Billing with e-Bills HOWTO

Mark Asplen-Taylor mark@asplen.co.uk

1. Preamble

• 1.1 Documentation copyright
• 1.2 Application licence
• 1.3 Feedback
• 1.4 Dedication

2. Introduction

• 2.1 What does e-Bills do?
• 2.2 What does it use?
• 2.3 What are its key features?
• 2.4 Components
• 2.5 New features

3. Installing e-Bills

• 3.1 Prerequisites
• 3.2 Downloading the latest version
• 3.3 Upgrading from previous versions
• 3.4 Create the user accounts
• 3.5 Unpacking the software
• 3.6 Configuring Apache
• 3.7 Configuring PHP
• 3.8 Configuring the database
• 3.9 Configuring LaTeX
• 3.10 Configuring the Billing Engine
• 3.11 Configuring for HTML format bills and letters

4. Configuration.

• 4.1 Configuring e-Bills: about your organisation
• 4.2 Configuring e-Bills: create a test customer & contract with charges
• 4.3 Configuring e-Bills: creating a bill
• 4.4 Configuring e-Bills: your own product codes/database
• 4.5 Configuring e-Bills: your own billing template
• 4.6 Changing the default email templates
• 4.7 Testing
• 4.8 ... and finally

5. Operation of e-Bills

• 5.1 The menu
• 5.2 Usage overview
• 5.3 Short cuts: the 'Last' button
• 5.4 User Help
• 5.5 Customer menu
• 5.6 Contract menu
• 5.7 Charges menu
• 5.8 Products menu
• 5.8 Workflow menu NEW
• 5.10 Billing menu
• 5.11 User menu
• 5.12 Help menu
• 5.13 Logout menu
• 5.14 Configure menu (super-user only)

6. Problem solving

7. Advanced configuration topics

• 7.1 Changing _configure.inc
• 7.2 Using customer references in your style
• 7.3 Using contract references in your style
• 7.4 Creating your own billing template
• 7.5 Configuring the email format sent with bills
• 7.6 Using the Billing Engine
• 7.7 Configuring the Billing Engine
• 7.8 Running multiple instances of e-Bills
• 7.9 Adding a logo into your bills
• 7.10 Linking to e-Bills from your intranet
• 7.11 Running the billing engine as a cron job
• 7.12 Configuring the email format used with work items

8. Questions and Answers

• 8.1 Why was e-Bills developed?
• 8.2 How long did it take to develop?
• 8.3 Where will the product go from here?
• 8.4 Why is the web-side source licenced under the GPL?
• 8.5 Why isn't the Billing Engine under the GPL?
• 8.6 How can e-Bills collect metered or usage data from customers?
• 8.7 What other applications are needed to run e-Bills
• 8.8 Do I have to use LaTeX?
• 8.9 Do I have to use MySQL?
• 8.10 How many customers can I use with e-Bills?
• 8.11 How fast is the Billing Engine?
• 8.12 How is user access controlled?
• 8.13 Which web-browsers work with e-Bills?
• 8.14 How does the charge logic work?
• 8.15 Why do you support non-integer quantities for charges?
• 8.16 I get an error when selecting a billing template?

9.References