WHMCS is your ultimate companion for reselling web hosting. This guide will help you set up the Automation Settings of WHMCS, which is the second step you should take after installing WHMCS.
Did you know that you can get a free WHMCS license with our reseller hosting plans? Give us a try! 🤝
Let’s begin!
How to Configure the Automation Settings in WHMCS
You can follow the steps in this article or watch out our video tutorial.
Step 1: First, log in to your WHMCS Admin. Once logged in, click the wrench in the top right corner, then click System Settings.
Step 2: Once the System Settings load, click Automation Settings:
The Automations Settings area in WHMCS is where you can control various settings, such as:
- Suspensions
- Un-suspensions
- Terminations
- How far in advance invoices are generated
- When overdue are sent
and more…
How to repair the Cron in cPanel to eliminate the Automation Settings Error Notice
If you open your Automation Settings area for the first time and you see an Error at the top, like the image below, this section will help you out.
For daily automation in WHMCS to occur, a Cron job must be configured. The Cron is typically configured automatically during WHMCS setup. The default is to run this Cron every 5 minutes.
When you use Softaculous to install WHMCS, it’s possible your Cron for WHMCS was automatically set up incorrectly. This is a feature, not a bug. 😉
Use the steps below to resolve this.
Step 1: Open your cPanel and navigate to the Advanced Section.
Step 2: When the Cron Jobs page opens, scroll down to the “Current Cron Jobs” section and locate your WHMCS Cron:
Click Edit to open the Cron.
Step 3: When the Cron editor opens, click the drop-down that says –Common Settings–:
Step 4: In the drop-down menu, choose every 5 minutes:
Step 5: Click Edit Line to save your changes.
Step 6: You’ll need to wait 48 hours for all the Daily Crons in WHMCS to run before this error will go away. If after 2 days the error still remains, please contact Support!
Reviewing the Remaining Settings in WHMCS Automation
The automatic modules area controls how WHMCS handles suspensions, un-suspension, and terminations. In this section, you can choose whether whmcs performs these functions and the requirements for doing so, such as how overdue a service needs to be before it’s suspended or terminated.
The Billing Settings area lets you choose when invoices, reminders, and overdue notices are sent. You can also adjust when late fees are generated, overage billing calculation, and enable or disable automatic invoice status and due date adjustments if chargebacks occur.
Payment Capture Settings control how automatic payments using stored payment methods are handled.
You can adjust when charges occur, when failed attempts should be retried, and how often to retry, and how to handle expired card information.
In Currency Auto Update Settings, you can choose whether WHMCS should update exchange rates daily, or whether product pricing should update automatically using the current exchange rate daily.
In Domain Reminder settings, you can control when and how many domain reminders are sent.
The domain sync settings control whether the domain sync function is used. This ensures the expiration date, next due date, and status of active or pending domains remain accurate. Here you can choose whether you want to enable this function, control how often it syncs, choose whether or not to update the next due date, and whether automatic changes are made and an email is sent to the admin.
In the Support Settings area, you can choose whether you want tickets to automatically close after x amount of time of inactivity.
Data retention settings control how long clients with no active products, services, addons, or domains will be kept in the system before being automatically removed.
In the Miscellaneous area, you can enable auto-cancellation terminations, automatic usage calculation, and choose how client status updates are handled.
Paired w/ your data retention settings, this area helps you ensure your active client list remains up to date.
Don’t forget to click save changes after making changes to this area. The changes will take effect the next time the Cron runs.
And that concludes our tutorial on configuring the Automation Settings in the WHMCS app.
▶️ Please join us in the next tutorial where we will walk you through configuring the Payment Gateways in WHMCS