Concepts
The words Tidemark Billing uses (client, product, service, invoice, quote, plugin) and how they relate.
This article explains the main terms you will meet in the admin area and the client area, and how they connect.
People#
- Client (also called customer): someone who buys from you. Clients sign in to the client area. Admins can use "view as client" to see what a client sees.
- Staff: people who work in the admin area. There are three roles: Admin, Staff and Customer. The Staff page under System is available to administrators only.
What you sell#
- Product: something you sell. Products have prices in one or more currencies, optional setup fees and billing cycles, and can be grouped so the order form shows them in tabs.
- Service: a product that one client has bought. A service has a status: Pending, Active, Suspended, Cancelled or Terminated. Renewal invoices are created from services.
- Server: a hosting-panel server (for example cPanel/WHM) that a product can provision accounts on, through a plugin.
Money#
- Invoice: a bill. Its status is Draft, Open, Paid, Void or Uncollectible. A client can pay an open invoice from the client area or from its pay link, which works without signing in.
- Quote: an offer you send before an invoice. Its status is Draft, Sent, Accepted, Declined, Expired or Converted. When a client accepts a quote, it can turn into an invoice automatically (Settings → Billing, "Invoice automatically when a quote is accepted").
- Payment: money received against an invoice. Payments can be partial and can be refunded.
- Billing cycle: how often a service renews, from monthly to every 3 years.
How things run#
- Billing run: a scheduled task that creates renewal invoices, sends reminders, suspends and terminates overdue services, processes cancellations and expires quotes. It runs daily at 02:30 UTC.
- Autopay: charges saved payment methods for invoices that are due. It runs hourly.
- Scheduler: both of the above are started by one cron entry that runs every minute. See Set up the cron job.
Plugins#
A plugin is a folder with a plugin.json file. Payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal), provisioning modules (cPanel/WHM, DirectAdmin, Enhance) and the license server are all plugins. You turn them on under Plugins in the admin menu.