Introduction
What Tidemark Billing is, what it does out of the box, and where to go next.
Tidemark Billing is an open-source billing system and client portal. It runs on ordinary PHP shared hosting or in Docker, and it is released under the MIT licence.
Invoicing, quotes and recurring billing are built in. Everything else, such as payment providers, hosting-panel provisioning and license servers, is added as a plugin.
What is built in#
- Invoices with automatic numbering, taxes by country and region, partial payments, refunds, PDF downloads and pay links that work without a login.
- Quotes that clients accept online. An accepted quote becomes an invoice and the services it orders.
- Products and recurring services with multi-currency prices, setup fees and billing cycles.
- Free trials, plan changes and usage-based billing.
- Saved payment methods and autopay, with scheduled retries.
- An automatic billing run that creates renewal invoices, sends reminders, and suspends or terminates unpaid services.
- A client portal where customers order services, pay invoices, accept quotes and manage their services.
- An admin area for clients, services, products, servers, invoices, quotes, payments, tax rates and settings.
- Two-factor sign-in for staff and customers.
- A REST API with signed outbound webhooks.
Support tickets and the knowledge base (this help center is one) are optional. Both are switched off until you turn them on under Settings → Support and Settings → Knowledge base.
Bundled plugins#
| Plugin | What it does |
|---|---|
| Stripe | Card payments through hosted Stripe Checkout, webhooks and refunds |
| PayPal | PayPal checkout, webhooks and refunds |
| cPanel / WHM | Creates, suspends, unsuspends, terminates and upgrades hosting accounts |
| DirectAdmin | The same for DirectAdmin servers |
| Enhance | The same for the Enhance control panel |
| License Server | Issues license keys for products, with a public verify and activate API |
The cPanel / WHM, DirectAdmin and Enhance plugins follow the vendors' published API documentation. They have not been tested against live servers. Each plugin's README lists what could not be verified.
What is not included yet#
The project README lists these as not yet included: a multi-language interface, saving cards through PayPal (wallet payments only), and two-factor enrolment over the API.
Where to go next#
If you are installing for the first time, start with the quick start. If you want the vocabulary first, read the concepts article.