The cron job

The line to add#

Add a cron job in your hosting control panel that runs every five minutes:

*/5 * * * * php -q /home/USER/public_html/cron.php

Use the full path to cron.php on your account; the installer's last page and Utilities > Automation Status show the exact line. To see what runs when you try it by hand, add -v:

php -q /home/USER/public_html/cron.php -v

If the command-line PHP on your server is older than 8.1, use the full path to a newer PHP binary, such as /usr/local/bin/php83 or /opt/cpanel/ea-php83/root/usr/bin/php; your control panel's PHP settings show it.

Web cron#

If your host offers only web cron (an address fetched on a schedule), use the cron address instead:

https://billing.example.com/cron.php?key=CRONKEY

The key is made at installation and shown under Utilities > Automation Status. Keep the address private; without the right key the page answers "Forbidden". Both ways do the same work.

The daily run#

Daily tasks run once a day at the hour set under Settings > Automation Settings, Schedule tab, "Hour of the daily run", in your company's time zone. They create invoices, send reminders, add late fees, suspend and terminate, sync domains, update exchange rates, back up the database and remove old data. Other tasks run every few minutes or hours: the email queue, ticket mailboxes, pending module actions, quiet live chats and add-on modules' background work.

Checking that it runs#

• The dashboard warns when the daily run has not happened for 26 hours.
• Utilities > Automation Status warns when the last cron run was more than two hours ago, and lists each task with its last run and result.
• A task can be run by hand from the same page.

When the cron does not run#

1. Run the command by hand over SSH with -v and read the output.
2. Check the path to cron.php and the PHP version of the command-line PHP.
3. Check that the cron job's user can read the files and write to storage/.
4. Look in storage/logs/error-YYYY-MM.log for PHP errors.