Discover jBilling and make managing invoices, payments and billing simple and stress-free
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A lot more people are taking up the entrepreneurial route these days.
To the uninitiated it looks very easy; you are your own boss and can do
whatever you wish. But someone who has already taken the plunge knows
that being an entrepreneur is a lot tougher – whether working as a
freelancer or the founder of a start- up, you will almost always find
yourself donning several hats. While managing everything is relatively
easy when you are small, it can become a daunting task to manage things
when you start growing rapidly. Multitasking becomes a real skill as you
negotiate with clients, send proposals and work on current assignments.
With all this chaos, you certainly don’t want to miss out on payments –
after all, that’s what you’re working for!
Today we introduce jBilling, which can help you manage the most
important aspect of your business – the income. This is not the typical
invoice management kind of tool, rather a full-fledged platform with
several innovative features. jBilling helps you manage invoices, track
payments, bill your customers and more with little effort on your behalf
– just what you want when juggling responsibilities.
In this tutorial we will first cover the necessary steps to install
and set up jBilling before having a closer look at the various features
that can help you manage your business better. We have used the latest
stable community edition of jBilling, version 3.1.0, for demo purposes
in this article. The main menu bar gives you access to all the pages you’ll use most frequently
Step-by-step
Step 01 Installation
jBilling is integrated with the web server out of the box, which
helps make the installation process straightforward. Just unzip the
downloaded zip file to a folder (where you want the installation to be
done), eg ‘my_jBilling’. Open the command prompt and navigate to the
folder /path/my_jBilling/bin. Assign executable permissions to all the
shell script files, with the command chmod +x *.sh. Also, remember to
set the JAVA_HOME variable with your Java Home path. You can then start
jBilling by running ./startup.sh. This completes the installation
process – note that the process may slightly differ depending on the OS
you use. As the startup.sh script executes, the command prompt shows
five lines of logs indicating successful start. You can then access
jBilling via your browser at http://localhost:8080/jbilling and login
with credentials admin/123qwe. You can also access
http://localhost:8080/jbilling/signup to create your new signup. Step 02 Customers
No one wants to add a customer’s detail to the system every single
time an invoice is sent to them! It is generally a good idea to keep the
details of your customer with you and that’s precisely what jBilling
lets you do – simply click on the ‘Customer’ button on the main menu to
go to the customer page. Here you can view all the details related to
the customer – but before that, you need to add a customer. To do so,
click on the ‘Add New’ button and then fill in all of the relevant
details. Note that once you add a customer, a separate login for the
customer is also created and they can then log in to your jBilling
system and manage their account as well (to make payments, view invoices
and so on). This may seem trivial for smaller organisations with a
smaller number of customers, but if you have a huge customer base and
would like customers to handle payments themselves, you will definitely
like this feature. Step 03 Products
Besides customers, the other important aspect of a business is what
you sell – your products or services. Handling your products in jBilling
is nice and straightforward. Simply click on the ‘Products’ button to
go to the products page. To add a new product here, you must add product
categories first – click on the ‘Add Category’ button to do that. After
the category is created, select it to add new products to that
particular category or view all the products within it. Once you have
all your products listed in the system, you can use them to create
orders, invoices and so on. Step 04 Orders
Before serving your customer you need an order from them. jBilling
lets you handle orders in a way that closely resembles real-world
scenarios. Clicking on the ‘Orders’ link on the main menu will take you
to the orders page where you can view a list of all the orders received
up to now. At this point you may be puzzled; unlike other pages there is
no button to create an order here. To create an order you must first
navigate to the particular customer you plan to create it for (in the
customer page) and then click the ‘Create Order’ button (located below
the customer details). This arrangement makes sure that there is tight
coupling between an order and related customer. Once the order is
created you can see it in the Order page. You can then edit orders to
add products or create invoices out of it. Step 05 Invoices
We have tight coupling with customers and orders, so it
makes sense that invoices in jBilling should be related to an order too.
So, to create an invoice you need to go to the order for which you are
raising the invoice and click the ‘Generate Invoice’ button. The invoice
is then created – note that you can even apply other orders to an
invoice (if it hasn’t been paid). Also, an order can’t be used to
generate an invoice if an earlier invoice (related to it) has already
been paid. Having generated the invoice, you can send it via email or
download it as a PDF. You may find that you want to change the invoice
logo – but we’ll get to configuration and customisation later on. We
will also see in later steps about how the payments related to an
invoice can also be tracked. InvoicesStep 06 Billing
Billing is the feature that helps you automate the whole process of
invoicing and payments. It can come in handy for businesses with a
subscription model or other cases where customers are charged in a
recurring manner. To set the billing process, you need to go the
Configuration page first. Once you are on the page, click on ‘Billing
Process’ on the left-hand menu bar to set the date and other parameters.
With the parameters set, billing process runs automatically and shows a
representation of the invoices. This output (invoices) needs to be
approved by the admin – only once this has happened can the real
invoices get generated and delivered to the customer. The customers
(whose payments are not automatic) can then pay their bills with their
own logins. Step 07 Payments
Any payment made for an invoice is tracked on the Payments page,
where you can view a list of all the payments already taken care of. To
create a new payment, you need to select the customer (for whom payment
is being made) on the Customer page and then click the ‘Make Payment’
button at the very bottom (next to the ‘Create Order’ button). This
takes you to a page with details of all the paid/unpaid invoices (raised
for that customer). Just select the relevant invoice and fill up the
details of payment method to complete the payment process. Later, if
there is a need to edit the payment details, you need to unlink the
invoice before editing the details. Step 08 Partners
Partners – for example, any affiliate marketing partners for an
eCommerce website – are people or organisations that help your business
grow. They are generally paid a mutually agreed percentage of the
revenue they bring in. jBilling helps you manage partners in a easy,
automated way. Click on the Partners link on the homepage to reach the
Partners page and set about adding a new partner. Here you will need to
fill in the details related to percentage rate, referral fee, payout
date and period and so on. Now whenever a new customer is added (with
the Partner ID field filled in) the relevant partner gets entitled to
the commission percentage (as set during adding the partner) and the
jBilling system keeps a track of the partner’s due payment. Note that,
as with customers, partners also get their own login once you add their
details to jBilling. It is up to you to give them the login access,
though. Step 09 Reports
The reporting engine of jBilling lets you have a bird’s-eye view of
what’s going on with your company’s accounts. Click on the Reports link
on the main menu; here there are four report types available – invoice,
order, payment and customer. You can select one to reveal the different
reports available inside that type. After a report is selected, you can
see a brief summary of what the report is supposed to show. Set the end
date and then click on the ‘Run Report’ button to run the report. Having
done this, the system shows you the output. You can also change the
output format to PDF, Excel or HTML. ReportsStep 10 Configuration
The configuration page lets you fine-tune your jBilling installation
settings. Click on the Configuration link and you will see a list of
settings available on the left menu bar. The links are somewhat
self-explanatory but we’ll run through the more useful ones. The Billing
Process link allows you to set the billing run parameters. You can
change the invoice logo using the Invoice Display setting. To add new
users, simply click on the ‘Users’ link. To set the default currency or
add a new currency to the system, click on the ‘Currencies’ link. You
can even blacklist customers under the ‘Blacklist’ link. You will find
many more settings to customise jBilling as per your tastes and
requirements – just keep exploring and make jBilling work for you.
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