[freeside-users] Time of "next bill date"

[Ivan Kohler]

On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 06:35:44AM -0500, Gerald V. Livingston II wrote:
> 
> Example: (freeside-daily set in cron to run at 09:00)
> 
> Create new customer at 15:00 on August 9th. Bill for the first month of
> service and enter the payment to generate an initial invoice showing
> account activation and payment. Next billing date field gets set to
> September 9th at 15:00.
> 
> freeside-daily runs at 09:00 on September 9th. The customer listed above is
> NOT billed because it is not yet 09/09/2006 15:00:00 -0500 (CDT). 
> 
> freeside-daily runs at 09:00 on September 10th and the above account is now
> billed -- but now the "next billing date" field is set to 10/10/2006
> because the account was actually billed on the 10th this time.

I don't believe this is the case.  Using flat price plans (most of 
them), the new next bill date is the old next bill date plus the package 
frequency; *not* the time the daily script is run plus the package 
frequency.

The setup date and "current" time (actually, when freeside-daily script 
was started) are only used as fallbacks if the next bill date is not yet 
populated.

> If it was a new account near the end of the billing list the actual field
> may get set to something like "10/10/2006 09:07:03 -0500 (CDT)"

I don't believe this is the case either, even if there isn't an old next 
bill date or setup date, the final fallback time used is the time the 
freeside-daily script started, not the time the script got around to 
billing that specific customer.

I don't think the further suppositions about "slipping" dates are 
correct either.

-- 
_ivan