Changing auto renew periods for .NL & .DE to 12 months in Realtime Register in order to sync expiry date to WHMCS

Preparation

• Navigate to the domains tab in the Domain Manager and Filter a list of domains that are set to a quarterly and monthly auto renew period.

• Export the list in CSV format

• Now you have a complete overview of all domains that are not being synced with your WHMCS environment.

!!Take Note!! Read the full explanation before you're actually going to follow the step by step instruction. Also, since WHMCS has some specific settings that can differ from one user to the other, it's advised to start updating the periods for one domain at first. If the procedure for this 'beta' domain is successful, you can go ahead and start with the rest of your list as well.

It's entirely up to you how you handle the next few steps. The thing is, when a domain has a monthly billing cycle in Realtime Register, there will be a moment in time when the expiry date in WHMCS and the Expiry date in Realtime Register will be within the same month (max. 30 days apart from each other). We're going to use this point in time to update the monthly and quarterly autorenew periods in Realtime Register.

!!Take Note!! Invoicing dates in WHMCS will change when changing the auto renew periods in Realtime Register once the 12-month renewal has taken place and autorenew has been switched to false.

First, let your customer pay the invoice in WHMCS for the renewal. As soon as payment has been made and the expiry date has been updated in WHMCS, you're going to check if the expiry date in Realtime Register is no longer than 30 days after the initial expiry date in WHMCS before payment of the invoice. This is important since you're going to change the autorenew period for the domain which your customer has paid for to 12 months in your Realtime Register account and keep autorenew to true.

When the domain then reaches its expiry date in Realtime Register, it will be auto renewed for 12 months. Once this has been done, auto renew should be switched off in Realtime Register and the domain expiry date can be synced to WHMCS with the cron. This will ensure periods in both Realtime Register and WHMCS to be similar to each other.

To change the period from monthly to annual in Realtime Register in such a way that WHMCS picks up this automatically, follow the procedure below.

Situation

• Your customer has paid the renewal invoice for example.nl on 2019-02-22.
• The domain example.nl has an expiry date in WHMCS on February 2019-02-28.
• The auto renew period for example.nl is one month in Realtime Register.
• The expiry date for example.nl is 2019-03-12 in Realtime Register.
• Auto renew for example.nl is set to true.

The data above tells us that the domain sync is not going to pick up this domain and sync the expiry date in Realtime Register to WHMCS. It also means that example.nl is effectively renewed each month in Realtime Register and not annually as WHMCS suggests. In order to change this and have expiry dates in WHMCS and Realtime Register to be synced, follow the step by step instruction below.

• Step 1: Check the invoice status in WHMCS for example.nl -> paid.
• Step 2: Change the auto renew period for example.nl in Realtime Register to 12 months, keep auto renew true.
• Step 3: Upon the expiry date (2019-03-12), the domain is renewed for one year in Realtime Register through the auto renew setting that is set to true.
• The new expiry date in Realtime Register after the automatic renewal is 2020-03-12.
• Switch off auto_renew for example.nl in Realtime Register.
• The sync cron will now sync the new expiry date into WHMCS.

Once the new expiry date has been synced to WHMCS, there is a minor gap in which the registrant has not paid for his/her domain. This is why we advise to using the method above with a maximum offset of 30 days. As long as the expiry date in Realtime Register is within 30 days of the original expiry date in WHMCS before payment of the invoice, this offset is manageable.