Re: Printing Renewals

Josh Hillman ( (no email) )
Mon, 14 Apr 1997 17:57:30 -0400

> Dale,
> I have a problem printing Renewal invoices from the Batch tab.
>
> It's not an ODBC problem, I can pull them up individually and print them
> just fine.
>
> When I batch create a set of invoices, I put in the date, select Renewal
> and hit Create. It creates the Invoices just fine. I then hit Print and
the
> ODBC print dialog comes up with 1 blank invoice, for nobody. It then asks
> if I want to mark all these invoices as sent.

I had something like this happen every once in a while too. It turned out
to be a result of running a batch renewal-invoice with one of the accounts
having a servicetype with "improper" characters contained in the name of
that service type. For example, 20 invoices need to be created, and the
4th one in includes a ServiceType of "PPP#3" (or something along those
lines with a strange character in the name or description). The unusual
character caused the batch process to choke and produce blank invoices.
Some invoices had names, other ones had no information. The first few
would be completely normal because they were created before the problem
popped up with that one particular service.

After spending quite a few hours trying to figure out the root of all of
this, I went in Emerald Admin / Config Database and sifted through anything
I could think of that would be related to invoice creation. If I found any
unusual characters (#$%&, etc.) in an AccountType or Description, I removed
them. Apparently that's what fixed the root of the problem.

I also had to delete the messed up invoices (I don't think that VOIDing
them out always worked) and afterwards, rebatched the invoices and
everything was back to normal--for the most part. What was strange was I
had to do this 2 or three times (run the batch and check each invoice)
before all invoices came out normal.

I still don't know the character limitations in the names and descriptions
for account types, discounts, etc., but I've been keeping them relatively
simple to say the least!

Hope it helps...

Josh Hillman
hillman@talstar.com