Automation Settings
The Automation Settings are where you configure all the automated processes such as suspensions, unsuspensions, terminations, how far in advance to generate invoices, when overdue notices are sent, etc... It's the one central place that controls everything that the daily automation tasks do.
For the daily automation tasks to be triggered, a Cron Job must be configured, the recommended frequency is every 5 minutes. This is usually done as part of the initial installation of WHMCS.
Contents
Scheduling
Time of Day
This setting allows you to select the hour in which you'd like WHMCS to perform all daily automation tasks. This setting depends on your cron being configured to run at least once every hour to work properly. We recommend setting it to run every 5 minutes to allow for other system processes such as checking for updates to take place as well.
Automatic Module Functions
These settings pertain to your customer’s product/services and how the system handles non-payment.
Enable Suspension
Selecting this option will enable automatic suspension when products/services are overdue on payment. How long overdue they are allowed to get before being suspended is controlled by the setting immediately below.
Suspend Days
Once the products due date is this many days overdue, the client's service will be suspended if the above suspend option is enabled.
Enable Unsuspension
When enabled, services that are suspended for a reason of "Overdue on Payment" will automatically be unsuspended when the unpaid invoice for the item is paid. However, if products or services are suspended manually, and assigned a custom reason for suspension, then an automatic reactivation will not occur. For example a custom reason might be "Broken Terms of Service", "Awaiting ID Verification", etc...
Enable Termination
Ticking this option will terminate the client's service (remove it from the server) according to the setting below.
Termination Days
Once the client's service is this many days overdue the client's service will be terminated.
Billing Settings
These settings determine invoice generation and when your customers are reminded to make payments. Setting the Unpaid and Overdue Reminder settings to 0 will prevent that email from being sent.
Invoice Generation
This is the number of days before the due date invoices will be generated. Eg. If this setting is 7 then an invoice will be generated 7 days before the due date for products, services, addons & domains and your customer emailed.
Per Billing Cycle Settings
By clicking the Advanced Settings link you can specify a different invoice generation setting for each billing cycle. For example you may wish invoices for monthly services to be generated 7 days in advance while invoices for annual services are generated 14 days in advance.
Domain Invoice Generation
This is an optional setting that allows you to specify how far in advance domain renewal invoices should generate. You can use this if you want to give a longer time between the generation and due date for domain invoices, particularly useful in cases where payments are not taken online and so more time might be necessary to avoid domain expiry.
Leave this setting blank if you want all invoices to be generated the same.
Payment Reminder Emails
When enabled your customers will be reminded by email in advance of an unpaid invoice's due date in line with the Invoice Unpaid Reminder setting. This setting does not apply to Overdue Payment Reminders
Invoice Unpaid Reminder
This email is sent before the due date if the invoice is still unpaid to remind a customer an invoice will soon be due.
Overdue Reminders
If an invoice hasn’t been paid this many days after the due date these emails will be sent to the customer to remind them to pay.
Add Late Fee Days
Once an invoice is this many days overdue then your customer will be charged late fees (if defined in General Settings).
Overage Billing Charges
Determines how clients are billed for their overage (if enabled). The first setting will calculate the bandwidth overage costs on the last day of each month and create an invoice due immediately. This will create a separate invoice.
The second setting will still calculate the overage change on the last day of the month, but it will not create a separate invoice, instead it will be added to the client's next invoice.
Change Invoice Status
Part of the Payment Reversals feature. Set Invoice to Collections Status. The collections status for invoices in WHMCS is used to denote an invoice which is a bad debt and can be used to track invoices which have received payment disputes or chargebacks.
Change Due Dates
Part of the Payment Reversals feature. Reverts Next Due Date Increments for the products and services contained within an invoice. This has the effect of making the item be considered due again, and in cases where the date is in the past, overdue, which will trigger an automated suspension until repayment is made.
Credit Card Charging Settings
When using a merchant gateway to handle credit card payments these settings determine how your customer’s cards are charged.
Process Days Before Due
This is the number of days before the due date that you wish to capture. Eg. Setting to 1 would first attempt the card 1 day before the invoice due date.
Attempt Only Once
By default, unpaid invoices will have their payment capture attempted daily until successful. By enabling this option, WHMCS will only attempt to charge the customer’s card once. If it fails, it will not try again until the client or an admin makes a manual payment attempt.
Retry Every Week For
If a credit card is declined and this setting is enabled, WHMCS will attempt the card once a week for this number of weeks. For example, setting to 2 would attempt to charge the card 2 additional times before giving up. Set to 0 to disable and cards will be attempted each day.
CC Expiry Notices Date
This is the day of the month emails will be sent to active clients with cards expiring in the next month to remind them to update their records. The default of 25 will send a notice on the 25th to customers whose cards expire next month. The expiring credit card will also be removed when this email is sent.
Do Not Remove CC on Expiry
With this option ticked client's credit card information will remain on file after its expiration date. When unticked the credit card details will be removed in accordance with the setting above.
Currency Auto Update Settings
These settings are tied into the multi-currency system.
Exchange Rates
When enabled WHMCS will connect with the European Central Bank and obtain the latest exchange rates. This will ensure your currency conversion functions are always using an accurate rate. Currencies supported by this function are listed here.
Product Prices
Enabling this setting will automatically update your prices according to the exchange rates. So if you have a product costing $1 in your default base currency (USD) and the exchange rate was 0.6 for a second currency (GBP), the product’s price would automatically update to £0.6. Tomorrow, if the exchange rate changed to 0.7, a $1 product would be changed to £0.7.
Domain Reminder Settings
These settings determine when and how many emails are sent to your customers to remind them to renew their domain name. You can send a maximum of 5 reminders, setting any field to 0 will disable that email.
Domain Renewal Notices can be configured to be sent by WHMCS leading up to, and after a domain has expired.
For more information on this functionality, please refer to the Domain Renewal Notices documentation.
Domain Sync Settings
Domain Sync Enabled
Tick this checkbox to enable the domain date and status synchronisation function.
Sync Next Due Date
Choose whether to sync the Next Due Date to the Expiry Date, and how many days in advance of it (if desired).
Domain Sync Notify Only
If enabled, the domain sync script won't make any changes - it will only notify admins of the changes it would have made. Useful for debugging.
Domain Expiry Sync Frequency
A value of 0 will check the domain expiration dates every 4 hours. Use this setting to specify a different frequency. The lowest frequency setting of 1 will check every hour.
Pending Transfer Sync Frequency
A value of 0 will check the domains in Pending Transfer status every 4 hours. Use this setting to specify a different frequency. The lowest frequency setting of 1 will check every hour.
Support Ticket Settings
Close Inactive Tickets
Any tickets in answered or customer reply status will be closed after this amount of time has passed without a reply from staff or customer and an email sent to the customer. Tickets in on hold and in progress status are exempt from auto-closure. Closing takes place when the daily cron runs.
Data Retention Settings
Automatically Delete Inactive Clients
This setting allows you to configure client records to be automatically deleted after a given number of months with no invoice or transaction history.
To enable, you must select the radio option for removing clients automatically and specify a number of months greater than 0. To disable, select the Never radio option
When enabled, the Data Retention Pruning task is performed daily and will remove clients that meet the following conditions:
- Are in a status of Inactive or Closed
- Have no invoices that have been marked paid within the given number of months you specify
- Have no transactions that have been entered or applied within the given number of months you specify
For more information refer to the Data Retention Policy Automation page.
Miscellaneous
Cancellation Requests
When the Show Cancellation Link option is enabled, ticking this setting will automatically terminate the client’s package when the termination date is reached.
Update Usage Statistics
Enabling this option will display disk & bandwidth usage statistics from the hosting control panel (where supported) inside the WHMCS admin and client areas and update them on a daily basis.
Client Status Update
WHMCS automatically sets clients with no active products/services to Inactive status, this helps you to distinguish and filter clients effectively. However you can stop WHMCS from doing this by changing this setting. More information on this feature is available in Client Management.
Disabled - The status of a client will not be changed automatically
Change client status based on active/inactive products - If a client has no active or suspended products/services then their account will automatically be set to Inactive status when the cron job next runs.
Change client status based on active/inactive products and not logged in for longer than 3 months - In addition to the above option, a client's account will only be set to inactive when their last login date was over 3 months ago.