End-User Information
Purpose: gcdb is an aesthetically pleasing MySQL/PHP billing database.
It supports Customer, Payment, Invoice, Account, and Trouble Ticket entries.
Audience:
Meant for ISP, hosting, or general billing.
Pre-installation notes
Getting started with gcdb:
Before you are able to use gcdb, you need to load a few bits of
information into the MySQL or PostgreSQL database. One particular thing
that is added is the 'admin' account. Look in the 'dbtools' directory
for scripts to create initial information in your database..
More specific documentation may be found here:
What do I do next?
- Login using the 'admin' username and password you set in the
prior step.
- Populating an empty database:
- Update the 'Configuration' in the 'Admin' area.
- Enter resources in the 'Admin' area. These are ultimately your
billables.
EXAMPLES:
System Administration (Hour)
Disk Space (1Mb)
Dialup Service (10 Hours)
DSL Service
Email Accounts (10)
Shell Account
Web/Domain Hosting
- Create packages using one or more of the entered resources.
Packages are recurring charges (monthly, biweekly) which the
customer chooses.
EXAMPLES:
Consulting, monthly
Standard Dialup, monthly (contains Shell and Email)
Standard Hosting, monthly
At this point, you will may want to backup the basic structure of your database.
This will allow you to experiment for a bit before opening up for business. If
you do test first, then you can recreate your database and use the backup to
re-install all your basic information.
Never do this to a production database.
Now I got stuff! Now what? ** GRAND OPENING **
- Enter customer(s). Note: This includes a password field for use in checking
on accounts and sumbitting/checking trouble tickets and notes.
- Select the customer (also from List Customers):
- Edit a customer information that is already entered into the database.
- Manage account(s):
Change the package, username, password, domain, date opened,
date closed, and status of the account. Use one account per login.
A customer may pay for more than one shell or e-mail account.
- Enter Contact
Enter name, phone, mobile, email, and notes.
This could be domain, billing or emergency contact numbers for
customer accounts.
Edit contacts by clicking on Contact: ### Total
- Enter Payment
This is payments by the customer. These may be pre-payments or payments for
sent bills. The balance will be adjusted upwards with each payment. Today's
date will be used for the default payment date. This may be changed to the
postmark date.
- Enter Invoice
At present, this does not do anything but allow you to enter a description,
date and amount to bill to the customer. In the future, we hope that it will
search the database for billables and present a summary of items that should be
invoiced since the last bill.
- Enter Ticket
Enter support queries requested by the customer. This is a *HOT* area of
development. More stuff to come shortly. For now, simply edit the ticket to
make updates anc change the status from Open to Closed.
- Enter Note
Make notes about the accounts or the customer or for support staff.
- Send Bill
This function will send a bill to a customer. It will simply tabulate the
payments and invoices and show the customer the balance due, if any.