into debt, so therefore i too would assume he's paid... checking his bill even tells me its all ok. Its only detectable by doing the maths.

I don't use credit card processing, its cheque-only, but the billing principal is the same.
Customer "dieter" has the same accounting problem, but he's on unix, whereas "biglove" is on windows.
Customer "tonyjohnston" on unix is different again: it's doing his math properly but it never initially billed him on sign-up.


Hoping this helps furthur, as I say I can't even use the billing system if its reporting falsely to me and the customer.
thanks,
murray.

[Theoddity]

I have one account that begins and ends around the 30th each month. Each invoice has been wrong. The billing system doesn't seem to add up correctly (I've also gotten the $0.01 mistake in addition) and one month it didn't even charge them. The only thing I've been able to do is go in and manually make changes to the account. I've moved them to a different billing cycle (the 2nd) so I hope that solves it, since I don't have a problem with my other client cycle dates (that end in the middle of the month).

[ramjet]

any news on this?
murray

[somereseller]

I was wondering, you people are seriously using the billing system with your customers' credit cards? How much to you have to pay for charge back?

I've been using Hsphere for a long time, but there is no way I'm trusting the billing part. It's full of bugs. The customers get all kind of wrong statements. There is no way to clean them up.

[admin]

ramjet sorry about the wait.. I just sent anther email over to Psoft about this problem. Not sure why they never replied to the first one.

[ramjet]

brad, thats fine, but if you could really hassle them over this one i'd certainly appreciate it.
somereseller, i've just started using the billing system, but for cheque only (same hassles probably, minus the cc chargebacks) but as you can tell i've hit a few "glitches" already.
i guess what i'm trying to determine in advance is what problems i'm likely to encounter and how much of a mess they will cause.
The ones i've struck are missed billings, short billings and the problem of persuading the customer he owes when his CP invoice says he doesn't.
Perhaps you could shed some light on others that we could seek Psoft resolution on - i bought into H-Sphere mainly for its ease of customer management and i'd really like it to be hassle free.
Workarounds are not preferred, but generally ok by me, but i need to know what to work around in advance really.
The same applies to any aspect of the system Brad - i have suggested and would like to suggest again a single place we can go to read about ALL known problems be established, that offers suggestions or ideas on possible solutions. Its a right bastard encountering something like this when you know other people have also been through it.
No offence to you Brad but we know nothing happens fast when Psoft is called on to look at something... maybe they can provide Matrix with an "issues file" that resellers could assess before wasting time trying to implement something that either cannot be implemented, or is more hassle than its worth.
a little knowledge is a great thing
cheers to all, murray.

[kpcreativos]

I have had some problems too , when i change something in billing system ( changing billing periods , manual charge and so on) .

It's always add a 0.01 euros , and then i must to charge it manually (with subject "Account Regularization").

Is there a way to change manually any bill by us or to correct some mistakes ?

It's a good suggestion to PSoft.

[somereseller]

The problem is that it's supposed to be like an accounting system. You are not supposed to edit things, you make corrections by adding a reverse operation. But since this is so buggy, you end up with many corrections and that doesn't make you look good in the eyes of your customers.

Psoft should offer the option. True accounting or just informational accounting.

Since they don't listen to the resellers' suggestions, we'll have to wait if they come up with some kind of a better idea.