NOTE: Of course nothing prevents you from creating variable price "Miscellaneous one time charge " products. But extensive use of such transactions could well indicate you do not have established business procedures.

Only users with Administrator or Supervisor access rights can create and modify products. Products management could be accessed via Admin Panel. There are 2 main categories of products - Receipts and Invoices.

Receipts. Use this product in order to record payments received from your customers. It is recommended to create individual products for check receipts, credit card transactions, bank wires etc. Receipt product can be of fixed or variable amount. In case of variable amount you will have to enter exact amount every time you post actual transaction to customer account.

In order to create receipt product select 'Receipt' for 'Type' field. Type receipt amount into 'Setup' field or enter asterisk sign (*) for variable amount receipts.

Invoices. Use this product in order to post invoices and or initiate subscriptions.

One time charge invoices. Use this type of product to record nonrecurring charges. One time charge product can be of fixed or variable amount. In case of variable amount you will have to enter exact amount every time you post actual transaction to customer account.

In order to create one time charge product select 'Inv Normal' or 'Inv Prorated' for 'Type' field (there are no differences in functionality in case of one time charge). Type receipt amount into 'Setup' field or enter asterisk sign (*) for variable amount invoices. Select 'One time' for 'Bill cycle' field. Once you successfully create new product you can edit payments terms. Leave blank for system default due to terms (set by system administrator), enter number of days the invoice is due in or enter asterisk sign (*) to specify due in terms every time you post actual transaction to customer account.

Recurring invoices. Use this product to initiate recurring charges. There is no need to enter repeat invoices manually, all you have to do is to specify how often and on which day subsequent invoices are to be posted to customer account. Specification recurring invoices consist of 2 parts: Setup and Rebill. Setup defines initial one time charge, which is being applied to customer account immediately. It is Rebill section that defines how subsequent invoices will be issued. There are 2 types of recurring invoices - Normal and Prorated.

Prorated invoices always being issued immediately (the very moment the corresponding invoice being posted to customer account) with an amount which is proportional of time remaining before next rebill date. 'Bill Day' field of product definition sets the rebill date by specifying exact day within billing cycle (1 means "on Sunday" in case of weekly cycle, "on 1st of every month" in case of monthly cycle an so on). Asterisk symbol (*) means "same day as of initial invoice". Syntax *-n(*+n) requires Accounts Online 2.57+ and means "n days before (after) of renewal date, which is set to the same day as of initial invoice".

Normal invoices are being issued on the days defined by 'Bill Day' field. If 'Bill Day' in product definition is the same as the day of posting initial invoice (or is asterisk symbol) the next rebill will be issued only after full billing cycle - this is useful for implementing trial subscriptions.

Examples:

1. Product: Web Site Membership, $9.95 monthly.
Product specs: Type=Invoice Prorated, Setup=0, Rebill=9.95, Bill Cycle=Monthly, Bill day=*

2. Product: Web Site Membership, $9.95 monthly, free one month trial
Product specs: Type=Invoice Normal, Setup=0, Rebill=9.95, Bill Cycle=Monthly, Bill day=*

3. Product: Office space rent, $299.95 up front setup fee, $995.95 monthly, prorated.
Product specs: Type=Invoice Prorated, Setup=299.95, Setup due in=0, Rebill=995.95, Rebill due in=30, Bill cycle=Monthly, Bill day=1.

4. Product: Web Site Membership, $125.00 one time setup fee.
Product specs: Type=Invoice Normal, Setup=125.00, Rebill=0, Bill cycle=Annual, Bill Day=*

Please note that in last example we use recurring invoice with zero rebill amount instead of one time charge. This is because only recurring invoices are being treated as subscriptions inside Accounts Online. This is actually irrelevant for standalone installation of the software, but is very important in case of using plugins.