In other words, our product will let you charge customers on the grounds of the resources used by them. What is more, it offers hourly billing, ticket billing and credit billing.
The module will also automatically generate invoices on the basis of the data gathered by the synchronization.

We will guide you step by step through the whole installation and configuration process.

Files in your WHMCS directory should look like this.

File is located in 'modules/addons/AdvancedBilling/license_RENAME.php' . Rename it from 'license_RENAME.php' to 'license.php' .

Enter your license key between quotation marks as presented on the following screen. You can find your license key in your client area → 'My Products' .

Log in to your WHMCS admin area. Click 'Setup' then choose 'Addon Modules' .
Afterwards find 'Advanced Billing' and press 'Activate' button.

To do so, click on 'Configure' , choose desired admin roles and press 'Save Changes' .

Please note that billing features are different in each module but the core functionality of Advanced Billing is the same for each.
First, choose your module from 'Enable Advanced Billing for' dropdown menu as it is shown on the following screen.
For presentation purposes we have chosen 'cPanel Premium' with cPanel Extended module.

All other features are handled by extensions, which can be easily enabled/disabled, and are configured per product.

You can access resource usage pricing from any tab.

'Basic Module' enables you to bill your client for hourly usage of the product only.
In this tab you can also enable/disable Advanced Billing for product.
To disable it, simply unmark 'Enable' checkbox and press 'Save Changes' button, as shown on the following screen.

Here you can set Application Manager (Softaculous/Installatron) and cPanel theme. 'x3' is a theme's default value.
To use different theme simply enter its name as shown on the screen below.

• Free Limit - is used to set amount of usage records for which customer won't be charged.
  

In our example, customer won't be charged for 1GB (1024MB) bandwidth.

• Price - defines how much your client will have to pay for specific resource. Note that we provide two types of charging: units per hour and units used since last cron run.
  

For example, user pays for subdomain quantity each hour, but when traffic is generated, bandwidth used since the last cron run will have to be paid once only.

• Displayed Unit - category defines how record usage will be displayed. It does not affect free limit and pricing, they are calculated in basic unit.
  

If you select 'GB' , free limit will be still 1024 MB, and price will be MB/hr, not GB/hr.

• Status - allows you to enable/disable billing for this resource.
  

To proceed, choose your usage records, units, status, set up the prices and free limits. Afterwards, press 'Save Changes' .

It allows you to set up different free limits and pricing depending on resource origin.
Currently only Parallels Cloud Server submodule supports this feature.

Each cron run will create an item for each customer, if it does not exist at the moment, and add new records to existing ones.
In that way you can see current server resources usage from the last billing period.
Automatic generation of invoices is basing precisely on previously created items.
To view more details click on 'Show usage records' as shown on the following screen.
You can also easily remove billing for specific hosting. To do so, press 'x' in 'Delete' column.

The following screen shows the situation after running cron only 2 times. Note that the first record is always empty as its task is to initialize billing for the account.

You can also order creation of invoice for product through pressing 'Bill On Demand' .
Note: Bill on demand feature is not available for credit billing.

On the screen below you can see a previously generated invoice for our cPanel Extended account.
To view detailed information about particular invoice press 'Show' button.

You already know that you can set up automatic invoice generation in configuration section. Now let's generate an invoice for your customer manually.
For this purpose simply click on 'Generate Invoice' .

Choose .log file from a dropdown menu and press 'Show' as presented on the screen below.
To remove a log simply press 'Delete' instead of 'Show' button.
New log files are created every day to help you find information you are looking for.

The first of them allows usage records and autoscaling related features to be displayed in the client area.
It is required for 'Autoscale' and 'Client Area Usage Records' extensions.
Placing the second one results in displaying prices on the order form.
Important: Edition of clientareaproductdetails.tpl for classic and portal templates goes a bit differently than shown on the screen below.
In this case place required code after this line:

<div align="center">{$moduleclientarea}</div>

Important: Only three of them are included in Advanced Billing For WHMCS product, the rest can be obtained separately.
Default extensions included into Advanced Bulling For WHMCS are 'Recurring Billing' , 'Usage Records' and 'Credit Billing' .
Each extension is configured per product, therefore you can use different sets of extensions according to your needs.
To start using an extension, you need to activate it firstly, proceed to 'Settings' → 'Extensions' page.
Afterwards, press 'Activate' next to the extension you wish to use, new options will appear in Advanced Billing For WHMCS.

For more information about Autoscale For WHMCS, visit its Wiki.

To use it, besides enabling in, you need to place an integration code.
This extension is configured per product, proceed to the product configuration in Advanced Billing.
As you can see, new tab is available here.

• Enable - enables usage records being displayed for that product in the client area.
• Display Summary From - defines period from which usage records will be counted.
• Usage Records Precision - defines precision of usage records
• Show Usage Records - displays history of usage records.
• Usage Records Per Page - defines how many usage records should be displayed per page.

• Enable Credit Billing - this option enables/disables credit billing for this module (if credit billing is enabled, standard billing will be turned off).
  
• Create Invoices Each - this option defines how often invoice will be generated for this product (if nothing entered here, it will be 30 days).
  
• Minimum Credit - minimum amount that will be charged from client account credit balance.
  
• Low Credit Notify - if this value is higher than credits on client account, email to your client about low credit amount will be sent.
  
• Email Interval - defines how often low credit notification email will be sent.
  
• Autosuspend - when credit balance reaches 0, product ordered by client is automatically suspended and invoice with lacking amount is generated.
  
• Due Date - the number of days that your customers will have, to pay the invoice.

If it is unmarked and credit balance reaches 0, the client's product will not be suspended and invoice will be generated according to number of days set in 'Create Invoices Each' field.

The first one, 'Internal Credit' contains credits which were not used for payment, but are reserved for it. It was created to increase accuracy of credit billing.
The second column, 'Already Paid For Hosting' contains summary credit payment for hosting.
You can order refund of any hosting through pressing 'Refund' button next to it. Client will receive sum of 'Internal Credit' and 'Already Paid For Hosting' rounded down to 0.01.

• Enable Recurring Billing - check to enable this billing type.
  
• Bill on Terminate - when account connected with your module is terminated, invoice for account will be generated.
  
• Bill Type - enables you to choose how to bill your client.
  
  • Bill on Invoice Generate - customer will receive an invoice at the same time as the invoice for their hosting account.
    
  • Bill On Specific Day - will generate invoices each month on the day specified in the Billing Type Value.
    
  • Bill Each X Days - as its name suggests, it generates invoice each X days where X is a number specified in Billing Type Value field.
    
• Due Date - the number of days in which your customers will have to pay the invoice.
  
• Autogenerate Invoice - an important feature which if enabled, automatically sends previously generated invoices directly to your customers.
  
• Auto Apply Credits - automatically applies any available credits when invoice is created, works only if 'Autogenerate Invoice' is enabled.
  

You can enable hourly billing for any product type.
Regardless of whether it is a server, web hosting account or other, customer will be billed for each hour of using the product.

As in the case of hourly billing, you can enable ticket billing for any product type.

1. Go to 'Addons' → 'Advanced Billing' and select your product from 'Enable Advanced Billing for:' .

Additionally, choose 'Bill Every X Days' from 'Billing Type' dropdown menu and enter '14' into the 'Billing Type Value' textbox.

Afterwards, press 'Save Changes' .

You should see something like on screen below in your Advanced Billing main page.

1.Go to 'Addons' → 'Advanced Billing' and select your product from 'Enable Advanced Billing for:' .

Afterwards, enter '1' into 'Create Invoices Each ', ' 20' into 'Minimum Credit' and '50' into 'Low Credit Notify' .
With these settings your client will be billed from credit balance as soon as the payment for resource usage reach 20$.
They will also receive an email if their credit balance falls below 50$.

In your Advanced Billing 'Configuration' tab you should see something similar to the following screen.

In order to update the module, simply follow instruction in 'How To Update' .

An invoice for such client will be generated in the chosen currency, while usage record and calculation in Advanced Billing will use base currency.

To fix this, allow Read permissions to directory. In most cases chmod 755 solves the problem.

Cause 1: You are using Classic or Portal template.
Solution 1: In this case place required code after this line:

<div align="center">{$moduleclientarea}</div>

Cause 2: You are using heavily customized template.
Solution 2: Create a ticket and one of our specialists will help you set up the module.