generate PDF invoice and download all invoices by date range

[OptimusBain]

Hello everyone,

I don't know about you, but as a forum owner selling subscription plans and products, I will have to generate lot of invoices and download all of them. However ACP will not do any of that, I know IPS is not an accounting software but it just doesn't have the minimum requirements to get the work done to deliver to the accountant. 

I don't know about other forum owners selling products and subscriptions, but I have from 500 invoices every quarter. And there is not a way to download all the invoices, not even the possibility of manually generating a PDF of a single invoice 😞 😞

I don't know about other countries but where I live in Spain, and in many other countries, you have to deliver all the invoices every quarter. I will send them to the accountant, those with VAT and those without VAT and then he will do the magic to pay the taxes to the government.

What is IPS missing? A few basic functinalities. I am not asking for a complex accounting software, it's way beyond the scope of this message, but IPS doesn't even generate a PDF of an invoice and that's very sad. It can only print, cancel, redund or delete. Print will generate and HTML page that you "could use" to print it as PDF. But it's not the same, nothing to do with a PDF template with a fixed width and layout. IPS doesn't have any of that.

These are the basic functionalities that it should have. 

• Generate PDF invoice for every single payment or invoice
• Ability to attach the PDF invoice in the email sent to the user that paid for a product or subscription plan
• Bulk download all PDF invoices at once with a single click. See attachment. It's the online payment software I am currently using, it has all that a much more. and it's just a membership software. But at least I can generate the PDF and download all of them at once
• PDF template to generate a professional looking template. The Print invoice function is far from that
• Filter payments/invoices by dates so that the invoices for the last quarter or month can be downloaded and sent to the accountant. There is an actual search for invoices that filters them out by date, the bulk pdf invoice would be needed

Like I said above, I don't know how other forum owners selling products do it but you just can't sell products in my country and not paying the taxes for each and every country they are being sold to. And ACP is missing three very basic functions: generate PDF, download PDF, download all PDF invoices.

Thanks a lot for reading me. Have a great day and stay safe

Edited July 8, 2020 by Alfonso Moreno

[opentype]

I would add that the invoice would need an editor to control how everything looks and what is actually shown. Both to make it compliant with legal requirements and branding requirements. The default IPS invoice is extremely simple. 

At the moment, I am dealing with every purchase manually and add them to my own invoice program, but that is a lot of unnecessary work. 

[OptimusBain]

On 7/8/2020 at 1:24 PM, opentype said:

I would add that the invoice would need an editor to control how everything looks and what is actually shown. Both to make it compliant with legal requirements and branding requirements. The default IPS invoice is extremely simple. 

At the moment, I am dealing with every purchase manually and add them to my own invoice program, but that is a lot of unnecessary work. 

I agree with you. I feel that the Commerce module is sort of "abandoned". A software that takes payments has to be able to generate downloadable invoices. We like it or not, a PDF is the default format. 

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However, ACP won't even generate a PDF file. That's insane. Even less, allow you download it because it doesn't even generate one.

I read the Hump Days and I see the staff talking about new things always. What about the core ones? New is not necessarily better. 

I have to process many payments every quarter. It's a waste of so many hours.

This is just the type of the iceberg because the Commerce module seems to be forgotten. Even the default theme has things that were left there, probably done in a hurry. 

I would love to hear your opinion on this. @Jordan Miller

Why is Invision focused on making new things, badges, reactions, promotions, etc, and not focusing on making a solid core application as many are claiming in the community. There is the marketplace to extend the software, of course, but things as basic as PDF download and generation for invoices, and so many other things for the Commerce module and other modules. I read the Hump Day and it's great to see the bugs fixed, that's awesome. But what about saying, hey, next versions will be focused on improving the existing functionalities and adding many of the suggested features. 

It seems that the focus is on something else. I don't know. Promoting the cloud service, adding more and more new functions as if there was a race to be won. 

I just don't understand. I do understand that everything takes time and time equals money. That's a fact. 

The marketplace and the features channel is loaded with features that should be built-in in the core. What is it done instead? Adding new ones without hearing all the Voices speaking out loud in the community.

The marketplace has many free plugins that should be built-in the core. 

That's my vision and my opinion. Focus on the core functionalities. IPS goals may be different and I respect that, of course. 

There are just things that I don't understand and that I would never do in my own my business or community. 

Thanks a lot to those who read me. Hopefully, IPS will not only read, but take actions as well.

 

 

[PatrickRQ]

@OptimusBainFrom my personal experience, the Commence (earlier nexus) was always treated by IPS as "third child".

Not sure why but I have a feeling they are somehow scared of touching Commerce like it would be a rotten apple. The soft has potential but they need to follow our suggestions, as they are not aware of different scenarios we use Commerce for.

With our suggestions they could quickly achieve great improvement to the software making it count as an option in online sale world.

Edited March 2, 2022 by PatrickRQ

[opentype]

It’s not a problem with Commerce per se. Blogs, Gallery, Files, Pages … none of the apps have gotten substantial changes, let alone permanent improvements for years. IPS doesn’t have dedicated teams working on the individual apps, so they only get minor improvements once in a while. 

[PatrickRQ]

@opentype, products used for commercial purpose should always receive higher care, at least should make sure all issues affecting their functionality are sorted on regular basis. This is my personal opinion. Where I can live with temporary broken forum / blog / gallery etc, it is hard to live with broken store 😞

Edited March 3, 2022 by PatrickRQ

[TyronX]

I second this. I have over 1000 sales monthly and no ability to download all invoices. Quite startling.

[The Old Man]

On 3/2/2022 at 11:55 AM, opentype said:

It’s not a problem with Commerce per se. Blogs, Gallery, Files, Pages … none of the apps have gotten substantial changes, let alone permanent improvements for years. IPS doesn’t have dedicated teams working on the individual apps, so they only get minor improvements once in a while. 

Perfectly summarised. Therein lies the problem. Innovation seems to have stalled with the apps but IPS is still the best and the competition is way behind; perhaps that's the problem.

We still haven't got a Reject All option in the cookie banner.

Commerce lacking PDF invoices/receipts for customers does seems outdated. I would hazard a guess that a modern e-commerce system today up (against platforms like Shopify and Magento) should offer efficient sales and inventory reporting, after all, the data is all in there, it just needs extracting and exporting.

I'm not sure how many accountants would make use of PDF invoices, wouldn't they be of more use to customers and site owners. Perhaps accounting firms and bookkeepers would benefit from CSV, XML and owners Freshbooks and Quickbooks intergration.

A lot of work clearly went into Commerce, if your dealing with peoples data and payments that is a huge reassurance in particular the payment side of it, but it's had deprecated features for some time now and like the other apps it's stagnated for years, aside from compatibility and security updates.

Going back to innovation though, given the usefulness and appeal of these apps, especially Gallery, Commerce and Pages, it's a tad bit sad, after all, there's not only the cost of the apps in the first place to consider for new users to IPS and then the never-ending rental of them.

If you want to temporarily skip a renewal, you have to buy the app all over again from scratch if you want to reactivate it. Effectively the client is caught between a rock and a hard place so I still think clients should ideally have more flexibility in terms of managing the apps, to be able to enable or disable app licences prior or near to the 6 monthly renewal, also to be able to freely move apps between licences say limited up to twice a year, rather like having displayname change limits.

If an app fails to warrant renewal on a site, and the client has multiple licences, it's surely in both the client and Invision's interests to allow the client to move it to another community licence, rather than just cancel it outright. It could do much better on a different community or as part of a brand new community project.

Or if we have a site client who no longer needs their site, we ideally have to keep the licences going ready for when and if we pick up a new client or consider starting a new personal site, as opposed to buying a brand new set of licences all over again.

Edited March 31, 2022 by The Old Man

[PatrickRQ]

Coming to a conclusion we have to simply wish IPS a good competitor to get them "motivated" again 😄 

[ZLTRGO]

Who would be interested in such a plugin/app?
I will commission a dev for it soonish for something similar, and if a few chips in, It's going to be cheaper for everyone :o
I'll pay the biggest cut anyway so don't ya worry.

"Commerce Additions" <- Name of the plugin/app

"Direct Link in ACP Product View" 
- Button for each Product/Category in Commerce->Store->Product Groups, kinda like the Button on Page ACP "View Page"

"Mass Invoice Management" 
- Allowing us to select multiple invoices/Transactions at once in the Commerce->Invoice/Transaction Tab so we can "Mark Paid", "Reissue", "Print"(Print to PDF in Mass), Cancel, Delete (pretty much every button).
- Allowing us to export/"Print" invoices by date range.
- Allowing us to select multiple invoices/Transactions at once in the ACP when Viewing Commerce Profile of users.

If you are interested and don't wanna wait a few years until IPB adds this(if they are even gonna do that), send me a PM. 😲
 

[LiquidFractal]

While we're on the topic of organizing payment information in Commerce: I think there are very good suggestions posted earlier in this thread, but I'd also like the option to organize invoices into different folders or at least drop-down menus, say, by calendar or tax year.  Better yet - what about ordering invoices or putting them into headings or collapsible menus/folders by product (i.e. different headings for subscriptions and physical products)?

[rsst]

Sorry to drag up an older topic, but was this ever resolved?

We are looking to move to IPB and currently we use Revive Adserver to display ads on our site with a manual invoicing process for our clients.

It seems we can automate much of this process with IPB but how we do get the data out into our accounts package? Is that currently going to be a manual process?

thanks

 

[Marc]

This is not something that is an option within the product at present. You can currently download individual invoices only.

It may be worth looking at zapier to see if this is something you can achieve with zaps