Author Topic: Billing location needed? (Read 6912 times)

msn · August 10, 2007, 07:59:05 am

In my CiviCRM 1.8 setup I do not use the billing location in contacts. I do not need it, but may be I am wrong, and someone can convince me that I need this Billing location!.
I try to understand why there is a billing location and why the billing location can not be deleted, edited or switched off? What is the use of the Billing location?

Can someone help me here?

Martin

Dave Greenberg · August 10, 2007, 11:14:20 am

Martin - The 'Billing' location is assigned to contact data entered during an online contribution or event registration transaction. We do this instead of over-writing any existing "primary location" data (which we used to do) - because the billing address is often different.

If you're not using any of the online payment features - I think you can safely disable the Billing location. You'll need to do this via SQL since it is marked as a reserved location type and can't be disabled from the admin interface.

msn · August 10, 2007, 01:14:18 pm

Dave,

Thanks, By understanding the reason of the Billing task and behaviour I am satisfied. I don't use online contributions yet, it is planned for the future so I wil not disable it.

Thinking about it: Maybe the billing location should be not part of the primary location and also not of the secundary location. It should be a seperated location (only billing) witch is shown when it is necesarry (online contr. and event reg.).
Feature request (v2) or is this wrong thinking?

regards
Martin

Dave Greenberg · August 10, 2007, 02:07:10 pm

Billing is a separate location (not part of either primary or secondary). It only appears for a contact if they've submitted a contribution or paid membership/event registration.

Also, storage of "location-related" info (address, phone, email...) will be changing a bit for 2.0. You might want to review the new data model here if you're interested: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Location+Data

dalin · July 15, 2008, 08:30:48 pm

I'm confused. Then why there is the option to set any location as the billing address. For each location there are checkboxes for
-Primary location for this contact
-Billing location for this contact
So one can have a "Billing" location, and a "Work" location that is the "Billing location for this contact"

I'm not following.

Dave Greenberg · July 16, 2008, 10:47:27 am

Dave - Bonus points for asking good questions +++ I realized that I'm not sure how these 2 indicators are supposed to work / are used. I've pinged some of the folks on the team who were involved in adding the is_billing flags which that checkbox sets (in civicrm_email, civicrm_address, civicrm_phone) - and will post back.

TwoMice · April 14, 2011, 08:17:36 am

Quote

why there is the option to set any location as the billing address.

Obviously this is an old topic, but I think the question lingers (civicrm 3.3.5). Like dalin, I'm confused over having a "billing" location type and a "Billing location for this contact" checkbox.

Is it possible that we don't need both of these controls, or maybe I'm just not getting the distinct purpose of each of them? (Keep in mind: me-not-getting-it is just as likely as anything else these days.)

- TM

Donald Lobo · April 14, 2011, 10:12:09 am

The location type is basically legacy and we need to obsolete it

I'm not sure of the current status of the code with regard to both, but i do know we were moving towards making this more flexible

lobo

TwoMice · April 14, 2011, 10:32:26 am

Okay, thanks. I guess it's conceivable that there are two different cases here:
1. For contact A, there's only one address, and it's both home and billing. So set Type = "home" and check the "billing location" checkbox.
2. For contact B, there are two separate addresses for home and billing, so create one address with type=home, and another address with type=billing.

This would explain the need for both a "billing" type and an "is also billing" checkbox. If that's the idea, the meaning might be made more clear by
a. changing the "billing" type label to "separate location for billing only", and
b. hiding/disabling the "billing location" checkbox when type=billing

- TM

Dave Greenberg · April 14, 2011, 11:45:13 am

We were thinking that the Billing location type is just not needed, but your approach might make sense. Investigating how (if) we use each in the code might help. I think we set is_billing = true when recording an address record from the "billing block" of an online contribution or paid event registration form.

dalin · April 14, 2011, 05:30:45 pm

I suggest removing the "billing" address type. If you think of it from the contact's point of view, I have a home address, a P.O. box for my consultancy, and a work address. One of these may be the billing address for the credit card that I used for a donation, but I don't have a "billing" address.

This brings up the point that perhaps the appropriate address should be linked to from the contribution record rather than assigning one address as "billing" since for my next donation I may use a different credit card that is linked to a different address.

joe murray · May 10, 2011, 07:46:01 am

I like the idea of obsoleting the billing location type and just using the is_billing flag on other types of locations.

Dave Greenberg · May 10, 2011, 10:35:56 am

Quote from: dalin on April 14, 2011, 05:30:45 pm

This brings up the point that perhaps the appropriate address should be linked to from the contribution record rather than assigning one address as "billing" since for my next donation I may use a different credit card that is linked to a different address.

Maybe the right approach is to allow > 1 address to be marked as a billing address. Then provide UI for someone to select from available billing addresses if there's > 1 (else just fill in the fields automagically). Anyone up for putting together a patch for this for 4.1? :-)

joemcl · February 27, 2015, 03:55:55 pm

Cross-posting this from my reply to an even older (2009) post from Peter, at http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,11447.msg150514.html#msg150514.

I'm reviving this old topic, hoping to prompt work on a patch to 4.6/4.7 - what is the purpose of having the check box "Billing location for this contact" to apply to Home, or Work, or Other address, yet also needing to add or use an address of type Billing Address? Its intuitive to check that box and think that should populate for Billing Address.

It would be really handy if checking that box actually populated the address to type Billing Address that could then be used (for example) as we do, for Thank You letters to new/renewed members, for which we export name, billing address, city , state, postal/ZIP code.

We'd much rather just check that box than manually add another address of type Billing Address in addition to Home. For many/most of our contacts, Home is the Primary address as well as typically the billing address for credit cards, etc.

Dave Greenberg · March 03, 2015, 09:33:05 am

Deprecating the 'Billing' location type and consolidating the logic in the code to use the existing is_billing flag on address records still seems like a good idea. Rough guestimate is that this would be a ~25 hr. project including upgrade logic to convert existing addresses. Is your organization is interested in sponsoring this work for 4.7?

CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

News:

Author Topic: Billing location needed? (Read 6912 times)

msn

Billing location needed?

Dave Greenberg

Re: Billing location needed?

msn

Re: Billing location needed?

Dave Greenberg

Re: Billing location needed?

dalin

Re: Billing location needed?

Dave Greenberg

Re: Billing location needed?

TwoMice

Re: Billing location needed?

Donald Lobo

Re: Billing location needed?

TwoMice

Re: Billing location needed?

Dave Greenberg

Re: Billing location needed?

dalin

Re: Billing location needed?

joe murray

Re: Billing location needed?

Dave Greenberg

Re: Billing location needed?

joemcl

Re: Billing location needed?

Dave Greenberg

Re: Billing location needed?