Greetings,

You wonder if there is any module that enables the handling of products and services to generate monthly bills to customers?

Thank you

I suggest you change the topic to something like: "Invoice and Estimates Module" and ask a moderator to move it to the Extensions forum (as its a module request). I really like your idea and I don't want it to get lost due to a topic that might be misleading.... e.g. Products & Services could be something you use in the Catalog module.

[ Updated ]

The module can be very nice when completed. Here are my suggestions:
- Customer Module
- Products & Services Module
- Estimates, Invoices & Payments Module

* Customer Module usually contains more info than the members module, hence a new module.
* When defining a Product or Service, it will be selected (like which CE in the articles view) at edit-time, so when you press save, it automatically groups the item into groups:
Products
1/2 Hour Massage $60.00
1 Hour Massage $110.00
1 1/2 Hour Massage $160.00
Services
Consultation (per hour) $210.00
Technical Support (per hour) $90.00
Programming $110.00

* When making up an Invoice or Estimate (again selectable by TYPE) just select the customer and then add the associated products/services as child records, which you can reorder and sort and add notes/headings (non-product fields) - similar to the form editor. Payments can also be entered against a customer, so I'm not sure exactly where to add it, but if the Estimate, Invoice, Payments View is grouped by customer (which makes the most sense), then I guess its best to add it here, then it will appear (by date order) for each customer.

Then you can have another button next to each Customer in the Customer Module to show "reports" (showing invoices & payments) for that customer and do other reports like outstanding invoices. Its also possible then to generate a Statement. If certain amounts are overdue, then its possible to make that customer appear red in the Customer list in the back-end, so its easy to spot who's not up to date.

For the Front-End, the only real module I can see, is to link a Customer to a Member and then allow that member to see its own Invoices and a Statement of payments.

A great program that can be used to model this on would be GrandTotal, which is a MAC-only Invoice & Billing Application, which does exactly the above.

I think someone should turn this into a commercial package for TL, as I'd be happy to pay for it. e.g. Invoice from anywhere in the world and from any computer!

Just to tell you, I think Massage is not a product. Products are something you've got on stock and maybe has a serial number. The two examples by thyon are both services (for me).

It was just an example, but I give you some background if you're bored.

Well as I used to work for HP for many years and this is the method they use (multi-international company in almost all countries). Initially, they perform consulting work (services) to the client, until the service matures and then you convert the service into a pre-priced product, e.g. 1 1/2 hour massage isn't a considered a service anymore, simply because you don't charge per hour. The price of the massage comes down as you increase the time, which means if it was time-base service, you would just multiply, which is not the case. You have pre-approved and discounted the items and now they are simply products, e.g. fixed price items, which can be ordered.

When I do design work, I have lots of items that are multiple service tasks wrapped into a price with specs. Here are my examples of my personal pricelist, all are fixed pricing and I never (some exceptions) charge the client per hour:

Page Layout
1 Layout: Quick Logo + Text
1 Layout: Text + Art Creation + Photo Edit
1 Layout: Logo + Text + Color
1 Layout: Logo + Text + Photo Crop
1 Layout: Logo + Text + Photo Edit
1 Layout: Logo + Text + Art Creation
...etc...

PS. Actually does it really matter, because you can just bill your services as a single item and then just multiply by hours

5 x Consulting (per hour) $100 $500
5 x Massage, 1 1/2 hours $20 $100

So as there's no real difference in the above, unless you need to group items nicely, so I guess you can have a drop-down to choose a group/category, and you could also make-up your own groups.