How can we improve WHMCS?

Yes, this feature would be a big help. This is the detail of our need and what we would like to see.

Feature Request: Retainer or Expiring Credit Support

We offer service plans to our clients that function as an expiring retainer fee that can be applied to future invoices. The retainer amount is purchased and applied to work performed during that period (monthly or whatever). Any remaining credit amount expires at the end of the period.

The retainer is most like a recurring product/service that generates a CREDIT INVOICE and creates or adds to a special credit balance for a client. This credit balance *can* be applied to future invoices and each credit has an expiration date. For this to work well, the unexpired credit balance would need to be visible when invoicing so that it could optionally and easily applied to an invoice (reducing the available, unexpired credit balance). Ideally, it would be added as a credit line item on the invoice or otherwise identified on the invoice so that it's VERY CLEAR to the client that he or she is receiving the credit.

Similarly, we need the "Client Groups" feature expanded so that it can optionally be applied to invoices and/or certain invoice line items. For example, we often bill for labor/service and materials on a single invoice. The labor/service is discounted based on the retainer (service plan) purchased by the client, but the materials are not discounted. This part is the least difficult step of the service plan billing process, but still prone to error as billers must keep track of which customers have service plans (and which do not) and manually discount the appropriate line items. Ideally, the discount would be added as a credit line item on the invoice or otherwise identified on the invoice so that it's VERY CLEAR to the client that he or she is receiving the discount and the amount of the discount.

Right now, we have to manually keep track of all service plan billing to be sure we apply the appropriate credit (without going over or under) and discount for each client. This is tedious and error prone. We'd like automated this process with WHMCS.

How about having it the other way, instead of purchasing blocks upfront, Allow clients to set a limit for what they can afford, This way they get billed for what they use and dont need to pay upfront. In a support capacity where clients are billed this might be an option.

Tommy's got a good one here.

+1 for web developers using WHMCS

I would really love to see this, this is one major thing that we offer and have a hard time using WHMCS to implement.

If this feature was in WHMCS we would jump across ASAP. I think alot of smaller service base businesses that run a ticketing system sell 'blocks' of time and there aren't many ticketing applications that cater for this. I would be keen on sharing some costs on developing a retainer module ..

Completely agree. This combined with an bank expiration date and automatic renewal/refill when a recurring service is paid would help us out a lot. Would basically cover our needs for service contracts anyway.

We could use this both as a web design business or a managed services business.

would be really usefull selling service contracts is mostl a part of hosting business

This is similar to a request I had put in via a ticket to Matt for my company as well.

The way I sell all development and tier 2 support is through "Blocks of Time". Typically in sets of 5, 10, 20, 40+ etc. I had explained how it would be best (in my situation at least), if a client could purchase a Block of Time through the site (normal product / service), and then have this be added to his account in the form of a "credit". This I feel, should remain as a separate "bank" from the existing credit system for other products / invoices. Maybe would be nice to "convert" PM credits to Service credits or vice versa. Overall, having an option during a task / project in the Project Management addon to "Generate Invoice & Pay Using PM Credit" or something along those lines. Having the flexibility to not use PM credits, and just pay using alternate method would be great, as some clients of mine prefer to be picky on which tasks / projects that use their Blocks of Time on.

Please consider. I've implemented my own solution that works similar to this, but it is still rather manual and tedious. Having an option like this would be a great improvement to my work.