one main company, multiple websites with whmcs??

[amnesia]

Can anyone suggest the best way to run multiple websites with one install of whmcs?

Example:
Have a site called secureclientarea.com and make that where whmcs is installed.. then direct all sites to that support/order area?

What about merchant accounts? What should the business name on my PP account be? I would think something that is not related to all sites but will not cause confusion to clients.

Does anyone else currently run multiple hosting sites? Can anyone offer any advise?

[aushosts]

You can tag ?systemtemplate=default onto the PHP URLs to show different templates.

However I think with the cost of licenses only $324.95 each this is a small price to pay for your business. What happens if you ever want to sell one of the websites clients off? Stop trying to be cheap and get 2 x licenses.

[amnesia]

I was trying to avoid having 10, 20 different whmcs admin panels and support centers to login to...

ok, but what about the paypal account?

I believe you can only have one business name on your paypal account. How do I go about having everyone pay the same paypal account when the business name is different than the name of the hosting company?

If I remember right, you are only allowed to open one paypal account in your name.

Any ideas on that?

[aushosts]

I was trying to avoid having 10, 20 different whmcs admin panels and support centers to login to...
Umm - somethings up there. Why 10 or 20 hosting companies? Why not just 1 or 2?


ok, but what about the paypal account?
Make it a general name like "Some Holding Company Inc." or something like that and have it on your invoices or somewhere so if a customer googles a transaction on their bank statement it will come up with your website :)

We get a few google hits for "Aushosts P/L" which is what appears on our customers credit card statements if they buy domains at www.aussiedomainnames.com.au, and this works well for our second retail website.

[amnesia]

Umm - somethings up there. Why 10 or 20 hosting companies? Why not just 1 or 2?


Sorry, exaggeration. would be more like 3 - still it makes the process a pain. but I guess it would work.



Make it a general name like "Some Holding Company Inc." or something like that and have it on your invoices or somewhere so if a customer googles a transaction on their bank statement it will come up with your website :)


This is an idea I could go with. thanks for your advise. Im open to any other suggestions as well :)

[aushosts]

Sorry, exaggeration. would be more like 3 - still it makes the process a pain. but I guess it would work.

Our group of companies has 4 WHMCS installs and we don't find it that much of a problem.

[Keksi]

I'm actually after the same. We have two "sub-companies" selling two completely different things.
The only thing they have in common is cPanel, the WHMCS portal and invoices.

What i need is the ability to install three WHMCS installations. I have no problem paying for them, so thats not the case. But they need to share the user, server, invoice and support database, but also work seamless with all three sites. Portal.com, Company1.com and Company2.com.

Any ideas?

[Payton Designs]

This process is simple the only downside is that the Paypal account and invoice logo / name etc will be the same for all of the companies.

Simply upload two more additional template folders to the /templates directory. Name each one after the company it will correspond to. Integrate each template with its corresponding design.

Use the URL below at the end of all your WHMCS links and replace default with the template you need to render. If the URL already has a '?' in it, replace the systemplate with '&'
'?systemtemplate=default '

Hope this helps!

[disgruntled]

Simple is the solution!!

Write some base backend coding for your off installation websites to use the API of your WHMCS installation.

Configure WHMCS to only accept API access for your off installation servers.
Configure your FIREWALL to permit access to and from said IP addresses on correct ports
Configure WHMCS to manage each of these external servers just as you would for any other server

simple simon says WHMCS will do the grunt work from a single installation in this manner.


The not so simple part is you will have to impliment seperate designs at each OFF installation location that do not hook into WHMCS to allow full branding, you will also have to create external gateway scripting seperately and use whmcs only for provisioning.

That said if you are running several companies you should be minted to pay a development team to do what you need

[datawebcorp]

I realize I am late to this conversation, but...

I have one corporation and 3 or 4 d/b/a's. Each d/b/a has it's own site, logo, product offering, etc.

I disagree w/the suggestion of having multiple installs. We tried that method and we found ourselves having to update/patch multiple installs, create knowledge-base articles for multiple installs, monitoring multiple support tickets queues, multiple card processors, etc. Too much duplicate work. We have begun merging the systems into one.

We started-off by creating a branded template for each d/b/a. Then, from each d/b/a's website we simply created links to the support portal and set the URL so it called that d/b/a's template.

Then we announced to our clients what were doing. The only change they see is the name on their credit card statement (again, we warned them of this so there were no surprises.) and also that system-generated emails now come from the "parent" company domain.

For new clients we do not try to keep it a secret that "Company B is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Company A". We even revied our logos to mention the parent company.

On the server side (we use cpanel on Linux) we created a cpanel theme for each DBA. Then we created a reseller account on cPanel for each d/b/a. Then on WHMCS we created one server entry for each d/b/a using that d/b/a's cpanel login credentials. You can associate a server w/a product in WHMCS, so now when someone buys a particular service, it is branded on both the WHMCS and the CPANEL side.

You can also have a unique product email template for each product. Instead of using the standard WHMCS global logo feature, we embed the d/b/a's logo directly into the email template.

All is working well so far. Now we have only one install of WHMCS to maintain, one set of reports to look at, etc.

-Brian

[dewlance.com]

Its not good for you to use One WHMCS on your all sites,

For Example: If your clients check your domain license in WHMCS license verify then WHMCS show "Unauthorized license" :))) and then you lose your client "TRUST"

[datawebcorp]

No one is suggesting using multiple, unauthorized installations. My suggestion is to use one, licensed, install for multiple companies.

[Bora]

I would assume that you can actually change the logo that is sent too in templates (for invoices etc.) just use the IF blocks and check for the product name or ID and print a different logo for each? wouldn't that work?

[eebit]

datawebcorp, thanks for the explanation. Its comforting to know people are doing this with success.

The only thing stopping me at the moment is the need for different domain pricing on each sub-company/division.

Does anyone know how I could get around this? (without having to use promo codes)

[datawebcorp]

I would assume that you can actually change the logo that is sent too in templates (for invoices etc.) just use the IF blocks and check for the product name or ID and print a different logo for each? wouldn't that work?

I just set this up and it works great.

I created a Custom Account Field called "industry", and then created a pull-down list containing 3 or 4 specific industries I serve. So now when an email is created, it runs this script:

{if $client_custom_fields.0 eq "Veterinary"}
<img style="float: left;" src="http://dataweb.pro/images/vws_logo.gif" alt="" />
{/if}
{if $client_custom_fields.0 eq "Hospitality"}
<img style="float: left;" src="http://dataweb.pro/images/rb_logo.gif" alt="" />
{/if}
{if $client_custom_fields.0 eq "Fire-EMS"}
<img style="float: left;" src="http://dataweb.pro/images/fems_logo.gif" alt="" />
{/if}
{if $client_custom_fields.0 eq "Other"}
<img style="float: left;" src="http://dataweb.pro/images/other_logo.gif" alt="" />
{/if}

I wasn't sure how I could implement more then two option using the {else} condition, so I skipped using it. The above script works flawlessly for me.

[goinongp]

I just set this up and it works great.

I created a Custom Account Field called "industry", and then created a pull-down list containing 3 or 4 specific industries I serve. So now when an email is created, it runs this script:

{if $client_custom_fields.0 eq "Veterinary"}
<img style="float: left;" src="http://dataweb.pro/images/vws_logo.gif" alt="" />
{/if}
{if $client_custom_fields.0 eq "Hospitality"}
<img style="float: left;" src="http://dataweb.pro/images/rb_logo.gif" alt="" />
{/if}
{if $client_custom_fields.0 eq "Fire-EMS"}
<img style="float: left;" src="http://dataweb.pro/images/fems_logo.gif" alt="" />
{/if}
{if $client_custom_fields.0 eq "Other"}
<img style="float: left;" src="http://dataweb.pro/images/other_logo.gif" alt="" />
{/if}

I wasn't sure how I could implement more then two option using the {else} condition, so I skipped using it. The above script works flawlessly for me.

HI Brian,

Have read what you have posted here and hope that you may be able to help me. Although I would sincerely love to do EXACTLY what you have done with your sites, I am not sure that my programming skills are up to the task, so instead I am looking to see if you (or anyone else) are able to help me... I want customers redirected to a (package) specific page after checkout.

I am hosting a site on another URL that links back to my WHMCS installation for the processing of each particular package, so that part is pretty straight forward, it is the thank you page where I get into strife... any ideas?

Thank you in advance

[disgruntled]

{if $client_custom_fields.0 eq "Veterinary"}
<img style="float: left;" src="http://dataweb.pro/images/vws_logo.gif" alt="" />

{elseif $client_custom_fields.0 eq "Hospitality"}
<img style="float: left;" src="http://dataweb.pro/images/rb_logo.gif" alt="" />

{elseif $client_custom_fields.0 eq "Fire-EMS"}
<img style="float: left;" src="http://dataweb.pro/images/fems_logo.gif" alt="" />

{elseif $client_custom_fields.0 eq "Other"}
<img style="float: left;" src="http://dataweb.pro/images/other_logo.gif" alt="" />

{/if}

think that will do what you were after :)

pretty much all php stuff can be done in the if / elseif blocks but its good practice where ever possible to entirely seperate your php from your smarty. it is what smarty is for after all :)

[artetatu]

hope i can use it for 2 reseller

[thunderbolt]

Very late to this thread, but I wanted to let people know that you can have more than one PayPal account as long as the businesses have completely separate DBA's and separate bank accounts. You cannot have the same business name or bank account attached to more than one PayPal account, but as long as you legally treat them separately PayPal doesn't care. We have spoke to them directly about this on the phone, and they were more than happy to let us have another account so we could bill under another business name as long as we could show the separate DBA's on our business license and had separate bank accounts to go with them.

Regards,
Ron

[njjacob]

I have one main company, but two smaller companies and two WHMCS one for each. I separate the hosting company and the design company right now. THinking about this too. But I dont want the other clients to know there one. So right now there separate. I did however just add the WHM info to both WHMCS and I can work with either site and control the WHM

[txkhomes]

get a generic domain servicecenter.com
service center is your portal / billing company / support portal for all companies invloved

[disgruntled]

To be honest i dont see why anybody would be bothered that both companies are under the same umbrella so to speak, if anything it shows that you run a growing and diverse business that can meet all of their needs. thats a win in my book.

The only reason i can see for anybody to want to hide this fact is to fool their customer, i wouldnt see this as a good company if i were ever to find out about it. infact i would very likely leave such a company and the earliest convenience and most certainly before i ever paid them another penny.

Trust is hard to obtain, and very easy to lose, just be upfront and proud of your growth

[webjive]

Guys, I have put in a feature request at http://requests.whmcs.com/responses/multi-company-support for this feature. Please vote it up if you want multiple identities for WHMCS. I do!

[easyhosting]

you can have more than one PayPal account as long as the businesses have completely separate DBA's and separate bank accounts.

Unoffically yes you can but Offically you cant. Of paypal find out they can close all your accounts.

Paypal will allow any 1 person to have 1 business or 1 premium account and 1 personal account, regardless to how many bank accounts or business names you have as they go off the user (YOU) and not business names.

I know as I have tried.

we have 3 businesses running from our single WHMCS install. Our Paypal account is under our Group name which will show on invoices/bank statements all clients are aware of this they are also aware all orders are processed through our main business brand.

[bear]

I'd asked various Paypal support people a while back, and each one said something different. I got the impression they don't know the correct info either, for the most part. The docs seem to say one business account (once you find it; when I looked it was buried), so that's what I'd go with.

[brianr]

I can say PayPal will allow you to have multiple business accounts, at least in the US. I have my own business account, and I was the treasurer of a local kids baseball league. When I opened the 2nd account it would not accept my SSN because I already had an account. I had to call in to PayPal and FAX a copy of our IRS EIN letter, but since then it's been just fine. (Well, at least as fine as PayPal ever is.)

[thunderbolt]

easyhosting,

PayPal knows so it is officially supported. I was on the phone with them while the second account was set up by them, and they knew we already had another business account (and that I also had a personal account). I just told them I needed a second account for a second DBA, and they had no problem with it as long as I had a separate checking account and credit card to attach to it, and the official business licensing to support operating under the additional DBA name. Make sure your DBA name shows on your bank statement as this is important to them.

Our main company EIN is in both PayPal accounts for tax reporting purposes and my name is the contact name on both accounts (3 including my personal account) so there is nothing secret about it, and we've had both business accounts for well over a year now. It was a manager that set up the second account for me when we needed it so it is "officially" supported contrary to your statement. While you may have tried and failed, I have done it through official PayPal channels and succeeded so I also know what I'm saying.

We officially have two business PayPal accounts, and PayPal is perfectly aware of this fact.

All I can tell you it is possible with the correct business licensing documents, and a separate bank account for each PayPal account. PayPal's only real restrictions are you cannot have the same email address, bank account, or credit card attached to more than one PayPal account.

If you get mixed answers get to a manager instead of the first line support people.

Added thought: I noticed you're in the UK. Maybe it has to do with your business licensing documentation not showing the separate DBA clearly enough. I don't know what UK licensing docs look like, but that's all I can think of being different. Our business licensing explicitly lists every name our business operates under, and PayPal said they will treat each as a separate business entity if we wish for the purposes of having multiple PayPal accounts.

[easyhosting]

Added thought: I noticed you're in the UK. Maybe it has to do with your business licensing documentation not showing the separate DBA clearly enough. I don't know what UK licensing docs look like, but that's all I can think of being different. Our business licensing explicitly lists every name our business operates under, and PayPal said they will treat each as a separate business entity if we wish for the purposes of having multiple PayPal accounts.

In the UK their is no thing as DBAs. To run a business all you need is a business plan and to inform the Inland revenue and of course a business bank account. when you reach a certain threshold (77K) you then have to become VAT registered. apart from that no other official documents are needed

[Dean - ITDept.net]

In the UK their is no thing as DBAs. To run a business all you need is a business plan and to inform the Inland revenue and of course a business bank account. when you reach a certain threshold (77K) you then have to become VAT registered. apart from that no other official documents are needed

DBAs are not always required in the US either (actually its a state matter but all states use them). You don't need a DBA if the business name is he same as your personal name or the business name is the same as the corporation name. For example if your business name is Maggie Thatcher & Associates, and your name is Maggie Thatcher you don't need a DBA.

I am curious: how do you open a business bank account in England without any business papers? How does IRD know to tax you if there is no paper to link your business to your person?

[easyhosting]

I am curious: how do you open a business bank account in England without any business papers? How does IRD know to tax you if there is no paper to link your business to your person?

As a sole trader you can just open a business bank account like any other bank account in the UK (or you could when i set mine up in 1999) you then i to contact the HMRC and register for a business class National Insurance stamp rate and then yoiu have upto 3 months to register for business tax purposes because a sole trader is just you so your business would be Maggie Thatcher T/A Maggie Thatcher & Associates.
I think the process is different if you set up as a partnership or limited company.

[webjive]

Hey guys/gals, new addon that allows you to customize all outbound communications for client groups!! It has allowed us to appear as multiple brands/companies from our single WHMCS installation.

http://forum.whmcs.com/showthread.php?67627-addon-In-Touch