Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4 Guide
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Plesk Panel
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Contents
Introducing Business Manager 12
What's New in Business Manager 18
Getting Started with Business Manager 23
Quick Start After Upgrading from 10.2 and Earlier 10.x Versions 25
Configuring Payment Methods 32
Preface
Configuring Domain Registration Services 50
Configuring SSL Certificate Providers 54
4
Configuring Business Manager Automation 64
Preface
Setting Up Automatic E-mails 70
5
Setting Up Fraud Protection 97
Preface
Configuring Upgrade and Downgrade Requests Processing ......................................... 114
Promoting Plans with Coupons and Discounts 115
6
Creating Properties and Add-ons 121
Manually Paying an Invoice Using Saved Credit Card Information ................................ 166
Preface
Managing Security Settings 173
7
Viewing Accounting Information 177
Achieving EU Business Compliance 180
Viewing System Information 181
Appendix D. Operations that synchronize Business Manager and Hosting Panels ................. 193
8 Preface
Preface
In this section:
Preface 9
About This Product
Business Manager is an ordering, billing, and provisioning automation solution aimed at small-to-mid-level hosting providers. Business Manager comes in a bundle with Parallels
Plesk Panel.
The software includes an intuitive order process, complete with “shopping cart,” allowing your customers to build an order of any size or complexity with a single checkout (as opposed to the customer having to run through your online store multiple times if they want multiple items).
Upon checkout, Business Manager supports your customers paying in a variety of ways including:
Credit card (through strong integrations between Business Manager and many merchant gateways)
Off-site payment gateway (such as PayPal, WorldPay, etc.)
Bank transfer
Other manual options such as check , bank draft , and simply issuing an invoice .
Each of these payment options can be enabled/disabled and configured according to your company's specific business practices.
Business Manager can provision the following:
Any domain name subscription can be automatically registered through any of the resellers with which Business Manager integrates (such as eNom, OpenSRS, etc.).
Any hosting subscription can be automatically provisioned through any of the panels with which Business Manager integrates (such as Plesk, cPanel etc.).
Any SSL Certificate can be automatically provisioned through the eNom API or
SSLFactory.com API.
Any virtual private server subscription can be automatically provisioned through Parallels
Virtuozzo Containers.
Customers will receive notifications upon completed provisioning, as well as any passwords, etc. that are related to the customer accessing/using their purchased service.
Each of these provisioning options can be configured in Business Manager administrator's panel according to your company's specific business practices.
The total time it takes for the customer to be checked for fraud, charged, and their services turned on can be as little as a few minutes. The idea here is to save as much time as possible so that your company's team can focus on more important things than manually setting up customer accounts.
The automation does not stop once a customer has paid and had their order has been set up. Business Manager is fully customizable and can be configured to automatically generate invoices and collect payment from customers when needed, send out late notices when customers do not pay on time, and even suspend a customer's hosting subscription after they have neglected to pay.
10 Preface
Business Manager can even renew domains at your registrar as soon as your customers pay the invoice. Customers can “upgrade” or “downgrade” their services from the customer interface and not only have the changes automatically provisioned out to the panel, but also receive a pro-rated credit/debit for the difference in monthly price and begin receiving invoices for the subscription they upgraded or downgraded to.
Business Manager is a billing solution certified in Russia. To view the information about the certificate, see the Viewing Information about Russian Certification
Typographical Conventions
Before you start using this guide, it is important to understand the documentation conventions used in it.
The following kinds of formatting in the text identify special information.
Formatting convention
Special Bold
Italics
Monospace
Preformatted
Preformatted Bold
CAPITALS
KEY+KEY
Type of Information
Items you must select, such as menu options, command buttons, or items in a list.
Example
Go to the System tab.
Titles of chapters, sections, and subsections.
Read the Basic Administration chapter.
Used to emphasize the importance of a point, to introduce a term or to designate a command line placeholder, which is to be replaced with a real name or value.
The system supports the so called wildcard character search.
The names of commands, files, and directories.
On-screen computer output in your commandline sessions; source code in XML, C++, or other programming languages.
The license file is located in the http://docs/common/licen ses directory.
# ls –al /files total 14470
# cd /root/rpms/php
What you type, contrasted with on-screen computer output.
SHIFT, CTRL, ALT Names of keys on the keyboard.
Key combinations for which the user must press and hold down one key and then press another.
CTRL+P, ALT+F4
Preface 11
Feedback
If you have found an error in this guide, or if you have suggestions or ideas on how to improve this guide, please send your feedback using the online form at http://www.parallels.com/en/support/usersdoc/ . Please include in your report the guide's title, chapter and section titles, and the fragment of text in which you have found an error.
C H A P T E R 1
Introducing Business Manager
Business Manager is a billing automation system, used primarily in online business, such as:
Domain registration
Hosting provisioning
Selling SSL certificates
Other non-hosting online stores
Business Manager provides a control panel with different levels of administration (you have the Administrator interface, and the integrated online stores ) on top of a solid recurring billing/invoicing engine written in PHP. This engine will take care of generating and sending out invoices to your customers on whatever cycle that the good/service your customer has with you renews (monthly, yearly, or even hourly - the subscription renewal cycles are configurable down to minutes). Business Manager will facilitate credit card, PayPal or other payment gateways, and bank transfers. To use these resources, configure them in Business Manager.
Business Manager complies with PA-DSS requirements which guarantee that the system is a secure payment application, and you are free to process customer credit cards after a certain configuration. In addition, with Business Manager you will easily meet the European Union requirements, if your business is located there.
Later in this guide we will explain the basic Business Manager concepts and give some insights into the four above-mentioned business models served by Business Manager.
The current guide is dedicated to the functionality of the administrator interface.
Administrator interface is by default available at https://< your host name >:8443/plesk-billing/admin/ .
In this chapter:
European Union Business Compliance ............................................................. 16
Viewing Information about Russian Certification ................................................ 17
Introducing Business Manager 13
Domain Registration
Business Manager supports integration with several domain registrars and instant domain availability checking through your online store regardless of whether you're using one of the above registrars.
However, if you're using one of these registrars, your customers can purchase/transfer a domain name, pay for it, and Business Manager will issue a call automatically to that registrar's API to purchase/transfer the domain name and place it under that customer's account in your Business Manager for management (setting name servers, hosting records, etc.).
You can configure Business Manager to sell one, some, or all of the TLDs available through a particular registrar and charge your customers whatever price you want for their domain registration. Your account with your registrar will be charged whatever your standard reseller rate is for that given domain TLD. One of the clear benefits of this is that you can (for example) process “.com” sales through a certain registrar and
“.ca” sales through another registrar, allowing you to use multiple registrars to make sure you're being charged the lowest possible price per TLD for the domains that you resell.
There are two steps in getting your system configured with one or more of the domain registrars through which you resell and to tie to appropriate TLDs to each of those registrars:
1.
Configure domain registrar modules (on page 50).
2.
14 Introducing Business Manager
Hosting Services
Business Manager supports selling hosting resources of servers managed by Parallels
Plesk Panels for Linux and for Windows. To start offering hosting accounts to your customers, connect the panels to Business Manager and configure your hosting plans to set limits and permissions on the resources offered. For details on how to connect panels to Business Manager, see the chapter Connecting Hosting Panels
SSL Certificates Provisioning
Business Manager supports integration with eNom - an SSL certificates provider. The integration supposes that customers purchase certificates in Business Manager, and the latter acquires the certificate through the eNom API. If a customer purchases a certificate as an add-on to a hosting plan, the system will install the certificate to the customer's hosting account.
To acquire an SSL certificate, a customer submits the initial information to Business
Manager that forwards it to eNom. The certificate provider analyzes the information and queries for additional details if necessary through Business Manager. The interaction is repeated until eNom has enough information to issue the certificate.
Customers are notified about these additional requests by notifications in the Account tab of the Panel. Until the certificate is issued, the subscription status is user input required .
To configure the SSL certificates provisioning, add an SSL certificate provider plugin and associate it with your plan. If some of your plans require custom eNom account or administrative contact, add another eNom plugin and associate it with these plans. This gives you the flexibility to meet customers' needs.
For details on how to set up the certificates provisioning, see the following sections:
Configuring SSL Certificate Providers
SSL Certificates
Introducing Business Manager 15
Payment Gateways
If you wish to accept credit cards payments, set up one or more payment gateways. To set up a proper payment gateway, consider payment methods you want to offer to your customers. If you plan to process credit cards, add an on-site payment gateway. If you wish to rely on payment intermediary service when processing credit cards, add an offsite payment gateway. You also can allow your customers to choose between paying by credit card (and run those charges through your on-site payment gateway) or paying by PayPal - off-site payment gateway. For details on how to set up a payment gateway, see Setting Up Payment Gateways
To add one of these gateways, you need a merchant account with a corresponding payment processing service. In addition, if you plan to store credit cards details in your database, you need to configure encryption in your system. For details on encryption configuration, see Setting Up Encryption
Business Manager supports integration with several payment gateways. Most of the gateways allow for charge, pre-auth, finalize, void, and refund abilities through
Business Manager. For the list of supported gateways, see Appendix A.
Bank Transfers Processing
Customer & Business Manager provides the opportunity to accept bank transfers - direct debiting of customer's bank accounts.
When a customer places an order at your online store and selects a bank transfer as a payment method, the details required to perform a payment from their bank account to yours are placed into a batch. The batches are financial files of a particular format accepted by certain banks. To complete the money transfer, download and submit the batch to banks by e-mail, fax or other supported methods. For details on how bank transfers are organized in Business Manager and how to manage them, see Managing
Bank Transfers
Batch format accepted by banks of one country may not be suitable for banks from other countries. For example, banks in Germany generally accept DTAUS batches, while banks in Spain accept Norma19 batches. Business Manager provides bank transfer plugins for different batch formats.
To start accepting bank transfer payments, set up one of the available bank transfer plug-ins and associate it with your online stores. For details on how to do this, refer to the Setting Up Bank Transfer Plugin
For details on supported batch formats, see Appendix B
16 Introducing Business Manager
Online Stores and Website Widgets
Business Manager, unlike most host-based billing platforms currently available, provides online stores - automatically created websites. These websites display your plans, and also have a shopping cart with checkout to let customers subscribe to your plans. Customer payments are processed by a payment gateway associated with the store. You can have multiple online stores for different currencies, locales, and product lines.
Business Manager ships with the default online store for the United States locale and
USD currency. It is available at https:// <your-host-name> :8443/store/default.html
Online stores are completely customizable so you can template them to match the rest of your web site.
In addition to online stores, Business Manager offers website widgets . These are little snippets of code you simply drop into your company web site that feature any subset of plans you want in any format you want (listing, drop-down, etc). Because widgets are small snippets of code, they can be dropped anywhere on your web site where you want to sell plans and they require no special templating because they are included in your existing web site. This gives you precise control of the way you like to sell plans.
For instructions on how to manage online stores, see Managing Online Stores (on page
Security Settings
To reduce the risk of compromising sensitive data hosted on your server, you might want to implement special security measures that comply with the Payment Card
Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The standard is intended to help organizations protect customer account data. For detailed information about the standard, refer to https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/pci_dss.shtml
.
To read more about the security settings you can activate in Customer & Business
Manager, see Managing Security Settings
Introducing Business Manager 17
European Union Business Compliance
One of the tasks of Customer & Business Manager is to charge customers for using web hosting services - websites, servers, and applications. In terms of the European
Union (EU) taxonomy, these services are called services supplied electronically and they are subject to the European Union Value Added Tax (EU VAT) regulations.
EU VAT is a consumption tax that depends on supplier and customer location thereby determining which EU country collects the VAT and what VAT rate is charged. If your business is located outside the EU, this tax is not applicable to your plans, and you can skip related Business Manager modifications. Otherwise, please read Achieving EU
Business Compliance
(on page 180) and configure Business Manager to comply with the
EU requirements.
To learn more about EU VAT, refer to ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/how_vat_works/index_en.htm.
Viewing Information about Russian
Certification
You can view the information about certification of Business Manager as a billing solution in the Russian Federation. This information is available only if the Country in your administrator profile is Russia . To view the information, go to Business Setup > All
Settings > License Info .
C H A P T E R 2
What's New in Business Manager
Panel 10.4
Support of resellers
Now Business Manager contains tools for serving resellers - your partners that purchase your hosting resources to sell them to end customers for profit.
Learn how to serve resellers with Business Manager in the section Employing Reselles
Customization of schet-facturas
Now you can predefine the content of printable schet-facturas, for example, seller and buyer INN numbers or company head name.
Find more information about the schet-facturas customization in the section Configuring
Schet-Facturas
Automatic approval of new orders
Now you have an option to approve all new orders automatically; this lets new customers log in to Business Manager immediately after placing their orders.
Learn more about your options to approve new orders in the section Setting Up Fraud
Protection
Panel 10.3
Refined initial configuration
Initial configuration became much faster and easier since it contains only required steps: entering company details and choosing local Panel IP addresses to use for
Business Manager subscriptions. All optional settings are now available in the Quick
Setup widget on the administrator's home page.
Learn more about the new initial configuration procedure in the chapter Getting Started with Business Manager
What's New in Business Manager 19
New service plans add-ons management interface
Now you can organize services you offer to your customers faster and easier with new user interface for creating new and managing existing service plans and add-ons.
Learn more about new plans and add-ons management interface in the chapter Plans and Add-ons
New taxation system
The new interface for configuring taxes to apply to your plans allows to set up taxes simpler: You just create a taxation policy for each sales market and include tax rules that define particular taxes in the policy.
Learn more about new taxes configuration interface in the chapter Configuring Taxation
New interface for managing discounts and coupons
Set up discounts and organize promotion actions for your plans easier using new discounts and coupons management user interface.
Find the detailed information about plans promotion in Business Manager in the chapter Promoting Plans with Coupons and Discounts
New navigation pane & system management menu
To make your navigation in Business Manager smoother, we regrouped and renamed the system management menu items and the left navigation pane elements.
To get more information on changes in Business Manager navigation, refer to the chapter Changes Between Business Manager 10.2 and 10.3 User Interfaces
New home page
Now you have more Business Manager functions available directly from the Home page, such as configuring key system modules or viewing the system state.
Find the description of actions that you can perform from the home page in the chapter
Getting Started with Business Manager
Panel 10.2
Brand-new online stores: appealing and convenient
A new look and feel of online stores makes it easier and faster to place orders. The store settings page is also refined: The most important options are displayed directly, while the rest are grouped into tabs.
Learn more about online stores in the section Online Stores and Website Widgets (on page
20 What's New in Business Manager
IPv6 and dual-stack hosting support
Now you can offer Parallels Panel hosting plans with IPv6 addresses or dual stack
(both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses). This new ability brought the following changes to the
Configuration Wizard, hosting plan properties, and panel settings (in server groups):
Configuration wizard lets you set ranges of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to allocate them with hosting plans.
In hosting plan properties, you can specify if a plan uses IPv4, IPv6, or dual stack and choose to offer the plan with shared or dedicated addresses.
At the panel settings page, you are able to set shared addresses utilized by a Plesk
Panel.
To learn more about hosting provisioning, read Hosting Provisioning
Single port for SSO and Panel
Single Sign-On service (SSO) on Linux now works on the same port, 8443, as Panel instead of 11443 as in previous versions. This feature eliminates unnecessary SSL warnings when switching between Panel and Business Manager.
Schet-facturas support
The system is now capable of creating schet-facturas - documents that are required by accounting policies of some countries (such as Russia).
Read more about how to start creating these documents in Configuring Schet-Facturas
(on page 63). The details on how to view schet-facturas and download them, see
Viewing and Downloading Schet-Facturas
New domain name registrars and payment gateways
We added support for Go Daddy domain registrar (Wild West Domains), Nordea and
Ogone payment gateways.
For more details on payment gateways and domain name registrars, see Domain
Registration
Payment Gateways
Taxation configuration improvement: EU countries wildcard
Now you can have a single tax zone for all EU countries by using the EU wildcard instead of manually adding a tax zone per country.
Read more about taxation in section Configuring Taxation
Bank transfers settings in payment queue configuration
Bank transfer settings along with other settings related to manual payments now reside on the configuration page of payments queue.
For more details on payment queue, see Generating and Running Payment Queue (on page
What's New in Business Manager 21
Order eNom SSL certificates from Control Panel
Customers are able to complete the certificates ordering process right from Plesk
Control Panel. All the data required by a registrar from customers is queried through
To-Do items, so there is no necessity for customers to switch to legacy Business
Manager panel to provide certificate-related details.
PVC template for Microsoft Windows
Business Manager is available in a PVC template for Microsoft Windows.
C H A P T E R 3
Business Manager Licensing
Business Manager is the Panel component, and you should change the Panel license to switch to full-featured Business Manager. The license management facilities are found in the Panel, at Server Management > Tools & Utilities > License Management.
To view information related to the license for your Business Manager, go to Business
Setup > All Settings > License Info . Here you will find the following:
Business Manager . This will tell you the version number you are running. The build number is not included here.
License . This will tell you what kind of license you have.
Max Customers . Each license has a particular customer capacity. This will tell you the maximum number of non-archived customers you can have in your system before you need to upgrade to a larger capacity license.
Renews on . Each month, your system calls out to our licensing server to verify that your license is still valid. The date listed here lets you know when the next call is due to occur.
If you have questions on the licensing, contact Parallels sales.
C H A P T E R 4
Getting Started with Business Manager
When you log in to Business Manager under Administrator's account for the first time,
Business Manager invites you to perform the initial configuration. This includes the following:
Specifying company details.
Business Manager uses your company details to carry out routine tasks. For example, the e-mail templates pull your company name and contact information when creating e-mails. It is important to keep this information up-to-date. These values are initially filled with information gathered during the installation process.
Specifying IP addresses to use for Business Manager subscriptions.
When someone subscribes for a hosting account, Business Manager assigns this account an IP from IP pool of the local Panel , the Panel installed on the same server. This IP can be shared among multiple customers or dedicated for each account. During the initialization, select IPv4 and IPv6 addresses Business
Manager will allocate to subscriptions.
After you complete the initial configuration, the system will redirect you to the Business
Manager Home page - the page you see after you log in to Business Manager. On this page, you can do the following:
Get your business ready to go online ( Quick Setup) .
If you are a beginner, sequentially configure each of the settings and then proceed to configuring plans. This table helps you get details about each of the steps.
Settings
Payment gateways
Domain registrars
Taxation policies
Fraud protection
Encryption settings
Chapter
Setting Up Payment Gateways (on page 33)
Configuring Domain Registration Service (on page 50)
Configuring Taxation (on page 116)
Setting Up Fraud Protection
Setting Up Encryption (on page 174)
24 Getting Started with Business Manager
Check new subscribers ( Pending Customers ).
After new customers complete the ordering process, they appear in the list of
Pending Customers and the system wait for your approval. You can review the accounts and have options to activate each account, cancel it, or mark it as fraud.
Only customers with activated accounts will be able to log in to the system. If you suspect than an account is fraudulent or you do not want to activate it for another reason, you can cancel the subscription or mark it as fraud for future reference.
Whatever option you choose, customer accounts will remain in Business Manager.
If you want to completely automate new orders processing, enable the
FraudGuardian.
View the system statistics ( System Overview ) .
This widget shows statistical information such as number of customers, subscriptions, and invoices.
View the information on syncing objects with connected panels ( Sync Statistics ).
Each time a new plan, new customer, or new subscription appears in Business
Manager, it adds them to a connected panel. To keep the related objects in actual state, Business Manager syncs them each 5 minutes, or, in other words, updates panel objects to match the current state of Business Manager objects. If you see that there errors occurred during the syncing, you can run it manually from the
Business Monitoring > Events page or find other instructions in the section
Troubleshooting .
View items that may require your personal attention or actions ( To-do Items ).
For example, a hosting subscription may not have been provisioned correctly, or there may be some trouble with a customer's domain registration. When this happens, Business Manager sends you a note by creating a To-Do item and showing it on the home page.
Besides, from the home page you can navigate to other pages of Business Manager using the menu on the left side of the page.
C H A P T E R 5
Quick Start After Upgrading from 10.2 and Earlier 10.x Versions
To make your work with Business Manager easier and faster, we significantly improved the user interface in 10.3. This chapter explains how to accomplish routine tasks you typically carried out in earlier 10.x versions.
Finances & workflow
The tools related to the automation of your business, particularly, invoices and schetfacturas issuing, setting up taxes for your products, and defining rules of creating and canceling subscriptions, are now available in the new location, the Finances & Workflow group on the Business Setup > All Settings page.
Customer permissions management
To set permissions for your customer accounts, use the links in the Customer
Management group of the system menu. Particularly, you can set the following:
Profile fields your customers are able to change.
Billing accounts they can use.
Access to upgrades and downgrades.
Discounts & promotions
The tools for promotion of your plans are located on the Business Setup > Discounts &
Promotions page.
To limit the discounts for certain customers, include them into customer groups . The controls to create and manage customer groups are located on the Business Setup > All
Settings > Customer Groups page.
Fraud prevention
To protect against fraud, you can prohibit the registration of customer accounts with certain e-mails and use FraudGuardian - a tool that checks new customers for being fraudulent . The controls for managing e-mail black list and configuring FraudGuardian are located in the Fraud Prevention group of the Business Setup > All Settings page.
Custom prices for plans
If you intend to set up custom prices for your plans, create the price groups and price options you will use for it on the Business Setup > All Settings > Advanced Pricing page.
26 Quick Start After Upgrading from 10.2 and Earlier 10.x Versions
Hosting panels, payment gateways, domain registrars, SSL certificate providers
The tools for managing different plug-ins as hosting panels, domain name registrars, payment gateways, and SSL certificate providers are now available in the Hosting
Panels & External Modules group of the Business Setup > All Settings page .
The tools to manage IP pools of connected panels are accessible from the list of connected panels: Business Setup > All Settings > Hosting Panels .
If you want to test payment gateways with virtual terminals, click the corresponding link in the Available Operations of a certain gateway on the payment gateways list: Business
Setup > All Settings > Payment Gateways .
Branding & customization
To change the appearance of Business Manager user interface and specify the custom content, such as your company details, e-mail templates, or printable invoices, use the controls from the Branding & Customization group on the Business Setup > All Settings page.
System information
To view information about Business Manager license and version, installed gateway, registrar, and other modules or software, use the controls from the group System
Information on the Business Setup > All Settings page.
Moreover, if you need to troubleshoot Business Manager issues, you can find error reports and logs in the System Information group.
Payments
To view a list of payment transactions and uncaptured funds, go to the Business
Monitoring > Payments .
The list of bank transfer batch files and bank transfer transactions are now accessible from the Transactions tab of the Business Monitoring > Payments page with the link Bank transfers .
C H A P T E R 6
Setting Up Administrators
Business Manager provides a flexible system for setting up administrators within the system. Using administrator groups, you can create custom privileges for different kinds of administrators, such as a billing administrator and server provisioning administrator. By default, Business Manager creates four administrators: the root user , an online store user, an API user , and a cron user . The root user is created using the information you entered during the installation process, and is the main login you use to enter Business Manager. The online store, API , and cron users enable these parts of the system to have the level of access they need to function properly. Do not remove these administrators.
In this chapter:
28 Setting Up Administrators
Viewing Administrators
To view the list of your administrators:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings and click Administrators .
You will see a list of all the administrators you have created.
Creating New Administrators
You can add any number of Business Manager administrators to your system according to your specific business needs.
To add a Business Manager administrator:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings and click Administrators
2. Click Add New Administrator .
3. Fill in the necessary information:
First Name . The first name of the administrator.
Last Name . The last name of the administrator.
E-mail . The e-mail address of the administrator.
User name . The user name you would like the administrator to have.
New Password . Enter the password the administrator will use.
Enter Password Again . Enter the password a second time for verification.
Theme . If you have a custom theme, this is where you would select it.
Language . Choose the language you would like Business Manager to appear in for this administrator. Business Manager will use the language and country choice to determine which locale best fits this administrator.
Country . Enter the country in which this administrator resides. This helps determine the locale to use for the administrator. For example, if you choose
Portuguese, Business Manager can either use the Portuguese locale or the
Brazilian Portuguese locale, depending on where your administrator lives.
Active . You can activate and deactivate administrators as you need.
Assigned Admin Groups . Choose a group to which you want to assign this administrator. You can create additional administrator groups as needed.
4. Click OK .
The newly added administrator will appear on the Administrators page.
Setting Up Administrators 29
Setting Up Administrator Groups
Creating administrator groups allows you to grant specific sets of actions to certain administrators or groups of administrators. For example, if you have an employee who will be taking care of billing for you, but who does not need to look at any reports, you can create an administrator group called billing, add actions to this group related to generating and paying invoices, and remove any actions related to reporting.
To view the list of existing administrator groups:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Administrators .
2. Click Manage Administrator Groups .
You will see the list of all administrator groups in the system.
To assign more administrators to a group:
1. Click the Manage Actions control for the group.
2. Add more administrators under Assigned Admins .
3. Here, you can also unassign administrator from a group.
To edit privileges of administrators in a group:
1. Click the Manage Actions control for the group.
2. Configure privileges in the displayed categories as necessary.
3. Click Update Action Assignments .
30 Setting Up Administrators
Editing Administrator Profiles
If you need to change any of the settings for one of your administrators, you will follow a procedure similar to creating an administrator.
To edit an administrator profile:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Administrators .
2. Click the magnifying glass icon in the Available Operations column for an administrator whose profile you want to edit.
3. Click Edit .
4. Edit the administrator's profile accordingly. You will note that the password fields are empty. Do not put anything in these fields unless you want to change the password.
Note: Initially, the admin account is the same as the global account. The difference between them is that the global account lets you log in to any application within the
SSO realm whereas the local account is your account in a particular application. If SSO is turned off, it is mandatory to use local accounts. Otherwise, when the service is on, it requires your global account password to authorize you. If you change the admin password, both the global account password and your local password to Business
Manager are changed.
Setting Up Administrators 31
Configuring Administrator Interface
Business Manager provides an option to change the administrator interface to your liking.
Particularly, it allows to change the interface language and theme. To learn how to do it, see the instructions below.
To change Business Manager interface language:
1. Enter Your Profile form by clicking your name on the upper bar of administrator interface, or the Edit button on the Business Setup > All Settings > Administrators >
<your name>
page.
2. On the profile form select your language from the Language drop-down list.
3. Enter your administrator account's password in the New Password and Enter
Password Again to confirm the change.
4. Click Update Profile to apply changes.
To change Business Manager interface theme (skin):
1. Enter Your Profile form. You can do this by clicking Profile on the upper bar of administrator interface, or from the Settings > Admin Settings > Profiles menu.
2. On the profile form select a desired skin from the Theme drop-down list.
3. Enter your administrator account's password in the New Password and Enter
Password Again to confirm the change.
4. Click Update Profile to apply changes.
C H A P T E R 7
Configuring Payment Methods
The default Business Manager installation allows you to manually charge your customers via checks of bank drafts. To start accepting online payments with credit cards or bank transfers, you should configure a payment gateway or a bank transfer plugin .
When you set up a payment gateway, your customers are able to pay for your services online. Depending on your policy, use on-site or off-site gateways for accepting payments. The difference between them is the following:
If you use on-site gateways, your customers enter their cards information directly in your online store and the system saves this information. To ensure the security of this information, you can use on-site gateways only if you have configured the encryption of customer data as described in the section Setting Up Encryption (on
Off-site gateways connect Business Manager to payment systems that process transaction on their own sites, for example, PayPal .
Bank transfer plugins enable your customers to pay for their subscriptions online by transferring money from their bank accounts.
Find the instructions on adding payment gateways and bank transfer plugins in the section Setting Up Payment Gateways and Bank Transfer Plugins
Managing gateways and bank transfer plugins
To add a payment gateway or a bank transfer plugin:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Payment Gateways .
2. Click Add New Payment Gateway , choose a gateway or bank transfer plugin, and click select.
3. Choose online stores, in which you want to accept payments through the gateway ot the plugin.
4. Specify the Gateway settings and click OK .
Gateway modules and bank transfer plugins can have limitations or particularities in the configuration. For example, a module might support only certain currencies or require you to fill in custom fields, or log in to your merchant account and take extra efforts to successfully set up a gateway. To learn these module-specific details, refer to the sections Payment Gateways Configuration Details
Bank Transfer Plugins
Configuration Details
Configuring Payment Methods 33
To change a gateway or a plugin settings, go to the gateways list Business Setup > All
Settings > Payment Gateways , and click the gateway name in the list.
To remove a payment gateway or a bank transfer plugin, go to the gateways list, select the modules that you do not need anymore, and click Remove .
Testing gateways and sending transactions manually
If you want to ensure that that gateway module works properly or manually start a payment transaction, use virtual terminal to send transaction data directly to the payment system. Learn more about running transactions using virtual terminals in the
section Testing Gateways Using Virtual Terminals (on page 40).
Setting up payment queue
Business Manager creates invoices and runs payment transactions automatically. To initiate an invoice payment, the system adds the invoice to the payment queue. To learn how to define rules that govern the processing of the invoices in payment queue, refer to the section Setting Up payment Queue
In this chapter:
Payment Gateways Configuration Details ......................................................... 33
Bank Transfer Plugins Configuration Details ..................................................... 38
Testing Gateways Using Virtual Terminals ........................................................ 40
Payment Gateways Configuration Details
Since different payment gateways require different configuration parameters, there is no common instruction on configuring the gateway settings. Instead of it, we provide guidelines for configuring certain gateways in this section.
In this section:
34 Configuring Payment Methods
Authorize.net
This page provides clarifications on some fields you need to fill in when configuring
Authorize.net.
Authorize.net Login ID . This is the API Login ID that is available from within your authorize.net account.
Authorize.net Password . This is the API Transaction Key.
Gateway URL . This is the URL to which the system will send transaction data. Use
Live URL when you want to use your Authorize.net module in a production environment. Make sure the Gateway Testing checkbox below is unchecked. If you want to test your AuthorizeNet module then you should create a test account at the http://developer.authorize.net/testaccount/ , choose Testing URL and select the
Gateway Testing checkbox. Use your test account credentials in gateway testing.
Configuring Payment Methods 35
PayPal
This page provides clarifications on some fields you need to fill in when configuring
PayPal.
ID . [email protected] (Enter your primary PayPal e-mail address).
Item Name . Enter a comment or description about the services you offer. This will appear on the customer's PayPal receipt.
Display Logo . Enter the url to your display logo. This is the logo that will show up on the PayPal payment page once they go through the Business Manager shopping cart. This is a logo you create.
Submit Image . Enter the url to your image.
IPN URL . Enter the url to your IPN. PayPal sends IPN messages only to 80 and 443 ports. In turn, Business Manager accepts these messages on 8880 and 8443 ports.
Learn how to configure forwarding of IPN messages to these ports here: http://kb.parallels.com/en/112756 .
Subscription Enable . Do you allow PayPal subscriptions (Recurring payments)?
PayPal Accept Addresses . Enter any PayPal addresses at which you would like to receive payments, separated either by comma or a new line for each address.
Example: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected].
Note: Any address listed here must be an active PayPal account.
Note : After you have tested the connection with PayPal, be sure to change Gateway
Testing to No to accept live payments.
BBVA
This module does not have any particularities except for it accepts only EUR. To set up the gateway, enter the information you received from your merchant account provider.
Banca Sella
The system lets set up Banca Sella as an on-site or off-site payment gateway. The configuration steps in these two cases are almost identical.
To set up the gateway, select it from gateways list in the Add New Payment Gateway wizard, specify the initial information about the gateway and proceed to the configuration. Fill in your merchant ID, select Basic agreement (only for off-site payment gateways) and click OK to save the configuration.
When ready, go to your merchant account with Banca Sella and authorize Business
Manager to work with the gateway by following these steps:
1. Specify the IP address of Business Manager at Configuration > Environment > IP
Address .
36 Configuring Payment Methods
2. Provide the e-mail address that will receive notifications about transactions at
Configuration > Environment > Response .
3. Provide the callback URLs of Business Manager at Configuration > Environment >
Response .
The URLs should be the same as the listed below with wildcards substituted to your custom values. Namely, substitute <your-host-name> with the actual host name of
Business Manager, and <gateway-type> with the gateway type. Allowed gateway types are: BancaSella (for the on-site payment gateway) and BancaSellaSSL (for the off-site payment gateway).
URL for positive response: https:// <your-host-name> /plesk-billing/libmbapi/include/modules/gateway/return/HSPCCallback.php/plugin_ id,OP_<gateway-type>/action,notify/server_url,ecomm.sella.it
URL for negative response: https:// <your-host-name> /plesk-billing/libmbapi/include/modules/gateway/return/HSPCCallback.php/plugin_ id,OP_BancaSellaSSL/action,notify/server_url,ecomm.sella.it
URL Server to Server: https:// <your-host-name> /plesk-billing/libmbapi/include/modules/gateway/return/HSPCCallback.php/plugin_ id,OP_BancaSellaSSL/action,notify/server_url,ecomm.sella.it
Example: https://example.com/plesk-billing/libmbapi/include/modules/gateway/return/HSPCCallback.php/plugin_id,
OP_BancaSellaSSL/action,notify/server_url,ecomm.sella.it
Banca Sella uses callback URLs to send transaction statuses to Business Manager.
Unfortunately, the payment processor does not accept port numbers in callback URLs, so you should take extra steps to modify the default system configuration to automatically receive transaction statuses. Learn more about this problem and recommended solutions at http://kb.parallels.com/en/9500 .
Wirecard
This page provides clarifications on some fields you need to fill in when configuring the
Wirecard payment gateway.
Business Case Signature . A unique number Wirecard assigns to a merchant account.
This number includes up to 16 hexadecimal digits (0..9,A-F).
Name . The username set up for your account.
Password . The password set up for your account.
Country where the shop is legally registered . The country where your company is legally registered and where payment transactions take place. In certain cases, this helps to reduce acquirer fees by up to 1% of the transaction volume. Detailed information about this functionality can be requested from the Wirecard customer services department.
Enable CVV2/CVC2 verification . This item must be selected to make the gateway work.
Configuring Payment Methods 37
Enable address verification (AVS) . This item must not be selected to make the gateway work.
Check status period . An interval between attempts to request a transaction status after committing the transaction. Default value: 60.
Count of transaction checks .
The number of attempts to get a transaction status.
Default value: 10. If exceeded, the error status is assigned to transaction.
ATOS
This module is available only if Business Manager runs on Linux. To set up the gateway, enter the information you received from your merchant account provider.
LinkPoint
This page provides clarifications on some fields you need to fill in when configuring the
LinkPoint payment gateway.
LinkPoint store name . This is a number that LinkPoint assigns to you when creating your account.
Key file . Obtain this file from your LinkPoint account and upload the file to the following directory on the Business Manager server:
On Linux systems: /opt/plesk-billing/config/
On Windows systems: С: \Program
Files\Parallels\Plesk\billing\config\
Ensure that the psaadm user (on Linux systems) or the user that runs the IIS web server (on Windows systems) has permissions to read and execute the file.
WorldPay
This page describes steps necessary for configuring WorldPay module:
1. Configure the gateway settings.
2. Make sure that the Payment Response URL in accessible from the Internet.
3. Log in to your WorldPay account, go to the Installations > Integration Setup page and configure the account settings the following way:
Select the Payment Response enabled?
checkbox.
Enter your Payment Response password and Payment Response URL into the corresponding fields.
Enter the e-mail address to which the system should send troubleshooting emails into the Payment Response failure e-mail address field.
38 Configuring Payment Methods
Bank Transfer Plugins Configuration
Details
This section explains how to configure certain bank transfer plugins to start accepting payments through them.
In this section:
Configuring Payment Methods 39
Norma19 Plugin
The Norma19 plugin allows generating batch files of the format widely used in Spain.
The plug-in is implemented in such a way that an issuer (charging party) and submitter
(the party delivering a batch into a bank) requisites are always the same in the batch files profile. Thus, enter only the issuer requisites into the plug-in configuration form.
Norma19 Fields
Issuer customer code - your bank customer code.
Issuer name - your company name (as registered in your bank account).
Issuer account information your bank account requisites, namely:
Agency - the bank requisite, 4-digits code identifying the account.
Branch - the number identifying the bank branch where your account is registered.
CD - control digits, 2-digits code validating the Agency, Branch, and Account
Number. Control digits ensure that all the requisites are correct.
Account - your bank account number.
You are also able to enter up to 16 positions of additional information (Optional field #1
- #16) to be included with batches. When filling the optional fields, use placeholders enlisted below the optional fields. The placeholders will be replaced with the actual data fetched from information provided by the customer.
If you want to include a customer's address on a receipt, check the Include customer address as optional record box. A customer address will be taken from a customer's account profile.
DTAUS Plugin
The DTAUS plug-in allows generating batch files of the format widely used in Germany.
DTAUS Fields
Merchant name - the name you are registered under as a client in your bank.
Bank Code - the code of the financial institution (batch file recipient).
Account number - your bank account number.
40 Configuring Payment Methods
Testing Gateways Using Virtual Terminals
If your gateway account supports it, you can use Business Manager virtual terminal to connect directly to your gateway account. This can be useful for two main things:
1. Testing your connection during the configuration process
2. Charging a customer's card without having to use the Business Manager payment process.
To use the virtual terminal:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Payment Gateways .
2. Click Virtual Terminal in the Available Operations of the gateway you want to test. The first page asks two questions:
Create Income Accounting Entries . If you would like this transaction to create
Income Accounting Entries, check the box. Generally, you will want to have this checked. If you are testing, however, you may want to uncheck this, as the transactions you are putting through the terminal are not for accounting, but to verify connectivity.
Currency . Choose the currency which you want to use to test the gateway.
3. Click Next .
4. This page acts as the actual terminal. Enter as much information here as you have access to.
First Name . Enter the first name of the customer to be charged.
Last Name . Enter the last name of the customer to be charged.
Customer Email . Enter the email address of the customer to be charged.
Customer Address . Enter the customer's billing address.
Suite . Enter the suite, if applicable.
City.
Enter the city of the billing address.
State . Enter the state of the billing address.
Zip . Enter the zip code of the billing address.
Customer Country . Enter the country for the billing account.
Phone . Enter the customer's phone number.
Fax . Enter the customer's fax number, if applicable.
Amount Of Payment . Enter the exact amount of the payment to be charged.
Payment Comments . Enter any comments you want to accompany the payment.
You may want to enter your company name here.
Payment Type . Enter the payment type here. The virtual terminal will only work with payment types that are enabled in your gateway account.
Configuring Payment Methods 41
Charge Action . Choose to either authorize this transaction only, or to charge the card.
Credit Card . Fill in the credit card information:
Name on Credit Card . Enter the customer's name as it appears on their credit card.
Credit Card Type . Enter the credit card type.
Credit Card Number . Enter the credit card number, with no spaces.
Expiration Date . Enter the credit card expiration date.
CVV2 Code . Enter the customer's CVV2 code, if this is required by your gateway.
Issue Number . If you are using certain debit cards, you must enter this information
(if you do not know what this is, it's likely you don't need to use this).
Start Date . Like the Issue Number , if you are using certain debit cards, you must enter this information.
5. Click Charge .
42 Configuring Payment Methods
Setting Up Payment Queue
If you are using a top-tier gateway such as authorize.net
or bluepay to process your credit card or bank account transactions, the payment queue settings govern how and when invoices are added to and processed by the event ProcessPaymentQueue .
To set up a payment queue:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > All Settings > Automatic Payments .
2. Change the Common Settings . These settings include the following:
Process New Invoices . Do you want to process new invoices? If set to No , you will need to collect payments manually. For details on how to generate the list of payments to be processed, see Generating and Running Payment Queue (on page
Process Declined Transactions . Do you want to process invoices with declined transactions? If set to Yes , the system will collect payments according to the failure retry time set in the file libbilling/include/config/config.php
. If set to No , Business Manager will never automatically retry collecting payments. You will have to do this manually.
Process Errored Transactions . Do you want to process invoices with errored transactions? If set to Yes , the system will collect payments according to the failure retry time set in the file libbilling/include/config/config.php
. If set to No , Business Manager will never automatically retry errored invoices. You will have to do this manually.
Charge On Due Date Only . Do you want to charge the invoices only on the date invoices are due? If this is set to Yes , invoices will only be added to the payment queue on their due date (the due date for invoices is set in Invoice Settings ). If set to No , invoices will be added to the payment queue after they are created.
Clear The Payment Queue First . This should be set to Yes . If you do not clear the payment queue before a new one is generated, then invoices may be run multiple times.
Try Lesser Amounts . If set to Yes , the payment queue will start from the oldest invoice and will run till the first transaction declines. If set to No , the payment queue starts from the invoice with the least amount.
For example, we have invoice #1 for 20$ and invoice #2 for 10$, and 15$ is available on the customer's credit card. If you use lesser amounts, the system successfully charges 10$, and if you do not use them, the system fails to charge for invoice #1 and stops.
Configuring Payment Methods 43
Pay for a subscription from multiple billing accounts . This feature allows you to assign several different billing accounts to pay a single subscription, and then assign custom “weights” to each of these. For example, if a customer wants to use three credit cards to pay for one subscription, and wants to have 75% charged to one card, 20% to another, and 5% to another, you will need to enable this setting to allow this.
Generate Batch Prior To Due Date (Number of Days) . How many days before the due date do you want to generate the payment queue? A normal value for this is 1 .
3. Set the Credit Card Processing. This includes the Payment Queue Action . It determines whether the items in the payment queue get sent to the gateway as
Charge
, also called
AUTH_CAPTURE
, or Authorization Only , which will require a payment capture at a later point in time. Generally, this item is set to Charge . If you wish to have the gateway just authorize transactions and collect payments later, then set this to Authenticate Only .
Please be aware that if you do this, you will need to manually capture the funds for all recurring credit card transactions. For details on this operation, see Capturing Uncaptured Payment
4. Set the Bank Transfers Processing . This includes setting the following parameters:
Start processing batch files automatically after (in days). How many days after the creating the batch file you want to start its processing automatically? The default value is 0.
Start processing batch files automatically on reaching this number of transactions. How many transactions must be in a batch file to start its processing automatically?
The default value is 0.
Responsible Administrator. This parameter shows the administrator who is responsible for bank transfer processing.
5. Click Save .
C H A P T E R 8
Connecting Hosting Panels
If you plan to sell hosting resources of multiple servers, you can connect them to a single instance of Customer & Business Manager. These servers should have
Parallels Plesk Panel for Linux and Parallels Plesk Panel for Windows installed on them. However, if you used other panels with one of the earlier Business Manager versions, you still are able to work with them after upgrade.
Connected Panels are divided into panel groups . Grouping provides flexibility in allocating hosting resources. For example, if a hosting plan is associated with a certain panel group and resources of one panel in this group are exhausted, Business
Manager will create a hosting account on another panel in this group. You can find more information on configuring panels load in the section Balancing Panels Load (on
Each panel group contains panels of a single type. For example, Business Manager has two predefined groups, PleskUnix and PleskWin , for Linux and Windows versions of Parallels Plesk Panel, correspondingly. If you want to create more groups or add panels to existing groups, do it at the Business Setup > All Settings > Hosting Panels page.
The following diagram shows relations between Business Manager, hosting panels, and panel groups.
Connecting Hosting Panels 45
Business Manager lets you offer shared or dedicated IP hosting. If you want to offer dedicated IP plans and a certain Panel, configure the Panel IP pool from which
Business Manager will take IP addresses. The number of free IPs left is available if you expand a per-panel summary block (on the Hosting Panels page, preceding the panel
ID ). Learn more about how to work with IP pools in the section Setting Up IP Pool for
Hosting Subscriptions on Dedicated IPs (on page 46).
If you used your panels for providing hosting services before and they contain customer accounts, services plans, and subscriptions, you are able to add these objects from your Parallels Plesk Panels to Business Manager automatically. For detailed instructions on adding Panel objects to Business Manager, refer to the chapter
Using Customer and Business manager of Parallels Plesk Panel Administrator's Guide .
Sometimes you may have problems with remote panels due to connection errors of some software problems. Find the information on possible causes of these problems and their solutions in the chapter Troubleshooting
In this chapter:
Setting Up IP Pool for Hosting Subscriptions on Dedicated IPs ......................... 46
Troubleshooting Problems with Hosting Panels ................................................. 48
46 Connecting Hosting Panels
Balancing Panels Load
When someone subscribes to a hosting plan, Business Manager assigns the subscription to a certain panels group and creates a hosting account on one of the panels from the group. You can define how Business Manager makes the panel choice by selecting one of the group settings:
Add new subscriptions to the least full panel . In this case, Business Manager adds new accounts to the panel with the smallest number of accounts.
Fill each panel in the group until it is full . In this case, Business Manager fills each panel with accounts until it is full, and then start filling the second panel, and so on.
To change the fill type for a panel group, click the Edit link for this group and choose a type from a drop-down menu.
Business Manager defines load of each panel using server weight . The server weight is a value that you assign to each hosting plan. This value refers to the number of resources a subscription to this plan is going to use on the panel sever, in terms of disk space, bandwidth, etc. For each panel, you should assign a Maximum Server Weight .
Configure this setting appropriate to how you plan to specify weights on your plans so you can be confident you will not be overselling your equipment - as each time
Business Manager creates a hosting account on a panel, the weight of the corresponding plan subscription is added to the total weight of account already created on the server.
If you want limit the load of certain panel, you can also restrict creating new hosting subscriptions on them. To do this, disable these panels. You are still able to perform all operations (suspend, activate, cancel, etc) with existing subscriptions on disabled panels. The control for disabling panels is located on the panel options page, to which you can navigate by clicking the Edit link for the panel.
Setting Up IP Pool for Hosting
Subscriptions on Dedicated IPs
If you plan to sell hosting subscriptions on dedicated IPs, you should first add these IPs to IP pools of the corresponding panels as described in the section Configuring Server IP
Pool of Parallels Plesk Panel Administrator's Guide .
Then, make these IPs available to Business Manager subscriptions. To do this:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Hosting Panels .
2. Find corresponding panel group and click its ID .
3. Find the panel to which you added IPs at the previous step and click IP
Pool .
Connecting Hosting Panels 47
4. Click Add IP Address .
5. Enter the range of dedicated IPs and click Submit .
After you add the dedicated IPs to Business Manager, make sure that subscriptions on dedicated IPs are available for certain plans and enable the corresponding option of needed.
To enable the Dedicated IP option for a hosting plan:
1. Go to Business Setup > Plans and choose your hosting plan.
2. Click Change Settings .
3. Go to the Properties tab and select the Dedicated in the IPv4 address or IPv6 address drop-down lists, or both of them.
48 Connecting Hosting Panels
Troubleshooting Problems with Hosting
Panels
In this section you will find a list of problems you may have with hosting panels connected to Business Manager and proposed solutions for them.
Cannot Connect a Panel
Sometimes you may have problems trying to connect a certain panel to Business
Manager. In this case we recommend to do the following:
Check that you have specified correct panel options. To see the options, go to the
Business Setup > All Settings > Hosting Panels , choose the panel, and click Edit .
Ensure that Business Manager server and the panel server can resolve each other.
Fix DNS settings so that Business Manager and the panel are able to resolve each other host names to IPs, if needed.
Try to reconnect the panel using the corresponding controls on the Business Setup >
All Settings > Hosting Panels page.
Hosting Subscription Does not Appear in Panel
If the subscription created in Business Manager fails to appear in connected panel, check the events responsible for sending subscriptions data periodically to the Panel.
You can view the events from Events > Events . Such events are of type ProcessPanel of subscription and are supported by a related subscription ID.
If an error occurred during the processing of a subscription data by the Panel, the related event receives status Error . To see the error details, open the operations menu for the event (by clicking ) and click MBAPI Command Output . This will display the request triggered by the event and the Panel response. The errors are highlighted in pink.
If the processing of a subscription data is not allowed by the system configuration, the related event receives status Blocked by the provisioning policy . For example, this happens when the configuration requires payment of an invoice before provisioning, and the invoice has not been paid. To change the configuration, go to Business Setup >
All Settings > Provisioning Policy .
When the reason for an error is diagnosed and fixed, re-run the respective event by locating its options, and clicking Run Now . If the error is resolved and subscription is successfully created in the Panel, the event receives status Completed .
Connecting Hosting Panels 49
Plan, Customer Account, or Subscription Properties in Panel Differ from
Business Manager
Besides the initial interaction between the system and a connected hosting panels,
Business Manager sends updates to a panel if a plan, add-on, subscription, or primary or additional contact is modified. This action is called syncing and Business Manager runs it automatically after certain events. To learn what updates cause this one-way sync, refer to the Appendix D. Operations that synchronize Business Manager and Hosting
Panels
If you see that properties of panel objects do not update automatically after updates in
Business Manager, you can run the syncing with certain panel by clicking the Sync All button for this panel in the Business Setup > All Settings > Hosting Panels page.
Cannot Log In to Panel
You or your customers may have problems with logging in to connected panels using the Business Manager credentials.
If a certain Business Manager administrator or customer cannot log in to a panel, this may be caused by outdating of account information on the authorization module. In this case, sync the panel with Business Manager by clicking the Sync All button for this panel in the Business Setup > All Settings > Hosting Panels page.
If nobody can log in to a panel, this may be caused by problems with the SSO service.
Learn more about SSO in the chapter Managing SSO Service
try to fix these problems by clicking the Fix Problems With Logging in to Panels button on the home page.
If this does not help, repair the integration between Business Manager and connected panels by running the following command from the Business Manager server shell:
On Linux systems:
/usr/share/plesk-billing/integration --command=repair-all
On Windows systems:
"plesk_bin%\billing-integration.exe" --command=repair-all
C H A P T E R 9
Configuring Domain Registration
Services
Business Manager supports integration with a variety of domain registration services.
We suppose that you have the existing account with one of the supported registrars and you wish to start reselling domain names.
There are three steps to start selling domain names:
1. Configure Accounts with Registrars
2. Configure TLDs
(on page 51) and link them to domain name plans.
3. Select the TLDs you want to offer with a particular domain name registration plan by clicking Plans (in the left navigation menu), clicking the plan name, and finally clicking the TLDs tab.
In this chapter:
Adding ID Protect as an Add-on for Domains .................................................... 51
Setting Up Accounts with Registrars
If you wish to resell domain names with a certain registrar, you should add information about your merchant account to Business Manager. The system will resell domain names on behalf of this account. To see the list of supported registrars, see Appendix E
Some domain name registrars require you to do additional actions to start reselling.
These particularities are described in corresponding subsections of this section.
To add information about your account with a registrar:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Registrar Modules . On this page, you can see all of the available registrar integrations we provide with
Business Manager.
2. Click the Edit icon next to the registrar, specify that you will use it and configure its settings.
Configuring Domain Registration Services 51
Wild West Domains (GoDaddy)
Only certified accounts are able to resell domain names with the Wild West Domains registrar, so you should pass the certification to start reselling.
The certification procedure verifies that your software is capable of using the registrar's
API. You can proceed to the certification as soon as you add the registrar's module and specify your reseller account details. When this data is provided, the system will display the link Learn how to complete the certification here with detailed instructions on how to get certified.
Openprovider
When you configure this registrar, set Remote host to http://www.openprovider.nl/incoming_custxml.php
.
Managing TLDs
A TLD is a domain extension you offer with domain name registration plans. The system ships with the predefined set of TLDs through you can add custom ones.
Initially, TLDs that not associated with any registrar and are suspended. Service plans can include only active TLDs.
If you properly configure accounts with domain name registrars in the Configuration
Wizard, the system automatically activates TLDs supported by these registrars. The first registrar that supports a particular TLD will be set as the default for the TLD. If you subsequently add more registrars that support the same TLD, the default registrar will not be changed.
To manage the existing TLDs and add new, go to Business Setup > All Settings >
Supported TLDs .
Adding ID Protect as an Add-on for
Domains
ID Protect secures the information you specified during a domain name registration.
This feature is offered by eNom and some other registrars. You can offer it as an addon plan for domains. Please note that provisioning this add-on will only work if you use a registrar that supports this feature. Perform the steps described in this section to add the ID Protect option to your online store.
52 Configuring Domain Registration Services
In this section:
Step 1. Create a Generic Property for ID Protect ............................................... 52
Step 2. Add the ID Protect Option to the Domain Name Plan ............................ 53
Step 1. Create a Generic Property for ID Protect
To create a generic property for the ID protect add-on:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings and click Plan, Customer, and Generic
Properties .
2. Click the button New Generic Property .
3. Set the following as given below.
Generic Property Key : idProtect
Generic Question Name : ID Protect
Default Question : Do you want ID Protect?
Default Answer Value : Yes
Question Description : ID Protect option
4. Click Save .
Configuring Domain Registration Services
Step 2. Add the ID Protect Option to the Domain Name
Plan
To add the ID Protect property to your domain name plan as an add-on:
1. Go to Plans > Plans, choose your domain name plan and click Details .
2. For item Can customers attach add-ons when ordering this plan?
select Optional from the drop-down box.
3. Click Save .
4. Click the Add-ons link from the submenu.
5. Click the Properties link from the submenu and click Save .
Note : If you skip this step, the add-on will be hidden in online stores.
6. Click Attach New Add-on Group .
7. Set the following accordingly.
Select a panel resource or service: >> Do you want ID protect?
This is the generic property you created in the previous step.
Add add-ons to an existing group or add a new group : New add-on group
Add-on group name : Domain Options or Domain Features
8. Click Next .
9. Set the following accordingly.
Add-on name : ID Protect
Value: Yes
10. Click Next .
11. Set prices for the ID Protect option and click Next .
12. Click Finish .
The ID Protect option will now be available on your online store.
53
C H A P T E R 1 0
Configuring SSL Certificate Providers
If you want to sell SSL certificates, first add and configure a plugin that will interact between Business Manager and one of the certificate providers (authorities). After you add a plugin, it is possible to edit the plugin properties, enable or disable it. If a plugin is enabled, you can associate it with SSL certificate plans.
Note : Disabling a plugin associated with existing plans leads to malfunctioning of the system.
For details on how to associate a plugin and an SSL certificate plan, refer to the SSL
Certificates
To create a plugin:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > SSL Certificate Providers and сlick Add
New Plugin .
2. Fill in the necessary parameters in the opened wizard and click OK .
This will open the list of plugins containing the newly created one.
To edit a plugin:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > SSL Certificate Providers and click the plugin you wish to edit.
2. Update the necessary parameters and click OK .
This will open the list of plugins.
To enable or disable a plugin:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > SSL Certificate Providers and select the plugins you wish to enable or disable.
2. Click the Enable or Disable item below the search bar.
This will open the updated list of plugins.
Note : Disabling a plugin associated with existing plans leads to malfunctioning of the system.
In this chapter:
Configuring SSL Certificate Providers 55
Setting Up SSLfactory Plugin
Business Manager in conjunction with SSLfactory allows you to provision SSL Certificates easily, quickly, and efficiently.
The following SSL certificate types are available:
RapidSSL - A low-priced 128-bit SSL certificate delivered to you in 10 minutes! Singlesigned certificate at the lowest price available.
QuickSSL - A low-priced 128-bit SSL certificate delivered to you in 10 minutes! Real-time two-factor telephone authentication and included Unique Business Identifier make it a great value.
QuickSSL Premium - This 128-bit SSL certificate includes a dynamic security seal for your site and real-time, two-factor telephone authentication plus the Unique Business
Identifier (DUNS number equivalent), and is still delivered in only 10 minutes.
True BusinessID - Provides end-to-end internet security protection for doing business online. Secure transactions through High Assurance SSL and business validation from
True Site - so you are completely covered!
To set up SSLfactory plugin:
1. Sign up for an SSLfactory account at
http://www.pleskbilling.com/products/sslfactory
.
2. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > SSL Factory and submit your SSLfactory account user name and access code.
C H A P T E R 1 1
Setting Up Invoicing
In this chapter:
Understanding Billing Modes
Business Manager is, at heart, a billing system. Because of this, it's important to understand how the billing process works, from beginning to end. There are two main billing modes in Business Manager: Anniversary Billing Mode and Monthly Billing
Mode . We will outline the aspects of each of these separately, as there are some important differences between these two choices.
In this section:
Setting Up Invoicing 57
Anniversary Billing Mode
As the name implies, anniversary billing mode involves billing customers on the anniversary of the day they signed up for the subscription. Broadly speaking, this has two major results:
Having invoice due dates spread throughout the month means that you will have a steady stream of income. It also means that if there is a problem with billing for any reason (your server goes down, your gateway is having trouble), only a small percentage of your customers may be affected. This makes recovering from such occurrences less painful.
If you generate invoices every day, customers with multiple subscriptions purchased on different dates will receive multiple invoices for their purchases. For customers who pay manually, this may be undesirable. It should not be an issue for customers who pay automatically.
In addition to the above, it is important to consider scalability. Because anniversary mode results in a monthly billing workload divided between 28-31 days, you are much less likely to have problems with race conditions and other server-based limitations as your company grows. If you intend to have more than 20 customers, we recommend that you choose anniversary billing mode.
What to Expect in Anniversary Billing
Knowing what to expect from your billing system can help alleviate a lot of potential concern and confusion. Here we will walk through the life of a hypothetical customer, focusing specifically on how they will be billed.
Say you have a customer, Alice. Alice would like to order hosting and purchase a domain name from you. She finds your plan listings on the web, and goes through your order process. This process will create a customer record in your Business Manager for Alice, and add two subscriptions to this account. Let's assume that Alice chose to pay for her hosting on a monthly billing cycle, and her domain on a yearly billing cycle and that she chose a plan called Personal Hosting. We will also assume that you have
Business Manager set to generate invoices ten days before the subscription is set to renew.
As part of the order process, the first invoice for Alice's subscriptions will be created.
No matter how she chooses to pay, the system will automatically enter the date that each of these subscriptions renews. Say she signs up on June 15 th , 2008. Her hosting subscription, which is on a monthly billing cycle, will renew again on July 15 th , 2008.
Her domain, which is on a yearly cycle, will renew June 15 subscribed on the 15 th th , 2009. Because she
of the month, these subscriptions will always renew on the 15 th .
Now let's say that Alice has decided to open a small business, and she wants a separate hosting account for this business' website. She goes through your order process again, this time on the 20 th of August. She buys your Business Hosting subscription. An invoice is automatically generated through the order process for this first month of hosting. Alice would already have paid for her Personal Hosting on
August 15 th .
58 Setting Up Invoicing
In September, Alice will get two invoices. She will get an invoice for her Personal
Hosting that will renew on September 15 th , and a second invoice for her Business
Hosting, which will renew on September 20 th . Now let's fast forward to May 2009.
By default, Business Manager is set to generate domain renewal invoices 30 days in advance, rather than the 5-10 days that other subscription invoices are usually set to be generated. This is to prevent people from losing their domains. Thirty days provides enough warning that a customer should have time to pay their bill on time, and allow the renewal to take place. Because of this, Alice will receive three invoices. On May 5 th ,
Alice will get an invoice for her Personal Hosting subscription, which renews ten days later, on May 15 th . On May 10 th , she will get an invoice for her Business Hosting subscription, which renews May 20 th . On May 15 domain subscription, which renews June 15 th . th , Alice will get an invoice for her
This may sound like a lot of invoices. Keep in mind that if Alice is paying with a credit card that she keeps on file, or with PayPal subscriptions (the two most common payment methods), these payments will be made and logged by Business Manager without either you or Alice having to do any work. If Alice pays manually, she can write a single check for all three invoices and mail one payment. You can use the Quick
Manual Payment feature to mark each of her invoices as paid.
Monthly Billing Mode
Like anniversary mode, monthly billing mode will invoice your customers on a regular billing cycle, usually once a month. Unlike anniversary billing, customer subscriptions will all renew on the first day of the month. Billing your customers once a month has a couple of main features:
No matter how many subscriptions a customer might have, they will receive a single invoice listing all subscriptions renewing in any given month.
If you choose to run your billing manually, you can set aside an afternoon to generate invoices and a second afternoon to run them through the gateway.
Monthly billing often involves proration. If a customer would like to buy a subscription on the 15 th , you can either choose to have that subscription start on the first of the next month, or to prorate that first month. Proration adds another level of complexity to your billing, which can sometimes cause confusion for your potential customers. Because of this, and the scalability issues mentioned above, we recommend that companies do not use monthly billing unless they intend to have a small number of customers.
However, it is possible to use monthly billing mode and set your plans to not prorate.
This causes these plans to behave as if you were in anniversary mode. This is especially useful for selling items such as SSL certificates and domains. These items have fixed start and renewal dates determined by outside sources. Proration would result in subscription renewal dates that did not match the actual item's renewal date, and could cause problems.
Setting Up Invoicing 59
What to Expect in Monthly Billing
We have already seen what the typical customer's invoicing will look like in anniversary mode. Now let's see what this system will look like in monthly mode.
Meet Alice's friend Bob. On June 15 th , 2008, Bob decides he wants to buy several subscriptions from you. He buys the Personal hosting plan on a monthly cycle and a domain on a yearly cycle. Your Personal hosting plan is set to prorate; your domain plan is not. Let's assume that you have your proration threshold set to the 15 th . This means anyone who signs up on the 15 th or later will pay for the rest of the month they are in, plus the next month.
As part of the order process, Bob paid the first invoices for these subscriptions. Like anniversary billing, no matter how Bob pays, his subscriptions will automatically be updated with their next renewal date. Because Bob's Personal Hosting subscription was set to prorate, his first invoice charged him for the rest of June and the whole month of July. The domain subscription was not set to prorate, so he was charged for a full year.
At the end of July, Bob will get another invoice for his Personal Hosting subscription, due August 1 st . This will cover the whole month of August. Say that Bob decides, after paying this bill, that he would like to buy a Business Hosting subscription for his new small business. On August 5 th , Bob goes through your order process again, this time to purchase Business Hosting. Because the 5 th is before your proration threshold of the
15 th , Bob will simply pay for the rest of August in this first invoice. At the end of August,
Bob will receive a single invoice. This invoice will carry charges for both the Personal
Hosting and Business Hosting account.
Fast-forward to May of 2009. Bob will again receive an invoice in late April for both the
Personal Hosting and Business Hosting subscriptions. May 15 th , Bob will receive a second invoice, this time for his domain which is set to renew June 15 th . Remember, this subscription was set not to prorate, so it follows the anniversary billing behavior for subscription renewal dates. At the end of May, Bob will again be billed for his two hosting subscriptions on a single invoice.
Just like in anniversary mode, Bob's invoices can be set to be paid automatically, with a credit card kept on file or via third party subscription accounts.
60 Setting Up Invoicing
Setting Up Invoicing
You can configure different aspects of invoicing: Who and when should receive invoices, how invoice numbers should look like, how much items to put into a single invoice, etc. The system generates invoices as PDF files, but you can also view the invoice details from web.
PDF invoices are formatted to the locale you specified for the admin user profile. For example, if the admin user country is Russia, the invoice will use “,” for decimal part delimiter, and if the country is the USA, the invoice will use “.”.
PDF invoice language is dictated by the user for whom the invoice was generated. For example, invoices generated for customers from Germany will be written in German.
Invoices generated from the administrator interface will use the administrator's profile language settings.
To change the administrator's country and language, go to Business Setup > All Settings
> Administrators , click an administrator and Edit . To change the language for your profile, click Profile in the top of the page.
For each subscription, Business Manager creates invoices in the currency of the online store, in which the subscription was ordered. For example, all invoices for the subscriptions ordered in a store with euro currency will charge subscribers in euro. You cannot change the currency of an existing subscription.
As we already mentioned, you can customize the format of invoice numbers (invoice sequence). For example, you can start with “1” or “1000” or any number specific to your business needs. The system also allows you to select how you want to number your invoices such as:
YEAR-ID , example 2006-1234
YEAR-SEQ , example: 2006-1
VATYEAR-SEQ , example 2006-1
Invoicing is one of the many features used by Business Manager to create accounting entries. The basic accounting entries that get created for an invoice are as follows:
Income : The amount of money you have coming in from the invoice in reference, not including taxes.
Taxes Payable : The amount of money that you are going to pay in taxes for the invoice in reference.
Accounts Receivable : The amount of money (income + tax) you will receive from the customer for the invoice in reference.
There are other accounting entries that can be made during invoice creation, but those are controlled by you. For example, coupon cost. When someone uses a coupon,
Business Manager will keep track of how much the plan they purchased would have cost without applying a coupon. The system creates the appropriate expense entries each time an invoice is created.
Setting Up Invoicing 61
In addition to coupon cost, there is subscription cost. You have the ability to associate generic accounting entries with each plan created. These entries are created each time a subscription of that plan type is included on an invoice.
To set up invoicing, go to Business Setup > All Settings > Invoicing .
Customizing PDF Invoices
The system provides means for modifying the look and feel of printable invoices. It is possible to change invoice style and formatting, modify heading labels, or add custom text. In addition, if you send invoices in windowed envelopes, you have the option to modify the address block position to fit the window size.
Business Manager also helps you create printable invoices from PDF templates that include watermarks, images or other information.
To update the appearance of printable invoices:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > PDF Invoice Customization .
2. Update the configuration parameters.
3. Click Save Settings .
If your printable invoice requires more advanced customization, you are able to directly modify the code responsible for generating invoices in PDF format. To generate PDF documents, the code uses the TCPDF library. Refer to http://www.tcpdf.org/ to learn how to modify PDF generation code.
The invoice rendering code is located at <BM_dir> /libbilling/include/config/PDFInvoice.example.php
directory. Here <BM_dir> stands for the directory to which Business Manager was installed. Typically, it is
/usr/local/plesk-billing on FreeBSD and RPM-based Linux systems, and /opt/pleskbilling on deb-based Linux systems.
To add a PDF template:
1. Create a one-page PDF file that the system will further use as a template for invoices generation.
2. Rename the file to
stationery.pdf
, and put it into one of these directories depending on your OS:
For Linux, it is /usr/local/share/plesk-billing/
The system searches for this file and uses it as a PDF template if it is found.
62 Setting Up Invoicing
For experienced administrators, Business Manager provides an option to deeply modify printable invoices appearance by editing the PHP script that generates them -
PDFInvoice.php
. To generate PDF invoices, the script uses the TCPDF and FPDI libraries. For more information on these libraries, refer to the following sites:
http://www.tcpdf.org/doc/ for TCPDF.
http://www.setasign.de/support/manuals/fpdi/ for FDPI.
The PDFInvoice.php
is located in the following directory:
On Linux systems: opt/plesk-billing / htdocs/libbilling/include/config/
On Windows systems: C:\Program
Files\Parallels\Plesk\billing\htdocs\libbilling\include\config\
Achieving Tax Office Compliance
For some organizations, it is obligatory to keep the originally generated invoices unchanged. However, when you re-send an existing invoice (from the invoice details page), the attached PDF file is re-generated and might be modified. The modification can be caused by changes to system-wide settings like invoices language, or personal details.
If your local tax office requires that you not change invoice content once generated, save PDF copies of original invoices before modifying one of the following:
Company details.
Printable invoice appearance and language. For the operation details, see Setting
Up Invoicing
Administrator language. For the operation details, Editing Administrator Profiles (on
Your customers are also able to cause changes to invoices content by modifying their contact information.
C H A P T E R 1 2
Configuring Schet-Facturas
Schet-factura is a financial document that certifies that you supplied a taxable service to another party. If your company is registered in Russia, the system will generate and send these documents to some of your customers. If your do not need to keep or send these documents, please skip this section.
How to start issuing schet-facturas
The system decides whether to generate schet-facturas basing on system configuration settings ( Business Setup > All Settings > Schet-Facturas Issuing ). The first option in the settings list controls the documents generation. If it is selected, schetfacturas are generated basing on the restrictions set by other options on the page.
Otherwise, if the first option is cleared, schet-facturas are not generated at all, and you are unable to view or upload them. For Russian companies (company's country is
Russia) this option is initially selected. If your company is not from Russia and you wish to use schet-facturas, select the first option.
When schet-facturas are issued
The system issues schet-facturas in two cases: By schedule (once per month) or in case of changes to provided services. These changes - subscriptions upgrade, downgrade, or add-ons adjustment - can be initiated either by administrators or by customers. Any of these changes signals the system to issue a new schet-factura. The rationale for generating the documents is that previous service (the one before changes) was supplied in full and not used anymore.
To illustrate the second reason of schet-facturas issuing, we will give an example. Say, if a customer has subscribed to the Bronze hosting plan and then upgraded it to Silver, the new schet-factura will be issued for Bronze since this service is fully supplied and the customer does not use it anymore.
Who can view and download schet-facturas
Schet-facturas are available for viewing and downloading only to administrators. Other users receive them only by e-mail and only if you allowed them to do it in schet-factura settings. For details on how administrators can view and download schet-facturas, see
Viewing and Downloading Schet-Facturas
How to customize schet-facturas content
If you issue schet-facturas, you are able to configure Business Manager to fill in some of schet-factura fields automatically. For example, you can define company head and chief accountant names. To view the full list of customizable schet-factura fields and set values for them, go to the Business Setup > All Settings > Schet-Facturas Customization .
C H A P T E R 1 3
Configuring Business Manager
Automation
Business Manager initially allows you to process the majority of tasks automatically.
The tasks include invoices issuing, payments processing, account activation and provisioning, and many others. This chapter explains how to tune the automation settings to tailor them to your needs.
Note : Automation is not possible if you encrypt customer account information with a passphrase. For details on encryption, see Setting Up Encryption
In this chapter:
Defining How to Handle Unpaid Subscriptions .................................................. 69
Configuring Business Manager Automation 65
Understanding Events
One of the central parts of Business Manager automation system is Events . By events here we are referring to events within Business Manager itself. When Business
Manager is initially installed, there are eight events created by default. These events run some of the important tasks like generating invoices, suspending customers who do not pay their bills, and charging credit cards.
In addition to the eight events explained below, Business Manager creates events to carry out other actions like domain registration and renewals, provisioning of subscriptions, and generating invoices and processing credit cards. Each event, when created, is given a time stamp that tells the system when the event should be run.
In this section:
66 Configuring Business Manager Automation
ProcessInvoices
Part of the configuration process involves telling Business Manager how soon before a subscription renews you would like the invoice for that subscription to be generated.
Each day, this event searches through your list of active subscriptions. It finds any that are due to be invoiced, and generates them. It also sends by e-mail a copy to your customers, reminding them that another payment is due.
For more information about invoicing in Business Manager, see the chapter Setting Up
Invoicing
ProcessPaymentQueue
Once Business Manager has generated invoices, it searches the system for invoices that are both due and set to be paid by a credit card or a bank account. It will collect payment on these invoices, if they meet the criteria you set in your payment queue settings. For detailed information on payment queue settings, refer to the section
Setting Up Payment Queue
ProcessSuspensions
If you are using the auto-suspend rules, this event will run once a day and send notices to customers with past due bills. It will also create events to suspend accounts that reach your final threshold.
For more information on configuring automatic suspension of subscriptions, see the section Defining How to Handle Unpaid Subscriptions
ProcessUnsuspensions
When a subscription has been suspended, customers still have access to their account and can log in and pay their bill. This event runs every 20 minutes, looking for past due invoices that have been paid. Like ProcessSuspensions , this event will then create an event to activate paid subscriptions.
ProcessUsage
If you charge for limits overuse for some of your plans, this event will run daily. It searches your system for any subscriptions that require overuse billing, and then contacts the server to pull this information over to Business Manager for local storage.
For more information on charging your customers for overuse of traffic, refer to the section Pricing and Price Options
Configuring Business Manager Automation 67
ProcessCancellation
When a subscription is canceled it is marked as such. Subscriptions can either be cancelled immediately, or at the end of the billing cycle. ProcessCancellation runs once a day, searching for subscription that need to be canceled and then carrying out that action.
ProcessExpiredCreditCards
Once a week, this event searches through the database for credit cards that will be expiring soon. If it finds any, it will e-mail the card holder reminding them the card is going to expire soon and asking them to update the card information to avoid missing a payment.
ProcessDomainSynchronization
This event runs once a week. If you use the eNom registrar, this event will request eNom to update renewal dates for all domains that are listed in your system as being registered in eNom.
Note : This event does not change the subscription renewal dates, only the renewal date listed for the domain in the domain details screen.
ProcessBatchFiles
To receive payments from customers who pay with bank transfers, you should provide your bank with information about these payments. The system stores this information in special files called batch files. Before you can send such file a bank, you should prepare it (or process it, in terms of Business Manager). Business Manager offers the automation facilities by periodically checking batches and processing them if they contain a certain number of payments or exist for certain number of days, depending on automatic payments settings. The event that performs this processing runs once a day and it is called ProcessBatchFiles .
Learn more about bank transfers in the section Bank Transfer Processing
68 Configuring Business Manager Automation
ProcessActionLog
When administrators or customers perform actions in Business Manager, it writes the information about these actions to the audit log. The audit log is stored in the Business
Manager database. In order to free up the database, the system periodically moves the log from the database to a file. To do this, Business Manager uses the
ProcessActionLog event. By default, it runs every three months, but you can change the frequency of executions.
For more information on logging users' actions, see the section Viewing Audit Log (on
ProcessSync
Every 5 minutes, Business Manager executes an event that looks for changes in
Business Manager its objects (customer and administrator accounts, plans, and subscriptions) and applies these changes to corresponding objects on connected panels. You can view the sync state on the Home page.
ProcessSchetFacturas
If you use schet-facturas in your business, Business Manager runs an event that check all subscriptions and generates schet-facturas for them as needed once a day. In addition, this event sends schet-facturas to your customers by e-mail according to configuration on the Business Setup > All Settings > Schet-Facturas Issuing page. Find more information about setting up issuing and sending of schet-facturas in the chapter
Configuring Schet-Facturas
Configuring Business Manager Automation 69
Setting Up Provisioning Policy
Some of the events carry out tasks related to domain name, SSL certificate, or hosting provisioning. When such events run, the system attempts to perform provisioning according to data provided by the events. The aspects of running the events are configured by the system-wide provisioning policy.
There are also a small number of settings in the main configuration file that affect the way the event queue runs.
To configure the provisioning policy:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Provisioning Policy .
2. Choose the desired options for the displayed fields.
3. Click Save Settings .
Note: When provisioning a customer account to a Panel, the system attempts to create an account with the username that the customer has specified in an online store. If it is impossible (for example, this username is already taken on the Panel), the system generates a random username. Besides, the system always generates random usernames for customers' access to the server over FTP, SSH, and RDP.
Defining How to Handle Unpaid
Subscriptions
You have the option to automatically send notifications to customers who have overdue invoices. If these customers do not close the invoices, the service removes their unpaid subscriptions.
If you turn on this service, the event queue will automatically check suspended subscriptions every twenty (20) minutes to see if the associated invoice has been paid.
If it has been paid, the system will activate the subscription.
To define how to handle unpaid subscriptions:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Cancelation of Unpaid Subscriptions .
2. Specify the appropriate values.
3. Click Save settings .
C H A P T E R 1 4
Setting Up Automatic E-mails
This chapter focuses on setting up automatic e-mails sent to users upon particular events. Sending e-mails to customers 'manually' is discussed in the Sending Mass Emails
E-mails are an integral part of the Business Manager system. They are a large part of what makes it possible to automate: when a customer needs information, the system will generate and send an e-mail automatically, letting customers know if there is something they need to do or know. Without e-mails, managers would need to do a lot more work to keep their system up and running.
Business Manager provides an extensive e-mail system that allows you to send e-mails based on locale. There is a set of e-mail actions which are specific to each type of email group you will use in your system.
Note: E-mail actions are pre-defined and cannot be modified.
In this chapter:
Getting Your System Ready to Send E-mail Messages ..................................... 75
Setting Up Automatic E-mails 71
Adding E-mail Templates
To add an e-mail template group:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > E-mail Templates .
2. Find the e-mail action you want to add an e-mail template to and click
Add Template .
3. Fill in the necessary information.
4. Click Save .
5. Click Add Locale button in the middle of the page. Set up the following:
Choose the language to associate with the template.
Choose how broadly you would like the template to apply. If you are making a
Spanish template, for example, do you want it to be used by Spanish speaking people world-wide? Or just in Spain?
If this is going to be the default locale, check the box. The default locale will be applied if no other locale can be found that applies to the customer.
Enter a subject for the email template. This is the subject line that each e-mail will use.
E-mail Template HTML Body . Enter the body of your e-mail template in html format.
E-mail Template Text Body . Enter the body of your e-mail template in text format.
Note : All contacts are set to receive HTML by default when they come through the online store. If you do not want a specific customer to receive HTML e-mails, go to the customer's account details page and click on the edit primary button. Uncheck
HTML for the E-mail Format . Click edit contact .
6. Reload Options : If you need to reload the original email templates, perform the following steps:
1. Select the template you want to reload.
2. Reload HTML . Select Yes .
3. Reload Text . Select Yes .
Caution : This will replace this existing template. Make a backup of your existing template if you do not wish to lose it.
7. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click Save .
72 Setting Up Automatic E-mails
Setting Up Your Locales
Business Manager has the ability to send e-mails in various different languages. Each of these locales must be set up during the configuration process. By default, the system sets up templates of a single locale (usually English).
To set up additional locales:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > E-mail Templates .
2. Choose the template you would like to add a locale to. Click on the green pencil icon to view the edit screen for this template.
3. Click Add Locale button in the middle of the page. Fill in the following:
Choose the language to associate with the template.
Choose how broadly you would like the template to apply. If you are making a
Spanish template, for example, do you want it to be used by Spanish speaking people world-wide? Or just in Spain?
If this is going to be the default locale, check the box. The default locale will be applied if no other locale can be found that applies to the customer.
Enter a subject for the e-mail template. This is the subject line that each e-mail will use.
E-mail Template HTML Body . Enter the body of your e-mail template in html format.
E-mail Template Text Body . Enter the body of your e-mail template in text format.
Note : All contacts are set to receive HTML by default when they come through the online store. If you do not want a specific customer to receive HTML e-mails, go to the customer's account details page and click on the edit primary button. Uncheck
HTML for the E-mail Format . Click edit contact .
4. Reload Options : If you need to reload the original e-mail templates, perform the following steps:
1. Select the template you want to reload.
2. Reload HTML . Select Yes .
3. Reload Text . Select Yes .
Caution : This will replace this existing template. Please make a backup of your existing template if you do not wish to lose it.
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click Save .
Setting Up Automatic E-mails 73
Editing Template Content
Whether you have just created a new locale or want to edit the defaults, you will follow the same general instructions. In addition to basic html and text content, you can use a number of predefined variables to populate the e-mails with information from the database.
To edit content of a template:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > E-mail Templates .
2. Choose the template you would like to edit. Click on the green pencil icon to view the edit screen for this template.
3. Click the green pencil icon for an existing locale or edit the content while adding a new locale.
4. Here you have a couple of options: you can develop the content on your own, or load our default template and then edit it. If you are looking at using our default templates, we recommend that you reload them before editing to be sure you have the latest version.
If you choose to use your own content, you would enter it in the fields E-mail
Template HTML Body and E-mail Template Text Body . As you edit, you can click preview on most templates and it will allow you to see how your work will be parsed by the system.
If you prefer to save time by editing our template, you can scroll to the bottom of the page, choose the template you would like to use, click Test for both the
HTML and text e-mail, and then click reload. You can now edit the template as above.
Note: All contacts are set to receive HTML by default when they come through the online store. If you do not want a specific customer to receive HTML e-mails, go to the customer's account details page and click Edit primary . Uncheck HTML for the Email Format . Click Edit contact .
5. Reload Options : If you need to reload the original e-mail templates, perform the following steps:
1. Select the template you want to reload.
2. Reload HTML : Select Yes.
3. Reload Text : Select Yes.
Caution: This will replace this existing template. Please make a backup of your existing template if you do not wish to lose it.
74 Setting Up Automatic E-mails
6. Click Save .
7. You will see your new template added with the locale you want to use for the e-mail template group you selected. You can add as many email templates to this group or any other group as you need based on your specific needs.
Setting Up Automatic E-mails 75
Reloading E-mail Templates
To reload e-mail templates:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > E-mail Templates .
2. Click the pencil icon next to each email template you want to reload.
3. E-mail templates for each locale you have setup will display at the bottom of the page. Click the pencil icon in the Available Operations column.
4. At the bottom of the Edit E-mail Template page are the Reload Option s.
Select the template you want to reload from the drop-down box.
5. Select Yes for both Reload HTML and Reload Text .
6. Click reload . The template has now been reloaded.
7. Repeat steps 2-6 for each email template you wish to reload.
Tip : If you are reloading all 25 email templates, save time by opening each email template in step 2 in a new window or tab, and go through the remaining steps one screen at a time.
Getting Your System Ready to Send Email Messages
Some users have reported instances where the e-mail templates, particularly the lost password e-mails, are being sent with the content missing. Below are some points to consider to ensure that your system is set up properly to send e-mail messages.
Are e-mail templates set?
First, check to make sure you have an email template set for each template group and locale.
To do so, perform the following steps:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > E-mail Templates .
2. Click the pencil icon next to each e-mail template you want to view.
3. An e-mail template for each locale you have set up will display at the bottom of the page. Click the pencil icon in the Available Operations column.
76 Setting Up Automatic E-mails
4. You will see an HTML e-mail template and plain text email template. If these fields are blank, you will need to reload your e-mail templates as described in the Reloading E-mail Templates (on page Error!
Bookmark not defined.
) document.
5. Test to see if the e-mail was sent out successfully. If it is still blank, see below.
Is the temp directory set properly in your smarty.php
file?
To check, perform the following steps:
1. Open up the file
lib-billing/include/config/smarty.php
.
2. Find the line
$CONF[”smarty”][”compileDirectory”] =
3. Make sure the path to your temp directory is set correctly after the
=
sign. Examples are provided below:
On Linux, this is typically $CONF[”smarty”][”compileDirectory”] =
“/tmp”;
On Windows, this is typically $CONF[”smarty”][”compileDirectory”] =
“C: \ Temp”;
4. Find the line
$CONF[”smarty”][”cacheDirectory”] =
5. Make sure the path to your temp directory is set correctly after the
=
sign. Examples are provided below:
On Linux, this is typically $CONF[”smarty”][”cacheDirectory”] =
“/tmp”;
On Windows, this is typically $CONF[”smarty”][”cacheDirectory”] =
“C: \ Temp”;
6. Save the file and test it to see if your e-mails are being sent out successfully.
Setting Up Automatic E-mails 77
Customizing E-mail Templates
All email templates in the system have special variables that are parsed at run-time.
This means that the variables are replaced with the data they represent prior to being sent to the customer. Some general customer variables may be shared and made available in all templates, however many specific variables are unique to a particular template set (invoice data, subscription data, etc). It is important to understand that not all variables can be used in all templates. To view a list of available variables and their meanings, refer to the E-mail Template Variables
The template files are found in the lib-themes/default/libbilling/templates/emails/widgets/ directory.
In this section:
Updating the E-mail Header
To update the e-mail header:
1. Login to your server via SSH.
2. Open the following file in your Business Manager file set:
libthemes/default/libbilling/templates/emails/widgets/header.tpl
3. The code below controls the header of the email. Modify it to fit your needs:
{$smarty.const[$headerTitle]|default:$headerTitle}
4. Save the file.
78 Setting Up Automatic E-mails
Updating the E-mail Layout
The e-mail templates are made up of several template files which control the display and layout of all 25 default email templates. To see which template files are used by each e-mail template, click the pencil icon to edit an individual e-mail template and view the source of the Email Template HTML Body , and find the corresponding fragments in files within the lib-themes/default/lib-billing/templates/emails/ directory.
Each component of the HTML email templates has its own header and footer file to make it easy to update each instance of that component throughout the email template set. For example, if you would like to edit the display of the information boxes that appear in any subscription Info e-mail template, simply edit the boxHeader.tpl
and boxFooter.tpl
files and the change will take effect across the entire e-mail template system. Likewise, tables that use IF statements to display or hide information such as in the New subscription order can be customized by editing the codeBoxHeader.tpl
and codeBoxFooter.tpl
files, and so on. The default e-mail templates we provide are designed to serve as examples that can be used by any business. You are encouraged to edit the colors, font styles, and layout to match your specific needs.
E-mail Template Variables
Below is a list of e-mail variables organized by the templates in which you can use them. Please note that these variables are hard coded in the system, and cannot be changed.
In this section:
Subscription Info E-mail
Name
Your Company Name
Your Company URL
Variable
{$companyName}
{$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
Your Company State {$companyState}
{$companyZip} Your Company Zip
Contact First Name {$contactFirstName
}
{$contactLastName} Contact Last Name
Contact Name {$clientCompany}
{$contactAddress1} Contact Address 1
Contact Address 2
Contact City
{$contactAddress2}
{$contactCity}
Contact State
Contact Zip
{$contactState}
{$contactZip}
Subscription Name {$packageName}
Subscription Price {$packagePrice}
Subscription IP {$packageIP}
Subscriber's username {$packageUsername}
Subscriber's password
Domain Name
Domain TLD
Nameserver 1
Nameserver 1 IP
{$packagePassword}
{$domainSLD}
{$domainTLD}
{$nameserver1}
{$nameserver1IP}
Setting Up Automatic E-mails 79
80 Setting Up Automatic E-mails
Nameserver 2 {$nameserver2}
Nameserver 2 IP
Nameserver 3
{$nameserver2IP}
{$nameserver3}
Nameserver 3 IP
Nameserver 4
{$nameserver3IP}
{$nameserver4}
Nameserver 4 IP
Contact User Name
{$nameserver4IP}
Contact customer URL {$companyClientURL
}
{$contactUsername}
Date {$currentDateTime}
Invoice E-mail
Name
Your Company Name
Your Company URL
Variable
{$companyName}
{$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
Your Company State {$companyState}
Your Company Zip
Contact First Name
Contact Last Name
Contact Name
Contact Address 1
Contact Address 2
Contact City
Contact State
Contact Zip
{$companyZip}
{$contactFirstName}
{$contactLastName}
{$clientCompany}
{$contactAddress1}
{$contactAddress2}
{$contactCity}
{$contactState}
{$contactZip}
Invoice Number
Invoice Date Entered
{$invoiceNumber}
{$invoiceDateEntered}
Loop Line Items
BEGINNING
Line Item Comments
{loop=lineItems}
{$lineItem.packageCommen
ts}
{$lineItemQuantity} Line Item Quantity
Line Item Description {$lineItemDescription}
Line Item Price Amount {$lineItemPriceAmount}
Line Item Discount
Amount
Line Item Tax Amount
Invoice Comments
Date
{$lineItemDiscountAmount
}
{$lineItemTaxAmount}
Line Item Total Amount {$lineItemTotalAmount}
Loop Line Items END {/loop}
Invoice Amount
Invoice Date Due
{$invoiceAmount}
{$invoiceDateDue}
{$invoiceComments}
{$currentDateTime}
Credit Card Payment
Name
Your Company Name
Variable
{$companyName}
Your Company URL {$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
Your Company State
Your Company Zip
Contact First Name
{$companyState}
{$companyZip}
{$contactFirstName}
Contact Last Name {$contactLastName}
Setting Up Automatic E-mails 81
82 Setting Up Automatic E-mails
Contact Name {$clientCompany}
Contact Address 1 {$contactAddress1}
Contact Address 2
Contact City
Contact State
{$contactAddress2}
{$contactCity}
{$contactState}
Contact Zip
Invoice Number
Invoice Amount
{$contactZip}
{$invoiceNumber}
{$invoiceAmount}
Credit Card Type {$billingCardType}
Credit Card Number {$billingAccountNumLastFo ur}
Transaction Date/Time {$transactionDateCreated}
Transaction ID {$transactionCode}
Auth Return
Auth Code
AVS Code
Transaction Amount
Notes
Date
{$authReturn}
{$authCode}
{$avsCode}
{$transactionAmount}
{$transactionNotes}
{$currentDateTime}
eCheck Payment
Name
Your Company Name
Variable
{$companyName}
Your Company URL {$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
Your Company State {$companyState}
Your Company Zip
Contact First Name
{$companyZip}
{$contactFirstName}
Contact Last Name
Contact Name
Contact Address 1
{$contactLastName}
{$clientCompany}
{$contactAddress1}
Contact Address 2
Contact City
Contact State
{$contactAddress2}
{$contactCity}
{$contactState}
Contact Zip
Invoice Number
Invoice Amount
{$contactZip}
{$invoiceNumber}
{$invoiceAmount}
Bank Name
Bank ABA Code
{$billingBankName}
{$billingBankAbaCode}
Bank Account Number {$billingAccountNumLastFo ur}
Transaction Date/Time {$transactionDateCreated}
Transaction ID {$transactionCode}
Auth Return
Auth Code
AVS Code
Transaction Amount
Notes
Date
{$authReturn}
{$authCode}
{$avsCode}
{$transactionAmount}
{$transactionNotes}
{$currentDateTime}
Bank Draft Payment
Name
Your Company Name
Your Company URL
Variable
{$companyName}
{$companyURL}
Setting Up Automatic E-mails 83
84 Setting Up Automatic E-mails
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
Your Company State {$companyState}
Your Company Zip
Contact First Name
Contact Last Name
{$companyZip}
{$contactFirstName}
{$contactLastName}
Contact Name
Contact Address 1
Contact Address 2
{$clientCompany}
{$contactAddress1}
{$contactAddress2}
Contact City
Contact State
Contact Zip
Invoice Number
{$contactCity}
{$contactState}
{$contactZip}
{$invoiceNumber}
Invoice Amount
Bank Name
{$invoiceAmount}
{$billingBankName}
Bank ABA Code
Auth Return
Auth Code
AVS Code
Transaction Amount
Notes
Date
{$billingBankAbaCode}
Bank Account Number {$billingAccountNumLastFo ur}
Transaction Date/Time {$transactionDateCreated}
Transaction ID {$transactionCode}
{$authReturn}
{$authCode}
{$avsCode}
{$transactionAmount}
{$transactionNotes}
{$currentDateTime}
Off-site Gateway Payment
Name
Your Company Name
Variable
{$companyName}
Your Company URL
Your Company State
{$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
{$companyState}
Your Company Zip {$companyZip}
Contact First Name {$contactFirstName}
Contact Last Name {$contactLastName}
Contact Name {$clientCompany}
Contact Address 1 {$contactAddress1}
Contact Address 2
Contact City
{$contactAddress2}
{$contactCity}
Contact State {$contactState}
Contact Zip {$contactZip}
Gateway Name {$gatewayName}
Transaction Date/Time {$transactionDateCreated}
Transaction ID
Auth Return
Auth Code
AVS Code
Transaction Amount
Notes
Date
{$transactionCode}
{$authReturn}
{$authCode}
{$avsCode}
{$transactionAmount}
{$transactionNotes}
{$currentDateTime}
Setting Up Automatic E-mails 85
86 Setting Up Automatic E-mails
Declined Payment
Name
Your Company Name
Variable
{$companyName}
Your Company URL
Your Company State
{$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
{$companyState}
Your Company Zip {$companyZip}
Contact First Name {$contactFirstName}
Contact Last Name {$contactLastName}
Contact Name {$clientCompany}
Contact Address 1 {$contactAddress1}
Contact Address 2
Contact City
Contact State
{$contactAddress2}
{$contactCity}
{$contactState}
Contact Zip
Invoice Number
Invoice Amount
{$contactZip}
{$invoiceNumber}
{$invoiceAmount}
Credit Card Type
Transaction ID
{$billingCardType}
Credit Card Number {$billingAccountNumLastFo ur}
Transaction Date/Time {$transactionDateCreated}
{$transactionCode}
Auth Return
Auth Code
AVS Code
{$authReturn}
{$authCode}
{$avsCode}
Transaction Amount
Notes
Date
{$transactionAmount}
{$transactionNotes}
{$currentDateTime}
Payment Error
Name
Your Company Name
Your Company URL
Variable
{$companyName}
{$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
Your Company State {$companyState}
Your Company Zip
Contact First Name
{$companyZip}
{$contactFirstName}
Contact Last Name
Contact Name
{$contactLastName}
{$clientCompany}
Contact Address 1
Contact Address 2
Contact City
{$contactAddress1}
{$contactAddress2}
{$contactCity}
Contact State
Contact Zip
{$contactState}
{$contactZip}
{$invoiceNumber} Invoice Number
Invoice Amount
Credit Card Type
{$invoiceAmount}
{$billingCardType}
Credit Card Number {$billingAccountNumLastFo ur}
Transaction Date/Time {$transactionDateCreated}
Setting Up Automatic E-mails 87
88 Setting Up Automatic E-mails
Transaction ID {$transactionCode}
Auth Return
Auth Code
AVS Code
Transaction Amount
Notes
Date
{$authReturn}
{$authCode}
{$avsCode}
{$transactionAmount}
{$transactionNotes}
{$currentDateTime}
Domain Renewal Notice
Name
Your Company Name
Variable
{$companyName}
Your Company URL
Your Company State
{$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
{$companyState}
Your Company Zip {$companyZip}
Contact First Name {$contactFirstName}
Contact Last Name
Contact Name
Contact Address 1
{$contactLastName}
{$clientCompany}
{$contactAddress1}
Contact Address 2
Contact City
Contact State
{$contactAddress2}
{$contactCity}
{$contactState}
Contact Zip
Domain Name
Domain TLD
{$contactZip}
{$domainSLD}
{$domainTLD}
Invoice Number
Invoice Amount
Invoice Date Entered
Domain Expiry Date
Date
{$invoiceNumber}
{$invoiceAmount}
{$invoiceDateEntered}
{$domainDateExpires}
{$currentDateTime}
Domain Transfer - Success E-mail
Name
Your Company Name
Variable
{$companyName}
Your Company URL {$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
Your Company City
Your Company State
Your Company Zip
Contact First Name
Contact Last Name
Contact Name
Contact Address 1
Contact Address 2
Contact City
Contact State
Contact Zip
Domain Name
Domain TLD
{$companyCity}
{$companyState}
{$companyZip}
{$contactFirstName}
{$contactLastName}
{$clientCompany}
{$contactAddress1}
{$contactAddress2}
{$contactCity}
{$contactState}
{$contactZip}
{$domainSLD}
{$domainTLD}
Setting Up Automatic E-mails 89
90
Date
Setting Up Automatic E-mails
{$currentDateTime}
Domain Transfer - Failure E-mail
Name
Your Company Name
Variable
{$companyName}
Your Company URL
Your Company State
{$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
{$companyState}
Your Company Zip {$companyZip}
Contact First Name {$contactFirstName}
Contact Last Name {$contactLastName}
Contact Name {$clientCompany}
Contact Address 1 {$contactAddress1}
Contact Address 2 {$contactAddress2}
Contact City
Contact State
Contact Zip
{$contactCity}
{$contactState}
{$contactZip}
Domain Name
Domain TLD
Date
{$domainSLD}
{$domainTLD}
{$currentDateTime}
Setting Up Automatic E-mails
Credit Card Expiration Notification E-mail
Name
Your Company Name
Your Company URL
Variable
{$companyName}
{$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
Your Company State {$companyState}
Your Company Zip
Contact First Name
{$companyZip}
{$contactFirstName}
91
Contact Last Name
Contact Name
Contact Address 1
Contact Address 2
Contact City
Contact State
Contact Zip
Credit Card Type
Credit Card Number
Expire Month
Expire Year
Date
{$contactLastName}
{$clientCompany}
{$contactAddress1}
{$contactAddress2}
{$contactCity}
{$contactState}
{$contactZip}
{$billingCardType}
{$billingAccountNumLastFo ur}
{$billingCardExpMonth}
{$billingCardExpYear}
{$currentDateTime}
92 Setting Up Automatic E-mails
Subscription Suspension E-mails
Name
Your Company Name
Your Company URL
Variable
{$companyName}
{$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
Your Company State {$companyState}
Your Company Zip
Contact First Name
{$companyZip}
{$contactFirstName}
Contact Last Name
Contact Name
{$contactLastName}
{$clientCompany}
Contact Address 1
Contact Address 2
Contact City
{$contactAddress1}
{$contactAddress2}
{$contactCity}
Contact State
Date
{$contactState}
Contact Zip
Contact User Name
{$contactZip}
Invoice Number {$invoiceNumber}
Contact Customer URL {$companyClientURL}
{$contactUsername}
{$currentDateTime}
Subscription Enable E-mail
Name
Your Company Name
Variable
{$companyName}
Your Company URL
Your Company State
{$companyURL}
Your Company Address
1
Your Company Address
2
Your Company City
{$companyAddress1}
{$companyAddress2}
{$companyCity}
{$companyState}
Your Company Zip {$companyZip}
Contact First Name
Contact Last Name
Contact Name
{$contactFirstName}
{$contactLastName}
{$clientCompany}
Contact Address 1
Contact Address 2
Contact City
{$contactAddress1}
{$contactAddress2}
{$contactCity}
Contact State
Contact Zip
Invoice Number
{$contactState}
{$contactZip}
{$invoiceNumber}
Invoice Amount Paid
Invoice Date Paid
Subscription Name
Date
{$invoiceAmountPaid}
{$invoiceDatePaid}
{$packageName}
{$currentDateTime}
Setting Up Automatic E-mails 93
C H A P T E R 1 5
Managing Online Stores
Online store is a website automatically created by Business Manager. To read the introduction to online stores, see
Online Stores and Website Widgets (on page 15)
.
This chapter explains how to add or edit an online store, how to customize its look and feel, and how to manage blacklists of customers e-mail addresses.
We do not provide store configuration instructions in this chapter, as the configurable options are self-explanatory, and you can easily find what you need by reading about these options when adding or editing online stores.
In this chapter:
Using Website Widgets to Embed Stores into Websites .................................... 96
Querying Customers for Extra Information in Online Stores .............................. 96
Adding an Online Store
If you are going to be charging your customers in more than one currency, then you need to have one online store for each currency.
To add a new online store:
1. Go to Business Setup > Online Stores .
2. This page lists your current online stores. From here, click Add New Store .
3. Fill in the necessary information using the tips from the interface.
4. Click Save .
Managing Online Stores 95
Editing an Online Store
Use the instructions below to edit an online store.
Tip : Assuming that you work with a single currency, you only need one online store to distribute your service plans. For these purposes, edit a default online store settings to match your needs instead of creating new stores.
To edit an online store:
1. Go to Business Setup > Online Stores and click the store you want to edit.
2. Fill in the necessary information. Use tips next to each of the fields and to understand what a field configures.
Changing Online Store Appearance
You can perform the following changes of the Business Manager online store appearance through the GUI:
Set the custom header and footer for the store pages. To do it, click the Header and footer > [edit header and footer] link on the store’s page.
Choose the color theme of the store from built-in themes or create your own. To do it, click the Color theme > [change ] link on the store’s page.
Change the store home page layout using landing page templates. Business
Manager provides two templates: column and row . To change the layout, click
Change Settings on the store’s page, choose the template from the Landing page template dropbox, and click Save .
96 Managing Online Stores
Using Website Widgets to Embed Stores into Websites
A website widget is a piece of code that shows a part of an online store on your website. Widgets either list your plans (catalog widget) or let your customers check a domain name availability (domain widget) to further add this domain to their subscription. When customers select a plan or submit a domain name, they are forwarded to a particular online store where they can complete the order.
To create a widget within an online store, go to the store page ( Business Setup > Online
Stores > store name ) and click the Add Website Widget button. Then fill in the required fields and save the widget.
To add a widget to your website, get the widget code by clicking Get Code in Available
Operations list on the store page. A widget code may be server-side (written in PHP) or customer-side (written in JavaScript). After you get the code, add it to your website pages on which you want to show the widget.
Querying Customers for Extra Information in Online Stores
If you need additional information on your customers, for example, social security number or other information that is not stored in customer details by default, you can get it using the questions mechanism.
Questions are groups of controls displayed to a customer in an online store during the ordering process. Customers enter the answer into certain field or choose one of proposed answers. Their answers are stored on the server linked to their accounts.
Therefore, questions allow to create additional fields for customer details.
For instructions on adding questions to online stores, see the section Setting Up
Customer Account Properties
C H A P T E R 1 6
Setting Up Fraud Protection
To prevent your business from frauds, Customer & Business Manager offers you tools that prevent people that you do not trust from logging into the system or placing their orders in online stores. These tools are the following:
Subscription approval policy.
E-mail black list.
Subscription approval policy defines when new subscribers will get the access to the system: immediately after placing their orders, after your approval, or as determined by the FraudGuardian - a tool that detects fraudulent orders automatically. Learn more about using FraudGuardian in Business Manager in the section Setting Up FraudGuardian
Note: Only US residents can have FraudGuardian accounts.
The controls for managing the subscription approval policy are located on the Business
Setup > All Settings > Fraud Protection Settings page.
If you want to prohibit subscriptions from certain e-mail addresses, for example, free mailboxes or an address previously used for fraud, add these addresses to your e-mail black list. This will make the system automatically reject the subscription, if such e-mail is provided in the subscriber's personal information. For details about using the e-mail black list, refer to the section Prohibiting Subscriptions from Certain E-mail Addresses (on
In this chapter:
Prohibiting Subscriptions from Certain E-mail Addresses .................................. 102
98 Setting Up Fraud Protection
Setting Up FraudGuardian
FraudGuardian is a tool we developed to help you screen incoming orders to help reduce the costs of fraud. FraudGuardian looks for orders that are probably not fraud and automatically approves them, helping to automate your business one step further.
Below are step-by-step instructions on how to set up FraudGuardian through Business
Manager.
First you need to sign up for a FraudGuardian account. Once you have done that, you need to enable the module, then configure it. There are two main parts to configuring
FraudGuardian: Fraud Sets and Thresholds.
In this section:
Step 1. Sign Up for a FraudGuardian Account ................................................... 98
Step 2. Submit Your FraudGuardian Account Data ........................................... 98
Step 5. Tie Fraud Sets with Online Stores and Thresholds ................................ 102
Step 1. Sign Up for a FraudGuardian Account
You can sign up for a FraudGuardian account at http://www.pleskbilling.com/products/fraudguardian/ . Once you have done that, you need to enable the module, then configure it.
Step 2. Submit Your FraudGuardian Account Data
To submit your account data:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Fraud Protection Settings and choose Automatic fraud detection using FraudGuardian (for US only) .
2. Submit your FraudGuardian account user name and password.
Setting Up Fraud Protection
Step 3. Create a Fraud Set
A fraud set is a group of thresholds. The fraud set allows you to tie various thresholds with online stores, and specify the e-mail you wish to have notices sent to. If you are selling in one currency, you will need just one fraud set, as you will be using a single online store. If you are using multiple online stores, you may want to create a unique fraud set for each online store. It is also possible to have a single threshold apply to several online stores through the fraud set.
To create a Fraud Set:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > FraudGuardian Thresholds .
2. Fill in the required fields:
Fraud Set Name . Enter the name of the new fraud set you want to create.
Fraud Set Email . Enter the e-mail you want to use to e-mail your FraudGuardian reports.
3. Click Define New Fraud Set .
Note: you can also modify an existing default fraud set according to your needs.
4. Click Manage to tie the fraud set with online stores and/or thresholds.
5. Click Save all .
99
100 Setting Up Fraud Protection
Step 4. Create a Country Threshold
Thresholds are your way of telling the system what variables you do and do not want, and how badly you do and do not want them. For example, you may decide that free e-mail is something you do not mind, and assign it zero points. But it may be that you do not want anyone coming through a proxy, and so assign these ten points. You also set how many points a customer can have, and what behavior the system will take depending on the total points assigned to each incoming customer.
You can have a single threshold, where all new customers have the same standards applied to them, or create various different thresholds depending on countries or regions.
To define a new country threshold:
1. On the FraudGuardian Thresholds page that you entered in the previous step:
1. Enter Threshold Name .
2. Threshold Type : Select one of the following:
Apply to ALL countries .
Apply to ONE country . This will apply to only one country. Select from the drop down menu.
Apply to REGION of countries . You select a parent country such as North America or child countries such as the Caribbean, Central America, or Northern America.
2. Click Configure for the newly created threshold.
3. Configure Fraud Score Threshold Actions . This section allows you to set the system behavior based on a customer's final score:
Score 1 . Normally, you will want to set an action for approving customers with very low scores. Low scores indicate that it is unlikely the customer is fraudulent. The action
Active With Auth Capture means that as soon as this customer has paid their signup invoice, they will be set to active. Set the highest score you would want to allow for customers to be approved as long as they pay.
Score 2 . Customers who score too high to safely qualify as not fraudulent, but who are not high enough to necessarily be fraud, can be set to pending so that you can approve them manually. We recommend setting Score 2 to Pending With Auth Capture .
Then choose the highest score you're willing to accept into the billing system.
Score 3 . The next level of score is usually set to Soft Reject . Customers meeting the
Soft Reject score will not be able to proceed through to the final checkout page, and instead will have a message displayed. The message they see is something that you enter yourself. It usually includes something letting the customer know there is a potential problem with their account information, and asking them to contact sales or support, depending on how you want to handle this. Set this number to the maximum score you are willing to even consider for a customer.
Setting Up Fraud Protection 101
Score 4 . Score 4 is usually set to Hard Reject . Customers with a score that meets or exceeds the number you enter for this level, if set to Hard Reject , will see your Hard
Reject message. This is usually set to something letting the customer know that you have identified them as fraud and are not interested in their business. Like the soft reject message, the content of the message can be set to whatever you would like it to be.
4. Configure Amount Override Threshold Actions .
One of the common tactics employed by fraudsters is to charge as much as possible once they find a card that is live. It might be possible that the customer's billing account and address information matches well enough to not stand out as being fraud, but the amount they are purchasing does. For example, if a fraudster steals a card from someone in the same town, the system may not be able to tell that this is not who they say they are. But if the fraudster is trying to charge $500 worth of hosting, that might tip you off that something is amiss (depending on how much you charge for hosting). Like the section above, you can set three different sets of actions based on the amount being charged. For example:
Amount 1 . Say you sell hosting for $20 a month, and your average customer buys two subscriptions and a couple of domains. The total sale will then usually be less than
$100. If you set this amount to $100 and the action to Pending with Auth Capture , then any customer who is buying more than $100 of services will be set to pending in your system. This will give you a chance to look the order over before approving it.
Amount 2 and Amount 3 . Like the Amount 1 setting, you can choose to set thresholds for these as well. For example, you may decide that anyone trying to buy $1000 worth of hosting from you is obviously not on legitimate, and want to set this to hard reject. You may also decide that any order over $200 might be legitimate, but that such a customer probably needs special attention. If you set this to soft reject, these customers will be encouraged to contact you directly for their sale.
5. Adjust Fraud Score Triggers .
Business Manager uses what it calls Fraud Score Triggers to assign points to incoming customer accounts in order to determine whether or not the order is likely to be legitimate. The system has these triggers set to default values upon installation, but you are free to adjust them as you like. For example, you may decide that you don't care if the customer's IP matches their country for billing purposes. In that case you can set this value to 0 instead of the default: 2.5.
6. Write rejections messages.
Soft Rejection Message . This is the message that will be displayed to people who trigger your soft rejection notice for this threshold.
Hard Rejection Message . This is the message that will be displayed to people who trigger your hard rejection notice for this threshold.
7. Click the button at the foot of the page to save settings.
102 Setting Up Fraud Protection
Step 5. Tie Fraud Sets with Online Stores and Thresholds
To tie a fraud set with online stores and thresholds:
1. On the FraudGuardian Thresholds page click Manage for the fraud set you wish to configure.
2. Assign an online store and a threshold by selecting them and adding them to the boxes.
3. Click Save all .
Prohibiting Subscriptions from Certain Email Addresses
When customers subscribe to your service plans, they provide e-mail address as a part of their personal information. If a fragment of a subscriber's e-mail is in the Business Manager e-mail black list, and if an online store is configured to reject subscriptions from e-mails in black list, the system will not let such customers subscribe.
You can find and edit your black list at the Business Setup > All Settings > E-mail Black List page.
To enable the rejection of subscriptions from e-mails in the black list for an online store, go to the Security tab of store settings page.
C H A P T E R 1 7
Plans and Add-ons
In Customer & Business Manager, services and resources that you sell to your customers are organized into plans. For example, a hosting account with 1 GB of disk space and 50 GB of traffic is a service plan; a 1024 bits SSL certificate for a year is a service plan too, but these plans are of different types .
There are two kinds of plans in Business Manager:
Service plans . These plans define sets of resources that you sell to end customers
- people who use your resources for their own needs, for example, hosting a website. A hosting account and a domain name for a year are examples of such plans.
Reseller plans . Subscribers of these plans are resellers - people who want to sell hosting accounts on your servers to others. Form a business perspective, resellers are similar to hosting providers: they have accounts in hosting panels, their own online stores, and customer management tools. The difference is that resellers do not have their own hosting servers.
Tools for managing plans are available at the Business Setup > Plans page.
If you are going to offer a new plan, you should perform the following steps:
1. Define what to include into the plan.
2. Only for reseller plans: Define subscriber's administrative permissions.
3. Set subscription prices and taxes to levy on subscribers.
4. Only for service plans: Choose extra services and resources to offer with the plan.
5. Choose the online stores in which you will offer the plan.
6. Specify available upgrades and downgrades.
Next, we will discuss these steps in more detail.
Define Resources to Include into the Plan
To get started with selling subscriptions to service plans, first, you should specify what plan subscribers will get, that is, disk space, domain extensions, SSL certificates and other resources or services. Find the full range of options you are able to offer on the each plan settings page. For details on what resources to define for different plan types, refer to the section Defining Resources to Include into Plans
104 Plans and Add-ons
Define Administrative Permissions for Reseller Plans
If you are creating a reseller plan, choose what tools are available to the plan subscribers when they go to Business Setup > All Settings . For example, you can make the subscribers use your invoicing settings by turning off the corresponding tool. You are able to do the same with other features. On the one hand, this simplifies the subscriber's interface; on the other hand, this reduces Business Manager functionality.
The list of available system menu items is located on the Permissions tab of the plan page. If you do not select an action, Business Manager will hide the corresponding tool on the Business Setup > All Settings page in the reseller's user interface.
Set Subscriptions Prices and Taxes to Levy on Subscribers
After you allocated resources to a plan, configure the plan pricing. Namely, specify prices for different subscription lengths, overuse fees, and taxes that subscribers should additionally pay. For more details on setting prices and applying taxes to plans, refer to the section Pricing and Price Options
Choose Extra Services and Resources to Offer with the Plan
With service plans, you are free to offer some extras like additional e-mail addresses or disk space. To do it, use add-on plans (or add-ons ). To learn more about add-ons and how to attach them to service plans, refer to the section Offering Additional Services (on
Choose the Online Stores in Which You Will Offer the Plan
The last step is to specify in what stores you want to distribute the plan. You can select stores of your liking in the General tab of the plan settings page. For each kind of plan, you can choose stores of a single type – customer stores for service plans and reseller stores for reseller plans. To learn more about online stores, refer to the chapter
Managing Online Stores
Specify Available Upgrades and Downgrades
If you have multiple plans of the same type, you are able to specify plans to which the current plan can be upgraded or downgraded. Find more information on plan upgrades and downgrades in the section
Upgrading and Downgrading Plans (on page 113).
In this chapter:
Plans and Add-ons 105
Defining Resources to Include into Plans
After you specify a plan's general properties, such as name and type, select the resources you are going to offer, be it a domain name, disk space, or an SSL certificate. For different types of resources, Business Manager offers different types of service plans. Reseller plans include only hosting resources: disk space, traffic, and so on. This section outlines the major available plan types and teaches you how to set up resources for each type.
In this section:
106 Plans and Add-ons
Hosting Services
To offer hosting services to resellers or end customers, use reseller plans and hosting service plans respectively. Getting ready to sell hosting services includes the following steps:
1. Connect hosting panels.
You can sell hosting accounts on multiple servers with Parallels Plesk Panel installed. Before you create hosting plans, connect the panels installed on the servers that you will use to provide hosting services, and organize the panels into groups. To learn how to do it, refer to the chapter Connecting Hosting Panels (on page
2. Define how to process new hosting subscriptions.
Just before creating the subscription, Business Manager checks that the subscriber meets certain requirements (for example, does not have due invoices) and creates the subscription only if all requirements are met. The list of these requirements is called provisioning policy . Before you start selling hosting services, check that this policy meets your needs. For details, refer to the section Setting Up Provisioning Policy
3. Add a plan and select the servers that will keep subscriptions to this plan.
Available servers are organized into groups on the Properties tab of the plan settings page. If you associate a plan with a panel group, Business Manager will create hosting accounts on one of the servers within the group.
4. Specify resources and services you want to include into the plan.
Select the resources you will offer to subscribers on the Properties tab of the plan settings page.
5. Restrict access to web applications.
Your customers have the opportunity to quickly install and use blogs, forums, image galleries, and other web applications. You can restrict access to certain applications by defining application filters on the Applications tab of the plan settings page.
Domain Name Registration
Domain name registration plans allow you to sell domain names. Business Manager supports a number of domain registrars. To be able to register domain names at a particular registrar, you should do the following:
1. Set up a registrar module and define which top level domains (TLDs) you will register at this registrar.
Learn how to do it in the chapter Configuring Domain Registration Service
2. Configure TLDs you want to offer.
Find the TLDs properties on the Business Setup > All Settings > Supported TLDs >
<tld_name> page.
3. Add a domain registration plan and define which of supported TLDs you will offer within it.
Plans and Add-ons 107
Select domain name extensions you intend to offer on the TLDs tab of the plan settings page.
4. Define domain registration options for online stores.
During the domain name ordering process, potential customers are prompted to choose between the three options: purchase a new domain name, transfer existing one to the new hosting, or use an existing one. You are able to change the list of available options at the Business Setup > Online Stores > < store name > > Change
Settings > Domain Registration/Transfer tab.
Important: Not all domain registrars support domain transfer. To find out if a certain registrar supports the transfer, contact the registrar's customer support.
SSL Certificates
To sell SSL certificates to your customers, use SSL certificate plans . Configuring SSL certificates selling includes the following steps:
1. Configure an SSL certificate provider plugin.
This will make you able to sell certificates from this provider. Learn how to do it in the chapter Configuring SSL Certificate Providers
2. Add an SSL Certificate plan and set up the certificate types you will sell.
Do this at the Properties tab of the plan settings page.
If you have offered SSL certificates from SSLfactory to your customers before, you can continue doing it using a separate plan type - SSLfactory plans . To create such plans, you should do the following:
1. Set up the SSLfactory plugin .
Learn how to do it in the section Setting Up SSLfacory Plugin
2. Add an SSLfactory plan and define SSLfactory plan properties.
When you create an SSLfactory plan, set its properties according to instructions from the section Creating SSLfactory Plans
108 Plans and Add-ons
Creating SSLfactory Plans
If you want to sell SSL certificates from the SSLfactory seller, create plans of the
SSLfactory plan type. For more information on SSLfactory , refer to www.sslcenter.com
.
Note: The minimum billing cycle for these plans is 1 year, and you can have only a year-to-year term. You should request only keys that are 2048 bits long or longer.
Each SSLfactory plan offers one SSL certificate type:
Quick SSL
Rapid SSL
True Biz SSL
Quick SSL Premium
To set the certificate type for certain SSLfactory plan, add the custom property with name certProductType to this plan and assign a value from the table below to it:
Certificate type
Quick SSL
Rapid SSL
True Biz ID
Quick SSL Premium
Property value
QuickSSL
RapidSSL
TrueBizID
QuickSSLPremium
Plans and Add-ons 109
Pricing and Price Options
A plan price in Business Manager is a combination of the following values:
Subscription price. This is a price you charge for using services during a billing cycle - a period between two billings . You are free to set multiple billing cycles with different prices for a single plan. For example, set the price to $10 for 6-month subscription and $15 for 1-year subscription.
Besides, you are able to define one-time charge - setup fee - for your plans. If you customers upgrade or downgrade their subscriptions to other plans, you can also set upgrade and downgrade fees .
Tax. If your country legal standards imply levying taxes on customers, you can include these taxes in the plan price. Learn how to set up taxes for your services in
Business Manager from the chapter Configuring Taxation
After you create certain taxation policies and apply them to the plans, do not forget to configure online stores where you sell these plans to display prices properly: including taxes ( gross prices) or excluding them ( net prices). You can do this on the
Business Setup > Online Stores > < store name > > Change Settings > Payment Options tab.
Overuse fee.
Use this parameter to define price that your customers will pay for each unit of traffic that they had used over the limit set in the plan properties.
The controls for setting subscription prices, taxes, and overuse fees are located on the
Prices & Taxation tab of the plan settings page.
You can reduce plan prices for promotional purposes by using discounts , coupons , and customer groups . Find more information on using these mechanisms in the chapter
Promoting Plans with Coupons and Discounts
Customer
Groups: Limiting Discounts and Exempting Subscriptions from Suspension (on page 152).
Some plans require more flexible pricing. For example, you might want to sell the same hosting services on fast and standard servers and you wish to charge a higher price for accounts on fast servers. Business Manager allows to set custom pricing for different plan variations through price options . Learn how to add custom price options in the section
Setting Up Custom Prices for a Plan (on page 110).
If you use accounting facilities included in Business Manager, you can define what information to add to the ledger after each invoice generation and payment. Learn how to define this format in the section
Creating General Ledger Entries for a Plan (on page 111).
In this section:
110 Plans and Add-ons
Setting Up Custom Prices for a Plan
If you want to set multiple prices for a single plan (and billing cycle), say, sell a hosting plan to US customers cheaper than to European customers, use price groups and price options .
To set up custom prices:
1.
Create a price group, for example,
Server performance
in Business Setup
> All Settings > Advanced Pricing , tab Price Groups.
2.
Create price options within the price group, for example
High
,
Medium
, and
Low
on the tab Price Options . Customers will see these names in online stores during the subscription process.
3. Go to the settings page of a plan you want to edit, open the Price Options tab, and select the price group and the price options that will be available for the plan. For example, for the Gold Hosting plan you can choose High and Medium server performance, while for the Bronze Hosting -
Low and Medium .
Plans and Add-ons 111
Creating General Ledger Entries for a Plan
If you use Business Manager for accounting of your business, configure your plans to write information on performed business operations to general ledger.
For example, if you want to track the cost of a domain (what you pay to the registrar), define the ledger entries for this plan as described below.
To create ledger entries:
1. Go to Business Setup > Plans , and select a plan.
2. Click Ledger Entries .
3. Click the button Add Ledger Entry Group .
4. Set the following:
Ledger Group Name . Enter the name of the ledger group you are creating for this plan. For example, if this group covers the cost of this plan, you may want to name it Domain Registration Cost or whatever makes sense to your business.
Filter Currencies . The ledger entries get created when the plan is ordered through your online store. If you have multiple currencies set up, such as USD and GBP, move the currencies from the Selectable list to the Selected list by double-clicking on each one or using the arrow buttons. Ledger entries will be created ONLY if the currency is in the Selected list.
Filter Cycles . Similar to Filter Currencies , you can select what cycles you want to have created when a particular cycle is used. Move the cycles from the
Selectable list to the Selected list by double-clicking on each one or using the arrow buttons. Ledger entries will be created ONLY if the currency is in the
Selected list.
Currency of Ledger Entries . The currency you select will most likely be your native currency or the currency you use to set up your plans. You can still create ledger entries for any currency, but you will see the entries such as cost of domain in the currency you select from the drop down menu.
Ledger Entries :
1. Create two ledger entries for the GL Account (General Ledger) account by clicking the + Add Ledger Entry button.
2. Select a ledger account to use such as 10000 - Cash 1 from the GL Account drop down menu.
3. Enter a description.
4. Enter the cost of the plan in the Credits text box.
5. Next, click the + Add Ledger Entry button again.
6. Select a ledger account to use such as 50000 - Cost of Goods from the GL
Account drop down menu.
112 Plans and Add-ons
7. Enter a description.
8. Enter the cost of the plan in the Debits text box. Make sure you tab over or click to another box after entering the amount.
5. Click Save .
Offering Additional Services
In Customer & Business Manager you can offer additional resources and services not included in service plans as add-on plans (or add-ons ). Add-ons are listed together with plans on the Business Setup > Plans page. If a plan has add-ons, online stores show them on a separate store page, so customers are welcome to include add-ons into their order. The controls to attach add-ons to plans are available on the Add-ons tab of the plan settings page.
Typically, an add-on provides a single resource: disk space, traffic, or other resource defined for the panel group you select for the add-on. You are also free to offer multiple resources and services as a single add-on.
To let your customers choose an add-on from a list of similar add-ons, say, different amounts of additional disk space, add-ons are organized into groups. Moreover, it is mandatory for an add-on to have a related group. When buyers subscribes to a plan, they see the names of add-on groups you attached to this plan and lists of groups items - add-ons - you selected for the plan.
For example, this can look like the following:
Would you like additional disk space? (add-on group)
1 Additional Gigabyte (add-on)
2 Additional Gigabytes (add-on)
5 Additional Gigabytes (add-on)
To see a list of plans with which you offer an add-on, go to the Plans tab of the add-on settings page.
Important : A service plan and attached add-on must have same billing cycles and currencies. Otherwise, customers will not be able to purchase this add-on.
In addition to offering hosting add-ons, you can sell SSL certificates using add-ons. For instructions on how to set up the SSL certificates selling through an add-on, see the section Adding SSL Certificates as Add-on to Hosting Plans
In this section:
Adding SSL Certificates as Add-ons to Hosting Plans ....................................... 113
Plans and Add-ons 113
Adding SSL Certificates as Add-ons to Hosting Plans
Although it is possible to offer SSL certificates as independent plans, you can distribute them as hosting plan add-ons. Customers find it more convenient as the certificates are automatically installed to the domains they purchased. It is also attractive for you as
Administrator because you will manage a single plan instead of two separate plans; it allows to cut down time costs.
To add an SSL certificate as an add-on to a hosting plan:
1. Create and configure an SSL Certificate plan.
2. Convert this plan to add-on by clicking Convert to Add-on on the plan's page.
3. Select an existing hosting plan to which you want to attach the SSL certificate plan or create and configure a new one.
4. Go to the hosting plan details and attach an add-on group containing the SSL certificate plan to it.
5. Choose the SSL certificate plan in the group and attach it to the hosting plan.
Important : To ensure the plans work well, add them to the same online stores, and set their pricing for the same billing cycles and currencies.
Upgrading and Downgrading Plans
Your customers may want to change plans to which they are subscribed, for example, if they need more resources that their current plans provide, or otherwise, if they do not want to pay extra money for resources that they do not use. For these cases, define available upgrades and downgrades for each plan.
You can use plans upgrades and downgrades to create a hierarchy of plans. The table below shows an example of plans set with available upgrades and downgrades:
Plan
Bronze Hosting
Silver Hosting
Gold Hosting
Description Available upgrades
An affordable hosting for individuals.
Silver Hosting
Gold Hosting
Hosting for small business. Gold Hosting
An ultimate hosting for business needs.
No
Available downgrades
No
Bronze Hosting
Bronze Hosting
Silver Hosting
114 Plans and Add-ons
If you offer plan upgrading and downgrading, define how to process upgrade and downgrade requests for all plans, for example, when to perform requested upgrades: immediately after requests or and the end of current billing cycle. The section
Configuring Upgrade and Downgrade Requests Processing
(on page 114) provides a list of
system-wide properties related to upgrades and downgrades and description of these properties.
Besides, Business Manager provides an option to charge customers for upgrading or downgrading their subscriptions. Define upgrade and downgrade fees for each plan on the Prices tab of the plan settings page.
In this section:
Configuring Upgrade and Downgrade Requests Processing ............................. 114
Configuring Upgrade and Downgrade Requests
Processing
The Business Manager allows you to define what actions the system takes when upgrading or downgrading plans. This includes the following:
Who can initiate upgrades and downgrades.
How to perform upgrades and downgrades.
How to bill upgrades and downgrades.
The controls to configure upgrade and downgrade requests processing are located at the Business Setup > All Settings > Upgrade/Downgrade Requests .
Customer-initiated upgrades and downgrades
If you allow your customers to initiate upgrades and downgrades, define when to change their plans: immediately after request or at the end of current billing cycle.
If you decide to perform upgrades and downgrades immediately, define what to do with unused money on customer's billing account:
Return the unused money to customers as credits. Choose this option, for example, for hosting plans.
Do not return the money, Do it, for example, for domain registration plans, when the registrar does not return the money if you stop using a domain name.
C H A P T E R 1 8
Promoting Plans with Coupons and
Discounts
Business Manager contains two mechanisms for promoting your plans - coupons and discounts.
Use discounts if you want to promote a subscription for a certain billing cycle, say, 1year subscription. A discount targets all online stores but only particular billing cycles of plans.
Use coupons to organize promotional actions among your customers. With coupons, your customers are able to reduce subscription price by entering in a coupon code during the ordering process. Coupons are best for promoting specific plans in a certain store. Say, if you sell a plan in two stores, US Store and EU Store , you have the option to lower the subscription price only in EU Store .
To create limited offerings, for example, discounts for the first 100 subscriptions to a new plan, create a coupon and set it to be automatically applied. In this case, online stores show new prices of the plans as if the coupon was already applied to the plans.
The table below describes the differences between discounts and coupons:
Availability to customers
Discounts Coupons
Lower prices for all customers Lower prices for those who have coupon codes (unless the coupons are applied automatically)
No Yes Apply to a specific store
Reduce price for a certain billing cycle
Cut-off amount
Yes No
Period of action
Validity period:
Percentage of subscription price
Unlimited
Unlimited
Percentage of subscription price
Fixed amount
A number of billing cycles
Unlimited
Limited
Unlimited
To create and manage discounts and coupons, use the controls on the Business Setup >
Discounts and Promotions page.
C H A P T E R 1 9
Configuring Taxation
As you run a hosting business in a particular country, you should set taxes to conform to legal standards of your country. Customer & Business Manager lets you achieve this through tax rules and taxation policies . The diagram below shows the relations between these entities and plans.
Configuring Taxation 117
Tax Rules
A tax rule defines a tax for a particular country or sub-national unit where you offer your plans. For example, if you serve the American customers from states with different sales tax rates, create a separate tax rule for each state and specify their rates in these rules. The rates can be either fixed ($10) or progressive (15%). Business Manager calculates fixed rates in the currency of the online store where you sell the plan.
There are two types of tax rules: stackable and non-stackable . Stackable rules are applied to a subscription price, while non-stackable rules are applied to a total of the price and stackable tax rules values. To see an example of stackable and nonstackable rules application, refer to the Applying Taxation Policies section.
A state or a province where the rule applies can be a two character state abbreviation or a combination of a two character state abbreviation and city. You can also add a county name. In this case, separate location parts by dashes (-). For example, use state-city to specify a particular city in a certain state. The other accepted locations are: state-county , state-city-county , state . Set the state to asterisk (*) or leave the corresponding field blank to apply the rule to the whole country.
Taxation Policies
A taxation policy links together tax rules and plans to which you want to apply them.
For example, to serve the American customers, create a taxation policy that contains all US tax rules and apply it to the plans you intend to sell in the US. If you offer the same plans to all customers, simply modify the default taxation policy and apply it to all plans.
Note: Each plan can have only one taxation policy applied. If you apply a new taxation policy to a plan, the existing one will be replaced.
To add new taxation policy or manage existing ones, go to the Business Setup > All
Settings > Taxation Policies screen.
Applying Taxation Policies
If a plan is associated with a taxation policy, the system searches for matches between subscriber location and tax rules included in the policy. If the system finds the matches, it will calculate the total tax due from rates of matching tax rules.
To calculate the total taxes due for a subscription to a plan, the system uses the following algorithm:
1. Form a list of tax rules matching customer country and the selected plans.
2. Sequentially apply each stackable tax rule to a subscription price. Add up all of the calculated tax values.
3. Sequentially apply each non-stackable tax rule to the total of the price and the step two result. Add up all of the calculated tax values.
4. Add up all of the tax amounts calculated at step two and step three.
118 Configuring Taxation
For example, a subscription price is $100, and the matching tax rules are as follows:
Rule 1: Apply 10% stackable
Rule 2: Apply 20% stackable
Rule 3: Apply 5% non-stackable
Rule 4: Apply 10% non-stackable
Then the total taxes due is calculated in the following way:
$100 * 0.10 = $10 (for Rule 1)
($100 * 0.20 = $20 (for Rule 2)
$10 + $20 = $30 (subtotal for stackable rules)
($100 + $30) * 0.05 = $6.5 (for Rule 3)
($100 + $30) * 0.10 = $13 (for Rule 4)
$6.5 + $13 = $19.5 (subtotal for non-stackable rules)
$30 + $19.5 = $49.5 (total taxes due)
To learn how to set up taxation for particular countries, see the examples below.
In this chapter:
Configuring Taxation 119
The United States
If you sell your plans to the US market, apply the sales tax . The sales tax is nonstackable, and its rate differs depending on the state where you sell plans.
To serve customers from the New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey states, create a taxation policy (for example, “USA Taxation”), apply it to the plans you are going to sell in the USA, and create a separate non-stackable tax rule for each state.
To set up a sales tax:
1. Add a taxation policy and apply it to the plans you intend to sell in the
USA.
2. Add a non-stackable tax rule for the New York sales rate with Country set to
United States
and State - to
NY
, and set the Rate to
4%
.
3. Add a non-stackable tax rule for the Pennsylvania sales rate with
Country set to
United States
and State - to
PA
, and set the Rate to
6%
.
4. Add a non-stackable tax rule for the New Jersey sales rate with Country set to
United States
and State - to
NJ
, and set the Rate to
7%
.
5. Save the policy.
Important: The rates in the example may differ from actual rates. To get the relevant information on taxation in the United States, consult your local authorities.
120 Configuring Taxation
European Union
If your business is located in Germany and you serve customers from the European
Union, apply the value added tax (VAT). The VAT is non-stackable, and its rate differs depending on the seller location.
To set up the VAT:
1. Create a taxation policy (for example, “
EU Taxation
”) and apply it to the plans you intend to sell in the EU.
2. Create a non-stackable tax rule with Country set to
European Union
and the asterisk (*) in the State field. Set the Rate to
19%
.
3. Save the policy.
After you add the VAT, configure the Business Manager to comply with EU business standards as described in the Achieving EU Business Compliance
Important: The rate in the example may differ from actual rate. To get the relevant information on taxation in the European Union, consult your local authorities.
Canada
If you run your business in the Quebec province, Canada, apply two taxes:
goods and services tax (GST) - the Canadian analog to VAT.
Quebec sales tax (QST ) - a separate stackable tax applied in Quebec.
To set up the Quebec taxes:
1. Create a taxation policy (for example, “
Canadian Taxation
”) and apply it to the plans you intend to sell in the Quebec.
2. Create a non-stackable tax rule for the GST with Country set to
Canada
and the asterisk (*) in the State field. Set the Rate to
5%
.
3. Create a stackable tax rule for the QST with Country set to
Canada
and the State - to
QC
, and set the Rate to
8.5%
.
4. Save the policy.
Important: The rates in the example may differ from actual rates. To get the relevant information on taxation in your province, consult your local authorities.
C H A P T E R 2 0
Creating Properties and Add-ons
During the ordering process in online stores, the system can ask customers for additional information that affect the resulting subscription or customer profile. Here you are able to write questions that the system will ask, set up available answers to these questions, and define the answer-dependent properties that will be added either as subscription properties (if you add a plan property), a customer account property (for customer properties), or an add-on property (if you add a generic property and configure a plan add-on to use it).
As mentioned, Business Manager supports three distinct types of properties :
1. Plan properties
2. Customer account properties
3. Generic properties
Depending upon your business rules, you may need to set up one or more of these properties.
Add-ons are basically what their name suggests - items that can be added on to a subscription. Add-ons can be created from two types of things: properties and other plans.
Plan add-ons are typically presented with a question/answer setup. You can create any type of add-on such as web design, bandwidth, database support, extended support, hardware, software, or anything that meets your specific business needs. Creating addons from properties is described in the Creating Generic Plan Add-ons
section.
In this chapter:
122 Creating Properties and Add-ons
Setting Up Plan Properties
When subscribing to a plan in online stores, you can ask customers to specify the planspecific information that is included in subscription properties. For example, for hosting plans this can be a choice between equal web servers or mail servers. This information does not affect pricing and it helps initially configure the subscription in the way that best fits customers.
To ask customers about the configuration preferences, write custom questions that will be displayed when choosing a certain plan, and connect the answers to these questions with the sets of properties and values to be included in the subscription. To properly handle this information, the receiving module (hosting panel, domain name registrar, etc.), should be able to recognize and process them.
Custom questions are displayed in the shopping cart in a section called Additional Plan
Information on the page where the customer enters their contact and payment information.
Note: Custom questions do not use pricing. Typically questions are general and are not associated with a particular plan.
To set up a plan property:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Plan, Customer, and Generic Properties .
From here you will see three buttons:
New Generic Properties . This field is used internally only. Customers will not see these questions and the values need to be entered by the administrator.
Manage Questions . This is similar to the above
New Plan or Customer Property . This is used to collect information through the online store from a customer to be tied to either the customer or the customer's subscription
2. Click New Plan or Customer Property . A pop-up window will appear. Enter a descriptive name for the property you are going to enter. This is something that only the administrator will see. Then click Edit .
3. You should now see a new line item, containing the name you just assigned. Click the green pencil next to Null . Choose Plan Property . Click
Edit .
4. Next is the Association field. This will decide which plan this property is tied to. If you want to have the same property tied to several different plans, you will need to create a property for each of them. You can use the same custom question over and over (this will be created in the next step), but each plan must have its own property.
Creating Properties and Add-ons 123
5. Create the question to be tied to this property. Click Manage Questions .
From this new screen, click Add Custom Question . There are several fields here:
Name . Choose a descriptive title for this question. This is an internal value, and your customers will not see it.
Display Order . This can be set at whatever the default value is.
Question . This is the question you will ask your customers.
Important : Do not put a question mark at the end, as this will not parse correctly!
Description . Write a brief description to clarify the question. It will be displayed with the question.
Type . Set the format the answer will take. Choices include Hidden , Text , Password ,
Text Area , Select , and Radio .
Input Restrictions . These should include anything to restrict the input a customer will send you. In this case, the only restriction your customer probably needs is
Required , which will require them to choose a control panel when purchasing the plan. When you are done filling these out, click Next .
6. Answers . Some question types require that you set predetermined answers. If these are required, you must enter the values in a list, one item per line, with no commas or other separators. Click Next .
7. Here you will set the display values the customer sees for all of the possible answers you set in the previous step.
Values . Set a display value for each of the answers.
Selected . Choose the value to display first in the drop down menu. Click next .
8. This stage lets you review the answers you have entered. If they are correct, click add wizard question to finalize your choices. This should take you back to the questions screen, where you will see the question you created, as it will appear on the online store.
9. Now we need to tie this question to your property. Go to System > System
Configuration and click Plan, Customer, and Generic Properties again. Find the property you were working on before. Click on the green pencil in the column Custom Question . From the drop down menu, select the question you just created, and click edit .
10. To view your work, go through the order process. Choose the plan you have tied the property to, and proceed to the cart. You should see this question as part of the section Additional Plan Information .
124 Creating Properties and Add-ons
Setting Up Customer Account Properties
Customer account properties also do not affect pricing. They create questions that will appear during the order process. Answers to these questions will be added to customer account properties.
To set up a customer account property:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Plan, Customer, and Generic Properties .
2. Click New Plan or Customer Property . A pop-up window will appear. Enter a descriptive name for the property you are going to enter. This is something that only the administrator will see. Then click Edit .
3. You should now see a new line item, containing the name you just assigned. Click the green pencil next to Null . Choose Customer property .
Click Edit .
4. Next is the Association field. This will decide which plan this property is tied to. If you want to have the same property tied to several different plans, you will need to create a property for each of them. You can use the same custom question over and over (this will be created in the next step), but each plan must have its own property.
5. Create the question to be tied to this property. Click Manage Questions .
From this new screen, click Add Custom Question . There are several fields here:
Name . Choose a descriptive title for this question. This is an internal value, and your customers will not see it.
Display Order . This can be set at whatever the default value is.
Question . This is the question you will ask your customers.
Important : Do not put a question mark at the end, as this will not parse correctly!
Description . Write a brief description to clarify the question. It will be displayed with the question.
Type . Set the format the answer will take. Choices include Hidden , Text , Password ,
Text Area , Select , and Radio .
Input Restrictions . These include anything to restrict the input a customer will send you. In this case, the only restriction your customer probably needs is
Required , which will require them to choose a control panel when purchasing the plan. When you are done filling these out, click next .
6. Answers . Some question types require that you set predetermined answers. If these are required, you must enter the values in a list, one item per line, with no commas or other separators. Click next .
Creating Properties and Add-ons 125
7. Here you will set the display values the customer sees for all of the possible answers you set in the previous step.
Values . Set a display value for each of the answers.
Selected . Choose the value to display first in the drop down menu. Click next .
8. This stage lets you review the answers you have entered. If they are correct, click add wizard question to finalize your choices. This should take you back to the questions screen, where you will see the question you created, as it will appear on the online store.
9. Now we need to tie this question to your property. Go to System > System
Configuration and click Plan, Customer, and Generic Properties again. Find the property you were working on before. Click on the green pencil in the column Custom Question . From the drop down menu, select the question you just created, and click edit .
10. To view your work, go through the order process. Choose the order you have tied the property to, and proceed to the cart. You should see this question as part of the section Additional Customer Information .
126 Creating Properties and Add-ons
Creating Generic Plan Add-ons
Generic properties can affect pricing. They create questions that will appear during the order process. Answers to these questions will create subscription properties. If the subscription property modifies an already existing property, Business Manager should be able to pass this value to the panel module to be automatically provisioned.
Generic properties are used for creating add-ons. Add-ons were designed to replace panel properties associated with a plan. However, if you have a plan that is not associated with a panel, but want to create add-ons for it anyway, you need to setup the generic properties first .
Notes:
1. Generic properties by themselves do not affect pricing.
2. Generic properties used for creating add-ons can affect pricing.
To create an add-on:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Plan, Customer, and Generic Properties .
2. Click New Generic Property . There are several fields here that must be filled in:
Generic property key . This is the internal property name, something only you will see. Choose a descriptive name.
Generic question name . This is an internal value for the question. Enter something meaningful, like a brief version of the question.
Default question . This value will appear in the plan property screen.
Default answer value . This is the default answer you would like for the Default
Question. You may leave this blank.
Question description . This is a description that will appear with the question on the online store page.
3. Click Save .
4. Go to the plan you want to create an add-on for. Click Properties . You should see the property that you just created displayed here. Next, you will want to create an add-on, which is what will create the options and process for this property.
5. Click Add-ons and Attach New Add-on Group . Walk through the add-on wizard and click Finish on completion.
6. You should now see the add-on group you have created, along with each of the options you created for it. To view the result of your work, go through the order process, choosing the plan you tied the add-on to.
When you get to the cart, you should see the add-on options you created.
C H A P T E R 2 1
Serving Your Customers
In this chapter:
Limiting Discounts and Exempting Subscriptions from Suspension ................... 152
Administering Customers
Here you will find a one-stop shop for customer management. You can approve new customers, view your archived and non-archived customers, or add new customers.
You can also view statistics about your customers and access customer details.
In this section:
128 Serving Your Customers
Adding New Customers
There are two main methods for new customer records to be added to your Business
Manager system: through the administrator interface (available for Business Manager administrators) and through the order process.
Adding customers through the administrative interface is a one-step procedure that involves adding customer details, contact details, and billing account. Each customer account can have several contacts tied to it. In this step you will specify the first of these contacts.
To add a customer account:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers and click Add New Customer .
2. Enter General Settings , and Primary Contact Information .
3. Set up a Billing Account for the customer.
4. Click Add Customer .
You have completed the process of adding a customer account. You can now view the details of this account and begin to add subscriptions and generate invoices by clicking the Customer ID .
Managing Existing Customers
Business Manager allows managing your customers through the Customer Summary page which you can access at Customers > select specific customer. The Customer
Summary page lists contact details, various billing information, subscriptions details, and notifications sent to customers.
To manage the details of a customer account, go to Business Operations > Customers , find the customer you want to view, and click Full Name corresponding to an account.
In this section:
Managing Billing Accounts and Details
Serving Your Customers
In this section:
Adding Billing Accounts
129
To add a billing account to a customer account:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers > click a specific account.
2. Click Show All Billing Accounts in the Billing Account Summary section
3. Find the contact you want to add a new billing account for and click Add
Billing Account to Primary Contact .
4. Select the type of billing account you want to add for this customer.
5. Fill out the details section according to the type of billing account you chose in Step 4 above.
6. Click Save Billing Account .
130 Serving Your Customers
Editing Billing Accounts
You can edit any billing accounts associated with a customer's account.
To edit a billing account:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers > click a specific account.
2. Click Show All Billing Accounts in the Billing Account Summary section.
3. You will see a list of all billing accounts (if available) and their associated contacts.
4. Find the billing account you want to modify in the list and click its name.
5. Edit the account details.
6. If encryption is turned on, enter your Encryption Passphrase .
7. Click Update Billing Account .
Note : To remove the billing account, click Remove in the Available Operations list.
Viewing Accounting Totals
This section outlines the following account and balance information available at a customer summary page (accessed from Business Operations > Customers > click a customer name.).
Accounts Receivable - money owed to you by the customer. Here you can also view the detailed Customer Payment History if you click the Accounts Receivable link.
Credit .
This option allows you to credit your customers.
Accounts payable . This is the money to be paid by you to the customer.
Refunds . This field shows you the total refunds.
Expenses . This shows the expenses.
Serving Your Customers 131
Viewing Billing Account Summary
The Billing Account Summary counts the number of billing accounts by type. In this section you can also Add Billing Account to Primary Contact . See the Adding Billing
Accounts
It is also possible to see all billing accounts of this customer. For this, click the Show All
Billing Accounts link. You will see the list of all billing accounts for this customer account.
You can also view a callback log by clicking the Show Callback History link.
Managing Customer Invoices
In this section:
Viewing Invoice History
The invoices history displays invoices due and invoices paid. This page also allows you to view all invoices for this customer, to generate invoices, to take customer payment, and to add single invoice.
To view all invoices:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers > click a certain account.
2. Click the Show All Invoices link in the Invoice Summary section.
You will see a list of invoices (assuming invoices have been generated).
Generating Invoices
To generate an invoice:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers > click a certain account.
2. Click the Generate Invoice link in the Invoice Summary section.
3. Specify the generation settings and click on the continue button.
4. If you selected to preview invoices, review them and click the Proceed with invoice generation button.
132 Serving Your Customers
Adding Custom One-Time Invoice
Business Manager allows you to create and generate a single (one-off) invoice for onetime charges.
To generate a single invoice:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers > click a certain account.
2. Click the Add Custom Invoice link in the Invoice Summary section.
3. On the form that appears, enter appropriate information:
1. Enter a short description for the invoice.
2. You can also add a Long Description .
3. Set the Invoice Date .
4. Enter the Invoice Amount .
5. Tick the box, if you would like to send your customer an e-mail with invoice.
6. Set the period to defer revenue.
4. Tick the box next to the Apply a payment as well , if you would like to take manual payment for the service provided. Enter all necessary information.
5. Click Process Invoice .
Taking Customer Payment
To take customer payment:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers > click a certain account.
2. Click the Take Customer Payment link in the Invoice Summary section.
3. Choose the invoice to be charged.
4. If the encryption is on, enter your LEK PIN.
5. Click Charge account .
Serving Your Customers
Managing Customer Details
From the Customer Summary page you can edit customer details, manage customer account properties, add new primary/additional contact, or edit existing contacts.
In this section:
Editing Customer Details, Status and Billing Account ........................................ 133
Editing Customer Details, Status and Billing Account
133
To Edit Customer Details:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers > Click a customer's full name.
2. Click Edit Details in the Customer Details section and update the details.
3. Click Save.
Managing Contacts
One customer in Business Manager can have several contacts. One of the contacts will be set as a primary contact, all the other will be additional contacts. The Customer
Summary page allows adding new contacts, editing existing contacts, logging in as primary contact, and resetting and resending password.
To add a new contact:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers and click a customer's full name.
2. Click Add New Contact in the Primary Contact section.
3. Specify the contact information and click Save .
To edit a contact:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers and click a customer's full name.
2. Click Edit Primary Contact link.
3. Edit all necessary information and click Save .
134 Serving Your Customers
Editing Customer Account Properties
The Customer Summary page lists the customer-related properties. The system uses them to apply a special logic to customers who have these properties. For example, it is possible to apply discounts using properties. You are also able to edit the properties for a customer.
To edit the properties:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers and click a customer's full name.
2. Scroll down to the Properties section.
3. Click the Edit Customer Account Properties link.
4. Specify if the attribute is active or not.
5. Set the internal value .
6. Click Save All .
Taking Administrative Actions
Administrative Actions are a collection of actions that help you quickly manage a customer’s account. The current administrative actions include:
Suspend Customer Account . Select this option if you would like to suspend a customer’s account. Such customers will be unable to log into the customer area.
Cancel Customer Account . You can use this for customers who let you know they would like to terminate their service. They are also unable to log into the customer area.
Archive Customer Account . Archiving a customer essentially makes the customer nonfunctional. Archived customers do not count against your license limit. The records associated with the customer will be present, but you will not be able to perform any functions on the customer, such as collecting payment for outstanding balances.
Serving Your Customers 135
Adding Credits to Customer Account
You can deposit funds (credits) into a customer account. The credits are utilized first to pay for subscriptions. When a credit balance is exhausted, the customer’s default payment method is used to pay for the services.
To add a credit:
1. Go to Customers and click a customer’s full name.
2. Click the Add Credit link in the Accounting Totals section.
3. Fill in the form and click Add Credit .
After you update a customer credit balance, you are able to see the customer’s credit balance changes history by locating the customer summary page and clicking Credits .
Viewing FraudGuardian Check Results
Business Manager allows you to check your incoming orders for fraud. You can view the results of this check per each customer per order at the Customer Summary page.
To view FraudGuardian results:
1. Go to the Customer Summary page accessed at Business Operations >
Customers > click a certain account.
2. Click the Display/Hide Additional Data link next to the subscription you want to edit in the Fraud Results section.
The page section will show you the total Fraud Score for each order, and the other information such as IP, customer bank, e-mail, proxy, etc.
Managing Invoices
The customer summary page allows you to view invoices for a particular customer. The system lists the Recent Invoices and gives you the option to show all invoices by clicking a respective link. From this section you can view basic details on the invoice, such as the
Invoice Number , the Amount of money, the dates Entered and Due, and the Status. The
Available Operations column gives you the option to manage and print the invoice.
To manage the invoice:
1. Go to the Customer Summary page accessed at Business Operations >
Customers > Click a customer’s full name.
2. Click the Details link next to the invoice you want to edit in the Recent invoices section.
Note: you will be taken to
invoices managemen (on page 161)t
which can also be accessed from the Finances > Invoices of the particular invoice.
136 Serving Your Customers
Adding Notes
The Recent Notes section of the Customer Summary page shows you the recent notes you added for this particular customer. These notes are strictly internal, and provide only the administrator with additional information.
To add a new note:
1. Go to the Customer Summary page accessed at Business Operations >
Customers and click a customer's full name.
2. Click the Read/Add Notes link of the Recent Notes section.
3. Add any information in the Note text box.
4. Add Note .
Serving Your Customers 137
Viewing Statistical Information
Quick Stats has two main sections: Customers by Status and Trend Reports . The top section lists the possible status that a customer may have, and below each status, the number of customers in each category. This number is a link; clicking on it will take you to a screen listing all customers of that type. For example, if you would like to see a list of all your pending customers, you can click on the number underneath the title
Pending. Below the actual count is the percentage each category comprises of the total number of customers. Trend Reports actually lists just one report. This report will show all new signups over the last year.
To view the customer statistics, go to Business Operations > Customers > Quick Stats .
The page also shows a pie chart and a key representing each of the numbers and their specific categories.
Viewing Customer Accounts
There are two types of customer accounts in Business Manager - non-archived and archived . You can filter the customer accounts by this status.
Customers is where you will find information about the vast majority of the customers entered in your Business Manager system. All customers count against your license limit. Initially, the page displays a list of all customers with the status of Pending , Active ,
Canceled , Fraudulent , Suspended , Inactive , and Declined , from newest to oldest. Clicking on one of the column headers will sort your customer data by the relevant heading.
To view customer accounts:
1. Go to the Business Operations > Customers . The link will show you a list of accounts.
You can access the customer details screen for each customer listed by either clicking the Customer ID or the Details link.
Clicking the e-mail address in the Customers list will enable you to send an e-mail directly to this customer. You can format these e-mails using various rich text tools.
Verifying New Customer Accounts
If you choose Manual approval of all incoming orders as fraud protection policy, you will see a list of all new customer accounts pending approval in the New Customers group on the
Home page.
Click the Review link to see more information about a particular order. Once you have verified the order, check the Activate or Cance l check box and click Submit .
Note : If you choose the Cancel option, remember to select the appropriate cancelation function in the Define policy on canceling subscriptions for this customer drop down menu at the bottom of the list prior to clicking the Submit button.
138 Serving Your Customers
If you do not want to verify new accounts manually, change the fraud protection policy on the page All Settings > Fraud Protection Settings .
Viewing Subscription Details
Business Manager allows you to manage customer subscriptions from two sections at
Customer Summary page: from Subscription Details and Recent Subscriptions sections. The first of them shows the number of subscriptions the customer owns and allows the administrator to add a subscription to a customer. The Recent Subscriptions section provides details on each particular subscription and allows the administrator to manage the subscription. For more details on subscription management, see Managing
Subscriptions
Sending Mass E-Mails
Along with the automatic e-mails (on page 70) sent by Business Manager when
particular events happen, you can also manually send e-mails to selected customers.
This is useful when, for example, you need to send an announcement to all, or to selected customers.
If required, you can always re-send an e-mail to all its recipients, be it an automatic email or the one sent manually.
In this section:
Sending E-Mail
Serving Your Customers 139
To send an e-mail:
1. Go to the Sending E-mail Wizard: Business Monitoring > Emails > Send
Emails .
2. Specify recipients of the e-mail: a. Define the target customers by using Customers Filter : enter the customers IDs separated with commas and/or filter them by
Status , Customer Group , Server , Panel Group and Plan if required. b. Select the customer's contacts to which the e-mail should be sent, either all or only the primary one.
3. Under Email Template , select a template.
Note that the templates list contains only templates from the group User Defined
Emails.
4. Click Next .
A list of e-mail accounts filtered according to the specified parameters (customer filter and contact) is displayed.
5. Verify that the list of contacts is correct and click Next .
Alternatively, click Back to go to the previous step and change customer filter or contact settings.
6. On the final screen showing all of the information on the e-mail you are about to send, check the e-mail properties (recipients, e-mail properties, e-mail message body) and click Send .
The e-mail will be sent, and will appear in the Show Emails list.
Resending E-Mails Sent Previously
To resend e-mails:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > E-mails .
2. Find the e-mail you want to send again and click Resend .
140 Serving Your Customers
Viewing Latest Correspondence
The Recent E-mails section of the Customer Summary page shows a list of the last five emails sent to the client. Each of the entries shows the following information:
Subject : Click the name and id to view, edit or resend the e-mail.
Timestamp : Includes date and time the e-mail was sent to the client.
The system also allows you to Resend and Edit Email the e-mails on the page that appears when you click the e-mail subject.
Sending Custom E-mails
To send a custom e-mail:
1. Go to the customer's details page for the customer you want to send an e-mail to.
2. Click the e-mail address of a customer in the customers list available from Business Operations > Customers .
3. By default, the customer's e-mail address will already be in the Contacts list. If this is not correct, make the necessary changes accordingly.
4. Next, if this e-mail requires a copy e-mail, enter it in the CC addresses field.
5. If this e-mail requires an additional copy e-mail (unseen by the recipient), enter it in the BCC addresses field.
6. Enter a subject in the Message subject field.
7. Enter your e-mail message in the Message body field.
8. Click Send .
Serving Your Customers 141
Managing Subscriptions
The services or resources you sell to your customers are organized into plans. A subscription is basically a permission to use the services or resources for a particular period of time.
Subscriptions also serve as a connection point in Business Manager. Invoices are tied to subscriptions. So are add-ons. A customer may stay the same, but they may have different subscriptions, and thus different add-ons and invoices, at various times in their life cycle. Subscription to a plan is a prerequisite for billing a customer. You cannot bill a customer unless they have at least one subscription tied to their account.
Business Manager handles subscriptions in two broad categories: domain subscriptions and all others. Domains subscriptions are created when a customer either purchases or transfers a domain through Business Manager.
In this section:
Adding New/Existing Subscriptions to Customer Accounts ................................ 142
Upgrading and Downgrading Subscriptions ....................................................... 149
142 Serving Your Customers
Adding New/Existing Subscriptions to Customer
Accounts
Business Manager supports the ability to add new/existing subscriptions to existing customer accounts. You can add as many subscriptions as you need to any of your customer accounts.
To add a subscription:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers and click a customer's full name.
2. Click the View link next to the subscription you want to edit in the
Subscription Details section.
You will see three links in the Subscription Details section:
Create New Subscription . This link represents new subscriptions only.
Import Existing Subscription . This link represents existing subscriptions. For example, if you are moving from a previous billing system other than Business
Manager, you can add those subscriptions to your customer's account.
Show All Subscriptions . This link displays all existing subscriptions associated with this customer's account.
In this section:
Serving Your Customers 143
Add New subscription
1. Click Create New subscription.
2. A pop-up window will open. If you have more than one online store available, it lists your online store. If you only have one (OF1) online store available, it skips the selection list and goes on to the choose a plan list as described in Step 3 below.
3. Choose a plan from the plan list.
4. Choose a billing cycle.
5. Set the following:
Start Date . Select the month, day, year, hour and minute you want for the start date.
Domain . If applicable, select or enter the domain you want to assign to this subscription.
Billing Account . Select the billing account you want to use from the drop down menu.
Price . Enter the price you want to use for this subscription.
Panel Groups . If a panel group list is available, select the panel group you want to assign to this subscription.
6. Click add new subscription.
144 Serving Your Customers
Import Existing subscription
1. Click Import Existing subscription.
2. A pop-up window will open. If you have more than one online store available, it will list your online stores. Choose from the list. If you only have one (OF1) online store available, it will skip the selection list and go on to the choose a plan list as described in Step 3 below.
3. Choose a plan from the plan list.
4. Choose a billing cycle.
5. Set the following:
New Renewal Date . Select the month, day, year, hour and minute you want for the next renewal date.
Start Date . Select the month, day, year, hour and minute you want for the start date.
Domain . If applicable, select or enter the domain you want to assign to this subscription.
Billing Account . Select the billing account you want to use from the drop down menu.
Price . Enter the price you want to use for this subscription.
Panel Groups . If a panel group list is available, select the panel group you want to assign to this subscription.
6. Click Import existing subscription .
Serving Your Customers 145
Viewing Subscriptions Details
To view subscription details:
1. Go to Business Operations > Subscriptions .
2. Click the name of a subscription you wish to view.
The page that shows will show you Subscription Details , including general information, subscription status, pricing information, policy on canceling subscriptions, subscription dates, and payment information. Here you can also view the Comments for the plan, the information on Last Invoice , and Subscription Add-ons and Properties and change the server associated with the subscription. Note that reassigning will tie this subscription to a different panel. It will not move the actual hosting account.
Changing Subscription Status
Business Manager allows for a number of different kinds of subscription statuses.
These statuses can be divided into groups based on their behavior:
Active . By far the most common status for a subscription. Active subscriptions are those that, as the name implies, are being actively used by a customer. This might be a current hosting subscription, software license, or service subscription.
Subscriptions marked Active will be invoiced.
Pending . The first status after a subscription is purchased. Pending subscriptions will be invoiced only once.
Canceled . If a subscription is canceled, it is removed or suspended on the server which stores this subscription. These subscriptions are not invoiced.
Important : If you manually change the subscription status to Canceled, it will not be canceled. To cancel the subscription, use the policy on canceling subscriptions.
Suspended . If a subscription is suspended, the subscriber is not able to access service plan resources. These subscriptions are invoiced if it is defined in the
server-wide settings (on page 60).
Pending Renewal . Applies only to subscriptions which include domain registration.
When a domain is approaching its renewal date, and an invoice is sent to the customer, the subscription status is set to this value. Once the customer pays, the invoice and the domain are actually renewed with the registrar, the subscription status again changes to Active. Subscriptions marked as Pending Renewal will not be invoiced.
Completed . This status is assigned when a subscription is available only for a limited number of billing cycles, and this number is reached.
Transferred . If you transfer a subscription from one customer to another, this subscription will be marked as Transferred. These subscriptions are not invoiced.
Failed . Generally, this status is set when provisioning of a subscription fails.
146 Serving Your Customers
Fraudulent . The FraudGuardian module assigns this status to a subscription if it considers that customer details are fraudulent.
Expired . Subscriptions marked Expired will not be invoiced.
Submitted . Subscriptions marked Submitted will not be invoiced.
You can create an invoice for a subscription with a status other than active or suspended by manually generating an invoice through the customer summary page.
The system also includes the following statuses that are not set automatically:
Stopped . Subscriptions marked Stopped will not be invoiced.
Started . Subscriptions marked Started will not be invoiced.
Collections . Assign this status to suspended subscriptions that were not debited for a long period of time. This will simplify the search for problem subscribers and the work of collection departments.
In Progress . Subscriptions marked In Progress will not be invoiced.
Why have many different kinds of status, when they all behave about the same? For example, if you are using Business Manager to sell web design in addition to hosting, you may want to set the web design subscription as something other than just Active or
Completed . You may want to Start the subscription, it may be In Progress , you may have to Stop the project for some reason, and the project may become Inactive , without ever being completed. These extra status designations allow you to keep track of general information in Business Manager. You can change the status of a subscription at any time.
To change the status of a subscription:
1. Go to Business Operations > Subscriptions . The page displays all subscriptions in the system.
2. Find the subscription you want to edit and click its name.
3. Click Edit in the Available Operations row.
4. Find the Subscription Status Options section. Fill in the corresponding fields with the new status and change reason.
5. Click Save .
Note : You can also navigate to a subscription page from Customer Summary Page of the customer to whom this subscription belongs. Click Show All Subscriptions in the
Subscription Details box and find the subscription you wish to edit.
Serving Your Customers 147
Activating or Suspending Subscriptions
Note : The customer subscription should be tied to a control panel in order to suspend/activate the subscription, otherwise the function to perform this action will not appear in the interface.
To suspend or activate a subscription:
1. Go to Business Operations > Subscriptions .
2. Click the name of a subscription you want to suspend or activate.
3. Click Suspend or Activate depending on the current subscription status.
4. When the events queue runs, the subscription will be set to Suspended or
Activated on a corresponding server.
Canceling Hosting Subscriptions
If a subscription is tied to a panel group, meaning the hosting account is created, follow the instructions in Method 1 below. If the subscription is not tied to a panel group, skip down to the second method.
To cancel a subscription tied to a panel group:
1. Go to Business Operations > Subscriptions .
2. Click the name of a subscription you want to cancel.
3. When the Available Operations items appear, click the Edit link.
4. Find a Servers section, and click the pencil icon in the Available Operations column.
5. When a window appears, select Canceled from the drop down menu and click the Edit button.
A system event will be created. The event will be run automatically if you have your system set up for automation. Otherwise, run the event.
To cancel a subscription tied to a panel group:
1. Go to Business Operations > Subscriptions .
2. Click the name of a subscription you want to cancel.
3. When the Available Operations items appear, click the Edit link.
4. Select Canceled from the Status drop down menu.
5. Click the Save button.
148 Serving Your Customers
Running Subscription Events
There are two ways you can run subscription events:
All at once
One by one
To run subscription events all at once, go to Business Monitoring > Events > Run Events .
All the events will be running at the same time.
Note : Running all events at the same time will process everything, not just subscription events.
To run subscription events one by one:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Events .
2. A submenu will appear from which you can filter subscription events by
Registrar , Panel , Panel Group or Recurring .
3. Make your selection of a registrar, panel or panel group. For example, you can choose to run all events related to your local Plesk server hosting subscriptions.
4. When the page loads with the filtered records, click the blue arrow icon for the event you want to run.
5. Click Display/Hide Additional Data and Run now link for each record.
Editing Subscriptions
To edit a subscription:
1. Go to Business Operations > Subscriptions .
2. Click the name of a subscription you want to cancel.
3. Click the Edit link in the Available Operations form that appears.
Edit the subscription settings according to your needs.
4. Save the changes.
Serving Your Customers 149
Upgrading and Downgrading Subscriptions
Before you upgrade or downgrade a subscription, make sure you have your plans configured to upgrade. Refer to the section
Upgrading and Downgrading Plans (on page 113)
for details.
To upgrade a subscription:
1. Go Business Operations > Customers and click a customer's full name.
2. Click the name of a subscription you want to upgrade to.
3. Click the Upgrade link in the Available Operations form that appears.
To downgrade a subscription:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers > Click a customer's full name.
2. Click the name of a subscription you want to downgrade to.
3. Click Show/Hide Operations Menu , and click the Downgrade link in the Available
Operations form that appears.
When you upgrade or downgrade a subscription, you can choose between the three options described below.
Upgrade/Downgrade now and apply proration credits . If this is selected, the system performs the following:
Adds money for the remaining number of days till the end of the current billing cycle as credits to the customer account.
Creates a subscription of type Upgrade Fee or Downgrade Fee . The subscription price is the price of a plan the customer upgrades or downgrades to respectively for the remaining number of days till the end of the billing cycle .
If Generate invoice immediately is selected, the system creates an invoice for this subscription for the current billing cycle. The next invoice (for the new plan) will be generated as usual before the next billing cycle. If Generate invoice immediately is not selected, the invoice will be generated in the next run of “ProcessInvoices” event. Typically, this event runs daily.
Applies the credits to the new invoice.
Creates the event to provision the upgraded or downgraded subscription to the
Panel.
150 Serving Your Customers
Upgrade/Downgrade now and DO NOT apply proration credits . If it is selected, the system performs the following:
Creates the event to provision the upgraded or downgraded subscription to the
Panel. The next invoice (for the new plan) will be generated as usual before the next billing cycle. Option Generate invoice immediately is not taken into account in this case.
Note : It is not possible to upgrade or downgrade this subscription again till the end of the current billing cycle.
End of current cycle . If it is selected, the system performs the following:
Upgrades or downgrades the subscription in Business Manager, but sets it to be provisioned only in the next billing cycle . The next invoice (for the new plan) will be generated as usual before the next billing cycle. Option Generate invoice immediately is not taken into account in this case.
Adding an Add-on to a Subscription
To add an add-on to a subscription:
1. Go to Business Operations > Subscriptions .
2. Click the name of a subscription to which you want to add an add-on.
3. Click Add-ons in the Available Operations column.
4. Click Add New Add-on .
5. Select an add-on you want to attach to the customer account from the plans list.
6. Update the pricing if necessary.
7. Click the Add button.
Serving Your Customers 151
Viewing Add-ons with Their Properties
To view the subscription add-ons:
1. Go to Business Operations > Subscriptions and click a subscription name.
2. Click Add-ons in the Available Operations form that appears.
On the page that loads, you will see the add-ons for the given subscription and their details. Here you can also Edit the add-ons and see the add-on Properties by clicking the respective icons next to each add-on.
Here you can also add or change Subscription add-ons
Viewing Subscription Properties
To view the subscription properties:
1. Go to Business Operations > Subscriptions and click a subscription name.
2. Click the Properties link in the Available Operations form that appears.
The page that lists subscription properties opens.
On this page, you can do the following:
View details of a property.
Edit a property or its value by clicking the Edit icon next to the given value.
Transferring a Subscription
Business Manager allows administrators to transfer a subscription from one customer to another.
To transfer a subscription:
1. Go to Business Operations > Subscriptions and click the name of a subscription you want to transfer.
2. Click the Transfer Subscription link in the Available Operations form that appears.
3. In the form that appears, enter the ID of the customer you want to transfer a subscription to.
4. Specify the billing account to pay for this subscription and confirm the transfer.
152 Serving Your Customers
Limiting Discounts and Exempting
Subscriptions from Suspension
Business Manager allows you to limit discounts for certain customers or exempt their subscriptions from suspension. To do it, create a customer group (or modify the default one) and add the certain customer accounts to it. Customer groups set the following properties for their members:
Maximum discount defines the maximum discount that group members can get when they subscribe to a plan. For example, if you provide a 20% discount on a plan, the member of a group with maximum discount 10% will get a 10% discount on this plan.
Guaranteed discount defines the discount that group members will get in addition to other discounts when they subscribe to any plan. For example, if you provide a 5% discount on a plan, the member of a group with guaranteed discount 10% will get a
15% discount on this plan. If you do not provide discounts on a plan, a member of this group will still get a 10% discount.
Exempt from suspension.
If this option is enabled, Business Manager does not automatically suspend the subscriptions of the group members if they do not pay in time.
If you change these properties for a group, Business Manager automatically applies them to existing members. Besides, you can override the group properties by custom values for each member. Changing properties of a group does not affect member with custom values of these properties.
To add new or manage existing customer groups, go to the Business Setup > All Settings
> Customer Groups screen.
To add a customer account to a group or override group properties for a customer, go to the customer Business Operations > Customers > < customer name > > Edit Customer
Account Properties .
Performing Manual Payments
In this section:
Generating and Running Payment Queue ......................................................... 155
Serving Your Customers 153
Using a Credit Card to Pay an Invoice
To pay an invoice using a credit card:
1. Select the invoice from the list available at Business Operations > Invoices .
2. When the invoice page is displayed, click the Take Credit Card Payment link in the Quick Links section at the top of the page.
3. Select the gateway you want to use to pay this invoice and click Next .
4. Enter all the payment information accordingly.
5. Click Charge .
Note : Payments of this kind are performed using the virtual terminals feature. Find more information about it in the section Testing Gateways Using Virtual Terminals (on page
Capturing Authentication-only Payments
To capture Authentication-only payments:
1. Select the invoice from the list available at Business Operations > Invoices .
2. When the invoice page is displayed, click the Take Credit Card Payment link in the Tools section at the top of the page.
3. Select the gateway you want to use for an authenticate-only charge and click Next .
4. Enter all the payment information accordingly.
5. Select Authenticate Only in the Charge Action drop down menu.
6. Click the Charge button.
This transaction will just validate the card and will not take the money.
154 Serving Your Customers
Capturing Uncaptured Payments
To capture uncaptured payments:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Payments > Uncaptured Funds tab.
2. Click each check box next to the records you want to capture funds from. The checked records are highlighted in red.
3. Click Capture funds .
Note : There is no confirmation screen after clicking the Capture funds button. The funds will be captured automatically.
Issuing Refunds
To issue refunds:
1.
Go to the invoice (on page 162) you want to issue a refund for.
2. Click on the Refund button in the Status column located in the Transactions section.
3. Verify that the refund details are correct. If passphrase encryption is used, enter it in the corresponding field.
4. Click the Yes, process this refund button. Otherwise, click Cancel .
Serving Your Customers 155
Generating and Running Payment Queue
If you want to confirm all payments from credit cards and bank accounts, generate and run the payment queue. When you click to generate the queue, the system analyses the list of existing invoices and creates events to pay them. Next, depending on the configuration, the system runs the events or not.
To generate and run payment queue:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Payments > Payment Queue tab and click Generate
Payment Queue.
2. Set the following:
Invoice Options :
Clear all items currently in Payment Queue . Check the box to avoid replicating the same items.
Generate . Select from one of the following: New, Declined, or Errored.
Generate Due Date Only . Select Yes if you want to generate payments based on invoice due dates only. Select No if you want to generate payments regardless of invoice due dates.
Due on or before . Select from the drop down menu the date you want to generate payments on or before or click the ... button to set the date using the built-in calendar.
Number of invoices to generate payments for . Enter the number or leave it as 0 to generate payments for all invoices.
Run Options :
Try charging lesser amounts on failed accounts . Check the box if you want the system to automatically charge less amounts for invoices IF they fail on the initial payment processing.
Run Payment Queue . Select one of the following: Don't Run or Run at a later date/time .
Date to run Payment Queue . Set the date to run the payment queue in the drop down menu or click on the ...
button to select the date using the built-in calendar.
Transaction Type . Select one of the following: Charge or Authenticate Only .
Enter your Credit Card Encryption Key . Enter the key you generated when you set up your encryption settings.
3. Click Continue .
156 Serving Your Customers
Managing Bank Transfers
This section explains how bank transfers processing is organized in Customer &
Business Manager, lists the bank transfers management operations, and addresses the processing automation. For details on these topics, refer to the corresponding subsections of this section.
To read the introduction to bank transfers processing, refer to the section Bank Transfers
Processing
In this section:
Serving Your Customers 157
How Bank Transfer Processing Works
This section discusses bank transfers processing and explains what operations
Business Manager provides to manage bank transfers.
Bank transfers processing works as follows:
1. Customer submits an order at one of your online stores using the bank transfer payment method.
2. Business Manager creates a new transaction that keeps the payment details.
3. The transaction is appended to an open batch. Batches are specifically formatted files that comprise orders to transfer funds from one bank account to another. The
batch format is dictated by a transfer plugin (on page 38) associated with the online
store. Each plugin has a single open batch which status is always Open . If the batch does not exist, the system creates it and opens.
4. After an open batch reaches a certain number of transactions, or after a certain period of time, the system starts processing this batch file. This includes closing the batch, giving it a unique name, setting the transaction statuses within the batch to pending , and opening a new batch.
You can manually request the system to start processing a batch.
For details on how to configure automatic processing, see Configuring Automatic
Processing
Note : The financial information of the receiving party is extracted from the profile of an administrator responsible for batch processing. You can change the administrator in the bank transfers manager settings.
5. If the batch is in the processing status, it is possible to download and submit it to a bank to perform transfers.
6. When you receive the bank response, either approve or decline the transactions included in the batch to activate paid subscriptions. If there is at least one approved transaction, the batch status is set to completed . This does not affect the statuses of included transactions.
After a transaction is either approved or declined, the only way to modify this is to remove a batch that includes the transaction. The removal is possible only if the batch contains at least one pending transaction. If you remove a batch, the transactions within the batch are included in a corresponding new batch.
You are able to exclude transactions from new batches or include transactions in new batches. This is useful when you balance the amount of funds included in a batch or wish to reorganize transactions.
158 Serving Your Customers
Business Manager imposes the following constrains on manipulations with transactions:
It is only possible to adjust the number of transactions in new batches (the batches under processing, completed, or declined are not modified).
You can include only transactions that are not bound to any batch. To unbound transactions, remove the new batch that contains them.
It is not possible to move transactions between new batches corresponding to different plugins.
Finally, Business Manager provides total amounts of transactions by statuses. This may be useful for statistical or auditing purposes.
For details on how to perform a particular operation, see Supported Operations (on page
Serving Your Customers 159
Supported Operations
This section lists the operations on batches and transactions available in Business
Manager. For details on routine bank transfer processing and operation descriptions, see How Bank Transfer Processing Works
To view the list of batches:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Payments > Bank Transfers on the Transactions tab.
2. Select tab Batch Files .
This will open the batch files list.
View included transactions to approve or decline them.
To view the transactions included in a batch:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Payments > Bank Transfers on the Transactions tab.
2. Select tab Batch Files .
3. Click the batch file.
This will open the list of transactions included in the batch.
Start processing a batch file to be able to download it.
To start processing a New batch file:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Payments > Bank Transfers on the Transactions tab.
2. Select tab Batch Files .
3. Click Start Processing next to the batch file (column Available Operations ).
This will change the batch file status to Processing .
Download a batch file to send it to a bank.
To download a batch file:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Payments > Bank Transfers on the Transactions tab.
2. Select tab Batch Files .
3. Click Download next to the batch file (column Available Operations ).
This will start the downloading process.
160 Serving Your Customers
To remove a batch file:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Payments > Bank Transfers on the Transactions tab.
2. Select tab Batch Files , and click the batch you wish to remove.
3. Click Remove Batch File and Unbound Transactions , and confirm the operation.
This will remove the batch from the batches list.
View total amounts of transactions by statuses for statistical, auditing, or other purposes.
To view the total amount of transactions by status:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Payments > Bank Transfers on the Transactions tab.
2. Select tab Transactions .
This will open the statistics followed by the transactions list.
Include or exclude transactions to balance the amount of funds included in a batch, reorganize transactions or for other purposes.
To include or exclude a transaction:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Payments > Bank Transfers on the Transactions tab.
2. Select tab Transactions .
3. Click the particular action next to the transaction (column Available
Operations ) and confirm the operation.
This will change the action name to the opposite (for example, display Include instead of Exclude ).
Approve or decline the transaction to update the associated subscription status.
To approve or decline a transaction in a batch:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Payments > Bank Transfers on the Transactions tab.
2. Select tab Batch Files .
3. Click the batch containing the transaction.
4. Click either Approve or Decline .
This will change the transaction status.
Note: You can change the transaction status directly from the transactions list.
Serving Your Customers 161
To change a responsible administrator:
1. Go to Business Setup > All Settings > Automatic Payments > Bank Transfers on the Transactions tab.
2. Set the appropriate administrator in the Responsible Administrator field and click Save .
This will change the responsible administrator.
Configuring Automatic Processing
The bank transfer processing settings are available at Finances > Manage Billing > Bank
Transfers Manager , tab Settings . You can adjust the following settings:
Process After XX days . This instructs the system to start batch processing in a certain number of days after a batch file is created. Use 0 to turn the feature off.
Process After XX transactions included. This instructs the system to start batch processing after reaching a certain number of transactions. Use 0 to turn the feature off.
For details on routine bank transfer processing and operation descriptions, see How
Bank Transfer Processing Works
Managing Invoices and Payments
In this section:
Manually Paying an Invoice Using Saved Credit Card Information .................... 166
Viewing and Downloading Schet-Facturas ........................................................ 167
162 Serving Your Customers
Generating Invoices Manually
You are able to generate invoices that include payments for previous or next billing cycles depending on the parameters you specify before starting the generation. For a single customer, the system generates only a unified invoice per currency. For example, if your customer ordered a monthly subscription in EUR and USD online stores, and requires an invoice for the next four months, the system will generate two invoices - one for the EUR and one for the USD subscription. Each of the invoices aggregates amounts for the four months.
Prior to generating invoices in your system, you should set up invoicing (on page 60).
To generate invoices manually:
1. Make sure there are Active or Suspended subscriptions in the system.
2. Go to Business Operations > Invoices > Generate Invoices .
3. Specify the invoice generation parameters and click Continue .
4. Click Events > Events .
5. You will see a list of events specific to the invoices that will be generated.
At this point you have two options:
Process all the events at one time by clicking Events > Run Events .
Run invoice entities one by one from the Events page. Click the “clock” icon in the Available Operations column for any of the invoice entries you want to run.
Make your selection and proceed forward with generating your invoices.
Viewing Invoices
To view invoices for your customer accounts:
1. Go to Business Operations > Invoices .
The list of all invoices issued by the system will be opened.
2. Click the invoice ID in the Invoice No.
column for the invoice you wish to view. (You can also access an invoice by clicking the magnifying glass icon in the Available Operations column.) The invoice details will appear.
Serving Your Customers 163
Editing Invoices
There are several ways to get to the edit screen for any invoice in your system. The easiest way to edit invoices for your customer accounts is to follow the instructions below.
To edit an invoice:
1. Go to Business Operations > Invoices .
2. You will be presented with a list of all invoices issued by the system.
Click the invoice id in the Invoice No. column for the invoice you wish to view. (You can also access an invoice by clicking the magnifying glass icon in the Available Operations column.)
3. Click Edit .
4. Update the invoice information according to your needs and click Save .
Note : Some organizations require you not to modify the existing invoices. For details, see Achieving Tax Office Compliance
Taking Credit Card Payments
Business Manager allows administrators to take credit card payments from their customers for unpaid invoices.
To take a credit card payment:
1. Go to Business Operations > Invoices .
2. Locate the invoice with
Due
status to which you want to apply payment manually and click its
ID
.
3. The invoice details will appear below the record of the invoice you are viewing. The other option is to click on the magnifying glass icon in the
Available Operations column to view the invoice details.
4. Click the Take Credit Card Payment link in the Tools section of the page.
5. Choose the Gateway and click Next to proceed.
6. Enter the billing account details.
7. Click the Charge button
164 Serving Your Customers
Applying Payments Manually
To apply payments to any invoice manually:
1. Go to Business Operations > Invoices .
2. Locate the invoice with
Due
status to which you want to apply payment manually and click its ID .
3. The invoice details will appear below the record of the invoice you are viewing. The other option is to click on the magnifying glass icon in the
Available Operations column to view the invoice details.
4. Click the Quick Manual Payment link in the Tools section of the page.
5. Set the following:
Choose Billing Account . Select the billing account you want to use for this payment in the drop down menu.
Payment Method . Select the payment method you want to use for this payment in the drop down menu.
Check Number . If payment is being made by check, enter the check number.
Apply Payment To . Select Entire Invoice or Selected Line Items . If you choose the
Selected Line Items option, it will list the line items available for this invoice.
Choose accordingly.
Amount of Payment . Enter the payment amount that you are applying to this invoice.
Payment Comments . Enter comments according to your specific needs.
6. Click Apply Payment .
Serving Your Customers 165
Paying by Credits
You can utilize customer credits to pay for subscriptions. When a credit balance is exhausted, the customer's default payment method is used to pay for the services.
To apply credits to any invoice manually:
1. Go to Business Operations > Invoices .
2. Locate the invoice to which you want to apply credit and click its
ID
.
3. The invoice details will appear below the record of the invoice you are viewing. The other option is to click on the magnifying glass icon in the
Available Operations column to view the invoice details.
4. Click Apply Credit in the Tools section of the page.
5. Set the following:
Apply Credit To . Select Entire Invoice or Selected Line Items . If you choose the
Selected Line Items option, it will list the line items available for this invoice.
Choose
accordingly.
Amount of Payment . Enter the payment amount that you are applying to this invoice.
Credit Comments . Enter comments according to your specific needs.
6. Click Apply Credit .
Voiding Invoices
To void any invoice manually:
1. Go to Business Operations > Invoices .
2. Locate the invoice that you want to void and click its
ID
.
3. The invoice details will appear below the record of the invoice you are viewing. The other option is to click on the magnifying glass icon in the
Available Operations column to view the invoice details.
4. Click Create an Invoice Reversal in the Tools section of the page.
5. Click Yes, create a credit note and void this invoice .
6. Go to Finances > Invoices again. You will see two entries for each invoice.
166 Serving Your Customers
Printing Invoices
To print an invoice:
1. Go to Business Operations > Invoices , and find the invoice you want to print.
2. Click Print next to the invoice.
A new window with the invoice in PDF format opens. You can print the invoice from this new window using your browser's print function or save it to your computer.
Manually Paying an Invoice Using Saved Credit Card
Information
Business Manager gives you the flexibility to manually pay an invoice using saved credit card information. This document explains how to decrypt saved credit card information to manually pay an invoice.
To decrypt credit card information:
1. Go to Business Operations > Customers .
2. Locate the customer whose invoice you want to pay by clicking the customer ID.
3. Click the link Show All Billing Accounts in the Billing Account Summary panel in the center of the screen.
4. All billing accounts associated with this customer will now be displayed.
Click the blue arrow icon for the credit card account you would like to use, which will expand with several options.
5. Click the magnifying glass icon next to the Account Last Four digits. A box will pop up prompting you to enter the encryption key you chose when configuring your Business Manager (for more information on encryption, view the Encryption Settings section).
6. Enter your encryption key and click the Submit button. The decrypted credit card number will be displayed.
7. Copy the credit card number.
8. Go back to the customer summary page and locate the invoice you wish to pay.
9. Make a credit card payment according to the instructions in the Using a
Credit Card to Pay an Invoice
Serving Your Customers 167
Viewing Transactions List
The transactions list displays the operations performed from customer billing accounts.
The list excludes bank transfer transactions that are available at bank transfers manager.
To view the transactions list, go to Business Monitoring > Payments .
Re-sending Invoices
In Business Manager, PDF versions of invoices are attached to each invoice e-mail. If you need to re-send an invoice, you can either re-generate PDF invoice or take the existing PDF attachment.
To re-send an invoice with a renewed PDF attachment, go to Business Operations >
Invoices > choose the invoice you need and click Resend . To re-send an invoice with a former PDF attachment, see Re-sending E-Mails Sent Previously
Viewing and Downloading Schet-Facturas
If your company is located in Russia and sells services to companies or individual entrepreneurs, the accounting policy requires you to send schet-facturas to them each time you supplied a taxable service. Although the system sends these documents automatically, there can be cases when you might need to re-send a schet-factura or to view it. To carry out these operations, go to Business Operations > Invoices > tab Schet-
Facturas and follow on-screen instructions.
If you do not see the Schet-Facturas tab, the documents issuing is not configured. For details on how to configure it, see Configuring Schet-Facturas
C H A P T E R 2 2
Employing Resellers
To help you grow your business, Business Manager allows you to provide hosting resources to a special kind of customers - resellers . Resellers are the people who purchase hosting accounts on your servers and offer the resources of these accounts to their own customers for profit.
Resellers in Business Manager
In Business Manager resellers combine features of customers and administrators. On one hand, they subscribe to plans in online stores, pay invoices for their subscriptions, and do other things that usual customers do. On the other hand, they offer the resources that they rent from you to other people using the administrator's workflow: resellers configure the plans that they will offer to their customers, configure online stores to sell these plans, configure payment gateways to accept online payments, etc.
The diagram below shows the resellers' place the hosting business that is run with
Business Manager:
Employing Resellers 169
To start serving resellers with Business Manager, you should perform certain steps that we describe in the section Getting the System Ready to Serve Resellers
Managing Reseller Accounts
To manage reseller accounts and subscription, use the same mechanisms as for customers: issue invoices, take payments, upgrade and downgrade subscriptions, and so on. You can find detailed instructions on managing accounts and subscriptions in
Business Manager, refer to the chapter Serving Your Customers
When a new reseller subscribes to a plan and you approve the subscription, the corresponding reseller account appears on the Business Operations > Resellers page.
The subscription is added to the subscriptions list on the Business Operations >
Subscriptions page.
Branding resellers' domain names
Since your resellers run their own hosting business, they want to have branded domain names for their customers' access to Business Manager and panels that serve their subscriptions. This hides the fact that the resellers offer somebody else's resources and have profit from this. Learn how to configure resellers' access to the system with their own domains names in the section Setting Up Custom Domain Names for Resellers (on
In this chapter:
Getting the System Ready to Serve Resellers ................................................... 170
Setting Up Branded Domain Names for Resellers ............................................. 170
170 Employing Resellers
Getting the System Ready to Serve
Resellers
If you have decided to start offering your hosting resources to resellers, you should perform certain Business Manager configuration steps that will let your potential resellers purchase the resources they need and open their own online stores.
These steps are the following:
1. Create reseller plans or configure the default ones to meet your needs. Learn how to configure reseller plans in the chapter Plans and Add-ons
2. Create online stores where you will offer reseller plans ( reseller stores ). Find the instructions on configuring online stores in the Managing Online Stores
chapter.
After you complete these steps, you are able to accept reseller subscriptions the same way as you accept usual customers and their subscriptions. For more information about managing customers and subscriptions, refer to the chapter Serving Your
Customers
If you have just installed Business Manager, you should first configure the system as described in the chapter
Getting Started with Business Manager (on page 23),
and then perform the steps described above.
Setting Up Branded Domain Names for
Resellers
Resellers naturally want to hide the fact that their business is selling resources of their hosting providers. If the customers know this fact, they may refuse the resellers' offerings and subscribe directly to the hosting provider. To avoid this, Business
Manager allows resellers to use their own domains names as access points to the system.
When a reseller asks you to configure the access with a branded domain name, perform the following steps:
1. Define what Panel serves the reseller's subscription.
This will help you define how much domain names (one or two) you will need to hide your domain names from the reseller's customers.
2. Adjust DNS settings.
Update the settings so that the branded domain names point to Panel and Business Manager IP addresses.
3. Adjust the domain name branding on the Panel server.
4. Change the reseller's URLs.
Below we discuss these steps in more details.
Employing Resellers 171
Define what Panel serves the reseller's subscription
To see the host name of Panel that serves the reseller's subscription, go to the
Business Operations > Subscriptions page and open the subscription page.
If the subscription is created on a remote Panel (a Panel installed on a different host), ask the resellers to provide you with two domain names: you will need the to replace both Panel host name and Business Manager host name to which customers are redirected for authorization purposes. If the Panel that serves the reseller's subscription is local (installed on a single host with Business Manager), one domain name is enough.
Adjust DNS settings
This step requires your cooperation with the reseller. You can make the domain names point to your IP addresses the following ways:
You add DNS record mapping the reseller's domain names to the IP addresses of the Business Manager and Panel hosts and tell the reseller to set your nameservers in the domain settings. Learn how to add DNS records in Parallels
Plesk Panel Administrator's Guide, section Configuring DNS Service .
If the reseller has purchased the DNS service together with the domain names, the reseller should add the corresponding records to the domain name registrar's nameservers.
Adjust the domain name branding on the Panel server.
If the Panel that serves reseller's subscription, skip this step. Otherwise, configure the
Panel host to redirect visitors of the <remote_reseller_host> to Business Manager SSO page. To perform this configuration, run the following command on the remote Panel server:
On Linux systems: /usr/local/psa/bin/sso --set-branded-idp domain <remoteresellerhost> -url https:// <mainresellerhost> :8443
On Windows systems: %plesk_dir%\bin\sso.exe --set-branded-idp domain <remoteresellerhost> -url https:// <mainresellerhost> :8443 , where
%plesk_dir% is a directory in which the Panel is installed
172 Employing Resellers
Change the reseller's URLs
Update the reseller's Business Manager URL for customer s and Online store URL to the new domain name. To do this, log in as the reseller and go to the Business Setup > All
Settings > Company Details .
After performing these steps, the reseller's customers access Business Manager and panel with URLs like the these:
Panel: https:// <reseller_host_1> :8443
Business Manager: https:// <reseller_host_2> :8443/plesk-billing/client
Note: if the subscription is served by the local Panel, then the <reseller_host_1> and
<reseller_host_2> are equal.
C H A P T E R 2 3
Managing Security Settings
To reinforce Customer & Business Manager security, configure password expiration and lockout policy for administrator accounts. To protect data in your database, set up encryption of the sensitive data. To track user activity within the system, use the audit log. For details on how to perform these tasks, see the corresponding sections of this chapter.
In this chapter:
Configuring Administrator Account Lockout Policy ............................................ 175
174 Managing Security Settings
Setting Up Encryption
If you process credit card or bank accounts payments directly (through on-site payment gateways or bank transfers), customer credit card and bank account numbers are stored in Customer & Business Manager database. To protect customer account data, set up encryption. You can use either passphrase or local encryption key (LEK) encryption. If the encryption is turned off, the system neither saves information about new accounts nor stores the existing accounts details.
Use the LEK encryption if you intend to automatically charge customer accounts.
However, you are required to enter a LEK PIN - a special 4-digit code - to view sensitive information like customers' credit card or bank account numbers and to void and refund transactions.
Use the passphrase encryption if you require confirmation of each transaction. The system asks for a passphrase to perform all operations related to customer billing accounts and payments. When a customer changes billing account details, you receive a corresponding to-do item to re-encrypt the new data with your passphrase. The reencryption of the new data is mandatory. For details on how to perform payments with passphrase encryption turned on, see Generating and Running Payment Queue (on page
As the system uses LEK to encrypt and decrypt billing accounts, all operations related to payments processing are halted when the key becomes damaged, corrupted, or lost.
To avoid these situations, back up your LEK in advance and restore it if necessary.
When you back up an LEK, it is divided between two administrators you assign. You can be one of these administrators. These administrators are able to back up their key part or restore it. After both administrators restore their key parts, the system restores the LEK and displays a notification about it.
To configure encryption settings:
1. Go to the Business Setup > All Settings > Encryption Settings page.
2. Enter agree in the Encryption Agree field.
3. Set a secret passphrase or PIN. It may remain empty if you wish
Note : To change from passphrase to previously specified PIN, leave the PIN fields empty.
4. Click the Submit Changes button.
Important!
To prevent irreversible database corruption during re-encryption by a new passphrase, we highly recommend that you back up the Business Manager database before submitting changes. You are also required to forbid access to adding and editing billing account information during re-encryption process.
Managing Security Settings 175
To assign a key part owner:
1. Go to the Business Setup > All Settings > Encryption Settings page.
It is assumed that LEK encryption is turned on.
2. Select two administrator accounts.
3. Click the Submit Changes button.
To back up your LEK:
1. Go to the Business Setup > All Settings > Encryption Settings page.
It is assumed that LEK encryption is turned on.
2. Click Backup .
To restore your LEK:
1. Go to the Business Setup > All Settings > Encryption Settings page. it is assumed that LEK encryption is turned on.
2. Fill in the current LEK PIN and specify the backup file.
3. Click Restore .
Note : You should turn on LEK encryption.
Configuring Password Expiration
To prevent unauthorized access to Business Manager with stolen passwords, configure
Business Manager to ask administrators to change their passwords periodically.
To update the password expiration period:
1. Go to the Business Setup > All Settings > Authentication and Password
Management (in the Security Settings group).
Update the password expiration period and click OK .
Note : If your password is expired and you log in to Business Manager, the system blocks all pages except for Edit My Account and forwards you to this page from other pages until you change your password.
176 Managing Security Settings
Configuring Administrator Account
Lockout Policy
You are capable of improving the system security level by setting the maximum number of failed login attempts for administrator accounts. If the number is exceeded, an account is locked out for an adjustable period of time. Additionally, depending on the system configuration, the primary administrator ( admin user), the account owner, or both receive e-mail notifications about the account lockout.
To update the administrator account lockout policy:
1. Go to the Business Setup > All Settings > Authentication and Password
Management (in the Security Settings group).
2. Update the lockout policy settings and click OK .
Note : To view the lockout e-mails in Business Manager, go to Events > E-mails .
Viewing Audit Log
The audit log captures operations performed by administrators and customers. The audited operations either change the user session state (log in or out), display personal information, or change it. A user who requested such an operation is listed in the log as a requester . A user to whom such operation applies is a target user .
Origination of an operation request is also captured. It can be either the Business
Manager GUI, internal API, or MBAPI (remote calls protocol).
Some operations provide supporting details that simplify changes tracking. For example, if a username is changed, the old and new names are written to the log.
Important : The audit is always turned on , and there is no way to stop it.
At first, when an audit log record is created, it is added to the database. Then, periodically, the system exports the records from the database to a regular file and removes them from the database. You can adjust the exports frequency in the audit log settings.
Audit records are exported in CSV format. The resulting files reside in
/var/lib/plesk-billing .
To view the audit log, go to the Business Setup > All Settings > Audit Log .
To access the audit log settings, open the audit log and click Settings .
C H A P T E R 2 4
Viewing Accounting Information
In this chapter:
Generating Accounting Reports
Business Manager allows you to generate the following types of accounting reports:
The Balance Sheet Report is a summary of your assets, liabilities, and equity account balance.
The Profit and Loss Report is a summary of your revenue, cogs, and expense account balance.
The Accounts Receivable Aging Report shows what is owed to you and how long it has been owed.
The Ranged Cash Flow Report shows you the change (and gives you small explanations of what they mean to your business) for a few important accounts.
The Ranged Plan Revenue Report shows us the amount of revenue generated on a per plan basis for a given date range.
The Daily Invoice Sheet is the list of invoices and their respective amounts and customers for a given day.
The Ranged Daily Signup Report is a list of the customers that signed up in a particular date range, grouped by day, and totaled daily, and for the range. The revenue from their signup invoices is also included.
To generate a report:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Accounting > Reports .
2. Click the type of report you need.
3. Choose a date range.
4. Click Generate .
178 Viewing Accounting Information
Generating Daily Journals
With Business Manager you can keep two types of daily journals:
Sales & Receipts Journal includes all daily sales and payments received.
Purchases Journal includes all daily cash disbursements.
Note : The Purchases Journal is currently not being used.
To generate a daily journal:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Accounting > Daily Journals .
2. Click the type of report you need.
3. Choose a date range.
4. Click Generate .
Viewing Accounting Information 179
Viewing General Journal
The General Journal report includes a list of all debits and credits in the system.
To view the General Journal, go to Business Monitoring > Accounting > General Journal .
Generating General Ledgers
Business Manager support the following types of general ledgers:
The General Ledger is a permanent summary of all supporting daily journals.
Financial statements are generated from this ledger.
The Accounts Receivable Ledger is a special general ledger used only for posting accounts receivable journal entries. Monthly customer statements are generated from this ledger.
The Accounts Payable Ledger is a special general ledger used only for posting accounts payable journal entries. Monthly statements for companies you owe are generated from this ledger.
The Tax Payable Ledger is a special general ledger used only for posting tax payable journal entries. Annual statements for the taxes you owe are generated from this ledger.
To generate a ledger:
1. Go to Business Monitoring > Accounting > General Ledgers .
2. Click the type of ledger you need.
3. Choose a date range.
4. Click Generate .
C H A P T E R 2 5
Achieving EU Business Compliance
If your Business is located in the European Union, it is subject to the European Union
Value Added Tax (EU VAT) regulations. To learn more about the regulations, see the section
European Union Business Compliance (on page 16).
To achieve EU business compliance, configure Customer & Business Manager to meet the following requirements:
Specify your VAT number in Business Setup > All Settings > Company Details . Business
Manager will include it into all invoices.
Set up the VAT charging for your customers from EU countries. For detailed instructions, see the section European Union
Require VAT number from commercial companies.
In your online stores, customers select whether they are individuals or commercial companies. In the latter case, they are required to provide a valid VAT number to define an applicable VAT rate. You should adjust your online stores to require this number from commercial companies and verify it. The respective option is available in the Business Setup > Online Stores > < store name > > Change settings > Taxes tab. The
<online store> here is the store which you use to sell plans to EU customers.
Note : If your company address is in the EU, these settings will be automatically applied to all new online stores.
Display either gross or net prices in your online stores.
Each EU country follows one of two different rules for the way prices are displayed in your online stores. Depending on the location of your business, your online stores must display prices either with VAT included (gross) or before VAT is added
(net). You can update your online stores to display prices accordingly on the
Business Setup > Online Stores > < store name > > Change settings > Payment Options tab.
The <online store> here is the store which you use to sell plans to EU customers.
C H A P T E R 2 6
Viewing System Information
In this chapter:
182 Viewing System Information
Viewing Module Information
To list all of the available modules, go to Business Setup > All Settings > Server Info . Here you will find the modules organized by type. You will also see displayed the status of the module (whether stable or testing), the latest version number, the author, and DRM information.
Viewing PHP Information
To view PHP information, go to Business Setup > All Settings > Server Info .
The PHPinfo script displays detailed information about your php settings. We include access to this script inside Business Manager to enable you to see clearly which PHP
Business Manager is using, and what the settings are. Having access to the PHPinfo script can also be extremely useful for Business Manager support technicians, as system incompatibilities can be easily identified and suggestions for corrections made.
Disabling the phpinfo function in php will disable this view in Business Manager as well.
Viewing System Information
Clicking Business Setup > All Settings > Server Info will provide you with a brief rundown of your server information:
Server Information . Here you should see the type of OS and web server you are running, including version number.
PHP Information . A brief display of the PHP version you are running. A full printout of your PHPinfo information can be found here.
Database Information . This is the version of the database you are using.
cURL Information . The version of cURL you are using, including SSL information.
This information is cursory, and is not meant to be exhaustive. It functions mainly to provide our technicians basic information in the event they need to investigate a problem in your Business Manager.
Viewing Business Manager Version
To view your Business Manager version, go to Business Setup > All Settings > License
Info.
Note : The versions feature is specific to Business Manager developers only. This will be relocated and hidden in a future release.
C H A P T E R 2 7
Managing SSO Service
Business Manager offers the global account feature that allows you to authorize only once and then switch between Parallels Plesk Panel and Business Manager without being prompted to log in again. The global accounts are managed by the Single Sign-
On ( SSO) service.
The software that provides the SSO service is called SSO server . This server is automatically installed together with Panel. By default, the SSO is automatically set up to share global accounts between Business Manager and Panel installed on the same server (the local Panel). In this case, the SSO does not need to know the IP addresses of the Business Manager and Panel, so it uses the localhost IP address (127.0.0.1) for referring to them. This SSO mode is called single-panel mode . The single-panel mode best suits for beginner hosting providers that use a single Panel (which is local). This mode works out of the box and does not require any additional host name configuration steps.
If you want to expand you business and sell hosting accounts on two or more Panel servers, make sure that all these servers are able to connect to Business Manager and reconfigure the SSO to work with multiple Panels. To check if the Panel servers resolve the Business Manager host name, run the nslookup system utility on these servers: nslookup <bm_host_name>
If your Business Manager host name is not registered, register it or purchase a new host name and configure Business Manager to use it by running the following command:
/usr/share/plesk-billing/integration --command=update -hostname= <new_host_name>
After you make sure that Panel servers are able to connect to Business Manager server, switch the SSO to the multiple-panels mode. In this mode, the SSO uses the servers host names instead of the localhost and this allows Business Manager to interact with multiple remote panels. After switching the SSO mode, connect the remote Panels. You can find the instructions on changing the SSO mode below.
The interaction between the SSO service and Business Manager is regulated by the
SSO utility. To learn more what you can do with this utility, refer to the Parallels Plesk
Panel Command Line Reference , section Single Sign-On Configuration: sso Utility .
184 Managing SSO Service
Switching SSO Modes
Note: Before you switch SSO to multiple-panels mode, ensure that connected Panels servers resolve the Business Manager domain name.
To switch the SSO to multiple-panels mode, run the following command on the
Business Manager server:
/usr/share/plesk-billing/integration --command=switch-sso-mode --ssomode=multiple-panels
To switch the SSO back to single-panel mode, run the integration utility the following way:
/usr/share/plesk-billing/integration --command=switch-sso-mode --ssomode=single-panel
Important: If you switch SSO to the single-panel mode while the remote Panels are still connected to Business Manager, your customers whose subscriptions are served by remote Panels will experience problems with transparent switching to these Panels.
C H A P T E R 2 8
Troubleshooting
This chapter lists common problems you may encounter when operating with Customer
& Business Manager and provides recommended solutions.
In this chapter:
Turning on Debug Logging
If an error occurs, the debug logging helps you collect the information necessary for our support engineers to diagnose and fix it. You should turn this service on, reproduce the error, and attach the newly added log records to the error description.
To turn on the debug logging, do the following:
1. In file
config.php,
set
true
for parameter
ALLOW_DEBUG_LOGGING
.
If you run Linux, the file resides in /opt/plesk-billing/libbilling/include/config/ .
2. Go to the Business Setup > All Settings > Debug Log and click Enable Logging .
Note : The value of ALLOW_DEBUG_LOGGING also affects the information provided in error reports. If you only wish to output extended details in error reports, skip step 2.
Be aware that these reports may contain sensitive information. The error reports list is available at Help & Support > Show error reports .
C H A P T E R 2 9
Appendixes
In this chapter:
Appendix A. Supported Payment Gateways ...................................................... 187
Appendix B. Supported Formats for Bank Transfer Batches .............................. 188
Appendix C. Parallels Plesk Panel Properties ................................................... 189
Appendix D. Operations that synchronize Business Manager and Hosting Panels
Appendix E. Supported Domain Name Registrars ............................................. 194
Appendixes 187
Appendix A. Supported Payment Gateways
Business Manager supports the following payment gateways:
On-site payment gateways
Authorize.Net
BluePay
ECHO
eWAY
InternetSecure
First Data Global Gateway (former LinkPoint)
Moneris
Payflow Pro
Sage Pay
PSiGate
QuantumGateway
Velocity Pay
Banca Sella Direct
Wirecard
BBVA
Off-site payment gateways
PayPal
WorldPay
ASSIST
ATOS
Nordea Also, the following payment gateways are supported but unstable:
On-site payment gateways
CyoGate
EchoInc
eProgressingNetwork
Merchant Commerce and Payment Services (MCPS)
Merchant Partners
PagoPorInternet
Planet Payment
QuickCommerce
188 Appendixes
RTware
SagePayments
SecurePay AU
SecurePay US
USA ePay
Off-site payment gateways
2CO (credit cards)
2CO (recurring)
MultiBanco
Appendix B. Supported Formats for Bank
Transfer Batches
Business Manager supports the following batch file formats:
DTAUS. This format is supported by German banks.
Norma19. This format is supported by Spahish banks.
Clieop3. This format is supported by Netherlandic banks.
Appendixes 189
Appendix C. Parallels Plesk Panel Properties
This chapter lists Parallels Plesk Panel properties.
In this section:
190 Appendixes
General Options
Server Weight .
Give your plan a specific weight , which is a component of simple load balancing. A server weight is a generic measure of how much of a server's “capacity” (which is set when you create a panel group in Business Setup > All Settings > Hosting Panels ) that plan takes up each time it is provisioned. When a server's capacity is reached, the hosting subscription will move to the next server in the group (assuming you selected Fill panels until full, one-by-one as a Fill Type for the panel group).
Suspend after expiration . Tick the box to automatically suspend the subscription when it is not renewed.
Dedicated IP.
This option adds a dedicated IP address to the subscription.
Webstats . Choose the statistical utility to analyze the log files.
Delete Webstats After . Choose this when you would like to clear the log files.
Shell type .
Choose between No Login , sh , bash , chrooted sh , or None .
Log Rotation .
Tell the system to enable log rotation or not, and whether to compress log files.
Also specify either size or time to rotate the logs.
Usage Type . The parameter for which the automated overlimit billing will be conducted ( Traffic for Plesk Module).
Usage Cycle .
Select how you are going to bill for the overlimits: daily, monthly, and so on.
Usage Factor .
Specify how you will track the traffic usage: Gigabytes, Megabytes, or Kilobytes.
Usage Limit .
Specify the traffic limit in gigabytes, megabytes, or kilobytes depending on the
Usage Factor you set above.
Invoice for usage on the subscription cycle . Generate invoices for traffic overlimit for the whole subscription cycle.
Limits
Skip Customer Creation - tick the box if you do not want the customer to be created when the plan is purchased.
Skip Domain Creation - tick the box if you do not want to create a domain when the plan is purchased.
Resource Overage Policy - choose between Normal , Notify , and Block policy for the resources used over limit.
Web Limits
Appendixes 191
Web limits provide settings that control limits per customer and per domain.Though you can skip customer and domain creation.
Maximum Number of Domains.
Specify the total number of domain names/web sites your customer will be able to host on the server. This includes web sites hosted on this server, and domain forwarders that point to web sites hosted on other servers. Domain aliases
(additional domain names for a site hosted on this server) and subdomains are counted separately and are not limited by this resource type.
Maximum Number of Domain Aliases . Specify the total number of additional alternative domain names that the customer will be able to use for his or her web sites. You can also specify a per domain limit.
Maximum Number of Sub-Domains.
Specify the total number of subdomains that the customer will be able to host. Set the sub-domains limit per domain.
Allowed Disk Space . Specify the total amount of disk space in bytes that is allocated to the customer. It includes disk space occupied by all files related to user's domains/web sites: web site contents, databases, applications, mailboxes, log files and backup files.
Allowed Disk Space Soft Limit. This is the so-called soft quota: when it is exceeded, the user account and domain names/web sites are not suspended automatically, only the appropriate notices are sent to your and your customer's e-mail addresses and the resource overage is indicated by the icon shown in your and your customer's control panels to the left of the user name or domain name. You can also specify disk space allocated for each domain.
Maximum Web Traffic . Specify the amount of data in bytes that can be transferred from the customer's web sites during a month. Once the limit is reached, the appropriate notices are sent to you and your customer's e-mail addresses and the resource overage is indicated by the corresponding icon shown in the Plesk control panel to the left of the user name or domain name.
Maximum Web Users . Specify the total number of personal web pages that your customer can host for other users under his or her domains. This service is mostly used in educational institutions that host non-commercial personal pages of their students and staff. These pages usually have web addresses like http://your-domain.com/~username . You can also set a per domain limit.
Maximum Number of MySQL Databases . Specify the total number of databases that the customer can host on the server. You can also set a per domain limit.
Maximum Number of Tomcat WebApps .
Specify the maximum number of Tomcat web applications available for the customer. You can also set a per domain limit.
E-mail Limits
Maximum Number of Mailboxes . Specify the total number of mailboxes that the customer can host on the server and a per domain limit.
Maximum Mailbox Quota . Specify the amount of disk space in bytes that is allocated for storing e-mail messages and autoresponder attachment files to each mailbox in a domain.
192 Appendixes
Maximum Number of Redirecting Mailboxes . Specify the total number of mail forwarders to a single recipient that the customer can set up. This setting in the Customer Limit column applies to the entire account, so setting 10 here would mean 10 total for the customer, not 10 for each domain. You can also set a per domain limit in a respective column.
Maximum Number of Mail Groups . Specify the total number of mail forwarders to multiple recipients that the customer can set up. Mail Groups are not Mailing Lists. These are e-mail addresses at the domain that can receive and send e-mails out to multiple recipients. You can also set the maximum number of mail groups per domain.
Maximum Number of Auto-responders . Specify the total number of automatic responses that the customer can set up. You can also set a per domain limit of auto-responders.
Maximum Number of Mailing Lists . Specify the total number of mailing lists that the customer can host on the server. You can also specify a maximum number of mailing lists per domain.
Management and Feature Options
Customer Manage Options allow customers to create domains and subdomains, manage the settings for those domains, allow/not allow the limits for the domains (note this will not change customer limits, only domain limits). Manage Options also allow customers to use or not to use Cron jobs, Anonymous FTP, Tomcat Webapps, Mailing Lists, DNS, Logs, Shell
Access, CHROOT Status, Backup Manager, and Remote Access. Tick the Control Panel
Access to specify if your customers will be able to access the control panel for managing his or her account and sites. Performance Settings option allows you to specify whether the customer will be able to limit bandwidth usage and number of connections to his or her Web sites.
Customer Feature Options enable or disable Domain, FrontPage, Scripting, and E-mail
Options.
Appendixes 193
Appendix D. Operations that synchronize
Business Manager and Hosting Panels
The following table lists operations that cause Business Manager to send updates to a corresponding hosting panel.
Service Plan Service Plan Add-on Subscription v v
Primary or Additional
Contact
Update name or properties v
Personal information v
Upgrade
Downgrade v v
Add/remov e add-on
Delete v v
194 Appendixes
Appendix E. Supported Domain Name
Registrars
Business Manager supports integration with the following domain name registrars:
eNom
Register.com
OpenSRS
DistributeIT
Nominet
Namecheap
EuroDNS
Dotster
RRPproxy
ResellOne
Openprovider
Wild West Domains / GoDaddy
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