Products, Services, Orders & Invoices¶

Updated 7 November 2026

These four objects are the heart of PNLCS. Understanding how they relate is the single most useful thing you can learn.

Product — what you sell¶

A product is an entry on your price list. It defines:

A name, group (category) and product type (Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, VPS/Dedicated, SSL Certificate, Other)
Which server module it provisions with (or None, when nothing is created on a server), and optionally a server group to keep it to certain servers. A product picks a module, not a single server; see Servers & Modules.
Auto Setup — when the account is created: As soon as the first payment is received, As soon as the order is placed, or Only when an admin accepts the order
A payment type (Recurring, One Time or Free) and pricing per currency and billing cycle (monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually, biennially, triennially; -1 turns a cycle off). A Free product with no cycle priced is sold monthly at no charge, and is never invoiced again
Whether customers may move to another package (Customers can move to another package, on by default) and which ones (Upgrade packages; none ticked allows any package of the same module)
Optional configurable options, add-ons, a free domain (the first year of a domain registered or transferred with it, for the extensions and cycles you choose), welcome email, and stock limits

A product is a template. Nothing is billed or provisioned until a customer actually orders it.

Order — the act of buying¶

When a customer checks out, PNLCS creates an order. The order:

Records who bought, what, and at what price
Generates an invoice for the total (an order that totals zero, such as a free product, is marked paid at once; a cart of free products only is not asked for a payment method)
Creates a pending service for each product and a pending domain for each domain registration or transfer (a domain ordered with hosting is its own line in the cart)

Order statuses:

Status	Meaning
Pending	Placed, waiting to be accepted: usually waiting for payment, or paid and waiting for you because a product is set to Only when an admin accepts the order
Active	Accepted — services have been activated/provisioned
Cancelled	Called off; its services are cancelled (accounts on a server are terminated) and an unpaid invoice is cancelled
Fraud	Flagged as fraudulent, by you or by fraud screening; its active services are suspended and an unpaid invoice is cancelled

A cancelled or fraud order can be put back with Set back to Pending on the order's page: its cancelled invoice is reopened (what was paid on it is owed again), and services that the fraud verdict suspended are switched back on.

Invoice — the bill¶

An invoice is generated for the order and later for each renewal. It carries line items, tax, credit applied and a status:

Status	Meaning
Draft	Not issued yet. Only the API creates drafts (createinvoice with `status=draft`). The customer does not see it, no email is sent and no credit is applied until it is published (`updateinvoice` with `status=unpaid`); reminders and automatic payment skip it
Unpaid	Awaiting payment
Partially Paid	Some money received, a balance remains
Payment Pending	A customer reported an offline (bank transfer) payment, awaiting your approval (the Awaiting approval tab on the invoice list)
Paid	Settled in full
Overdue	Past its due date and not fully paid; the daily run marks unpaid and partially paid invoices overdue the day after their due date
Collections	Set only by hand (through the API); PNLCS never sets it. Still counts as owed, but gets no reminders and is never charged automatically
Cancelled	Voided; anything already paid on it goes back to the client's credit
Refunded	Everything paid on it was returned (a partial refund puts it back to Partially Paid)

Tax on an invoice follows Setup → Tax Rules: Charge tax off adds no tax at all (the rules are kept), and Prices include tax makes the price shown what the customer pays, with the tax worked out of it instead of added on top. Each invoice keeps the mode it was issued with.

Paying an invoice is the trigger for almost everything: it accepts the order, activates and provisions the service (unless its product waits for an admin), credits affiliates, and sends the welcome email. Paying a renewal invoice moves the service's next due date on by one billing cycle.

Service — what the customer owns¶

Once an order is accepted, each hosting item becomes an active service — the live account. A service has:

Its own status: Pending, Active, Suspended, Terminated, Cancelled (ended at the customer's request), Fraud or Completed (the last two are only set by you)
Its own billing cycle and next due date
A link to the server it lives on and the username on that server

The Manage Status buttons on a service's admin page change the status in PNLCS only; the account on the server is suspended or terminated with Module Actions. Deleting a service, or marking it Terminated or Cancelled, while its account is still on the server asks first: Terminate on the server and delete (the default), or keep the account and close the record only. If the server refuses, nothing is changed.

Customers who own an active service of a product also get that product's downloads, if you have kept a download to owners of certain products (Only for owners of on the download).

The service is what renews. As the next due date approaches, PNLCS generates a renewal invoice (14 days before the due date by default; change it with Raise renewal invoices under Setup → General Settings → Invoicing); if it goes unpaid past your grace period, the service is suspended, and, if you have turned automatic termination on, eventually terminated.

How they flow together¶

Product (your price list)
   │  customer orders
   ▼
Order (Pending) ──creates──▶ Invoice (Unpaid)
                                  │  customer pays
                                  ▼
Order (Active) ──activates──▶ Service (Active) ──provisioned on──▶ Server
                                  │
                                  │  each billing cycle
                                  ▼
                             Renewal Invoice ──unpaid too long──▶ Suspend ──▶ Terminate (if turned on)

Domains¶

A domain is billed and renewed like a service, but it has its own statuses. The nightly domain sync moves a domain past its expiry date through the grace and redemption periods set for its extension:

Status	Meaning
Pending	Ordered, not registered or transferred yet
Active	Registered and current
Grace Period	Past expiry, within the extension's grace period; it still renews at the normal price
Redemption	Past the grace period, within the redemption period; it can be restored for the extension's restore price
Expired	Past both periods
Cancelled	Called off, for example with its order
Fraud	Set only by you
Transferred Away	Moved to another registrar

A customer can give a domain to another customer account: Give to another account on the domain's page, with that account's email address. The other account has 7 days to accept or decline, and nothing moves until it accepts. A domain with an unpaid invoice cannot be offered. Nothing changes at the registry; the new owner updates the WHOIS contact if needed.

Common questions¶

Why do I have both an "order" and a "service"? The order is the one-time purchase event. The service is the ongoing product the customer owns, which keeps billing long after the order is history.

Why is my service "Pending" and not "Active"? The order hasn't been accepted yet — usually because the invoice is still unpaid, or the product's Auto Setup is Only when an admin accepts the order — or the server refused to create the account and the attempt is waiting to be retried. See The Billing Lifecycle.

A customer paid but nothing was provisioned. Check the product has a Server Module assigned, that a server of that type exists (in its server group, if it has one), and that Auto Setup is As soon as the first payment is received. See Provisioning failed.