Customer Account Information not populating in Checkout process

Question

Firstly, THANK YOU in advance for any help troubleshooting this -- I'm absolutely in the weeds.
I've taken over a Business Catalyst site that was dropped by a different designer/management company at an incomplete stage, so am admittedly trying to clean up somebody else's mess at this point.  Most of the kinks are worked out, save for one: Saving/retrieving customer information.
What's worked:
- Setting up a Secure Zone for customers to create a profile, log in and review order info
- Tying that login information to the checkout process so that customers can use that login information to proceed to the payment page with (some of) their informaiton already popuplated
What's not working:
- The retention and population of the Billing Address information.  It is not saving the Billing Address information from the original registration page, nor the Account Information page (wherein they can update their account details), and then (obviously) isn't populating it onto the checkout page form.  It is, however, keeping and populating the name, email, company name and phone number fields from those same forms.
On the Customer Registration page (step 1), the Billing Address fields are included in the form, like so:
<tr>
                        <td><label for="BillingAddress">Billing Address <span class="req">*</span></label><br />
                        <input type="text" name="BillingAddress" id="BillingAddress" class="cat_textbox" maxlength="500" value="{module_billingaddress}" /></td>
                    </tr>
                    <tr>
                        <td><label for="BillingCity">City <span class="req">*</span></label><br />
                        <input type="text" name="BillingCity" id="BillingCity" class="cat_textbox" maxlength="255" value="{module_billingcity}" /></td>
                    </tr>
                    <tr>
                        <td><label for="BillingState">State <span class="req">*</span></label><br />
                        <input type="text" name="BillingState" id="BillingState" class="cat_textbox" maxlength="255" value="{module_billingstate}" /></td>
                    </tr>
                    <tr>
                        <td><label for="BillingZip">Zipcode/Postcode <span class="req">*</span></label><br />
                        <input type="text" name="BillingZip" id="BillingZip" class="cat_textbox" maxlength="255" value="{module_billingzip}" /></td>
                    </tr>
However, when you go to review your account details on the Account Settings page after creating your customer profile, these fields remain blank.  An attempt to give them values and then submit the updates also returns null values on the updated page.  Following is that section of code from the Account Settings page:
<tr>
                        <td><label for="BillingAddress">Billing Address <span class="req">*</span></label><br />
                        <input type="text" name="BillingAddress" id="BillingAddress" class="cat_textbox" maxlength="500" value="{module_billingaddress}" /></td>
                    </tr>
                    <tr>
                        <td><label for="BillingCity">City <span class="req">*</span></label><br />
                        <input type="text" name="BillingCity" id="BillingCity" class="cat_textbox" maxlength="255" value="{module_billingcity}" /></td>
                    </tr>
                    <tr>
                        <td><label for="BillingState">State <span class="req">*</span></label><br />
                        <input type="text" name="BillingState" id="BillingState" class="cat_textbox" maxlength="255" value="{module_billingstate}" /></td>
                    </tr>
                    <tr>
                        <td><label for="BillingZip">Zipcode/Postcode <span class="req">*</span></label><br />
                        <input type="text" name="BillingZip" id="BillingZip" class="cat_textbox" maxlength="255" value="{module_billingzip}" /></td>
                    </tr>
Then of course comes the page to checkout, from the Module Templates > Registration - Buy section, which includes this nugget of code to capture/display the billing information:
<div class="item"><label>Billing Address</label><br />
    <input type="text" name="BillingAddress" id="BillingAddress" class="cat_textbox" maxlength="500" value="{module_billingaddress}" /> </div>
    <div class="item"><label>City</label><br />
    <input type="text" name="BillingCity" maxlength="255" id="BillingCity" class="cat_textbox" value="{module_billingcity}" /> </div>
    <div class="item"><label>State</label><br />
    <input type="text" name="BillingState" maxlength="255" id="BillingState" class="cat_textbox" value="{module_billingstate}" /> </div>
    <div class="item"><label>Zipcode/Postcode</label><br />
    <input type="text" name="BillingZip" maxlength="255" id="BillingZip" class="cat_textbox" value="{module_billingzip}" /> </div>
    <div class="item"><label>Country</label><br />
... I feel like I must be missing something obvious here, but can't for the life of me figure out why this information isn't being saved/updated/displayed.  Help!                   

Answer 1

I have exactly the same issue. I think the problem is that the registration and edit account forms are not set up on the back-end to parse the billing or shipping information. Only the Checkout/Quote forms are.
*Edit - It would appear that ONLY the "Registration - Buy" form parses this data on the back-end. The "Registration - Quote" form does not.
My solution for now is to not have the customer enter billing and shipping details on registration, nor be able to edit it in the account section. Instead, I display the information and put a note to the customer saying that any billing and shipping address changes can be accomplished upon the next checkout.
Frustrating, as in my view, a customer should be able to edit those as necessary, and provide them up front if desired. In my situation, which is strictly a business to business ecommerce site, a customer can only see prices and add items to the cart once they are logged in, and in order to be allowed to log in, they have to be vetted by the company. However if the customer could provide billing and shipping info up front in the registration process, it would save my client some time by not having to enter those details separately for the customer in the CRM, in cases where the customer buys things on account instead of by credit card.
*Edit - actually, having those fields on the registration form will show up in the email auto-response to the customer and in the workflow notifaction to the client role responsible. My client could still see the information, reducing some work, but now the customer could be frustrated, knowing they entered those values, only to not see them show up in their account nor be allowed to edit them once they're added.
*Further edit - Even though I can manually enter the Billing Address in the CRM for the customer (can't manually add a shipping address), those values don't show up anywhere I've asked for {module_billing*}. So they can only be properly captured upon first or subsequent check-out. Then they will show up.
Mario's instructions for pre-populating the checkout form values are correct. Those {module_billing*}'s do exist and work if the data is in the CRM for the customer, as Liam said in post 7 here. I have it implemented in my checkout forms. Unfortunately the {module_billingdetails} (from Liam's link to the Module Quick Reference) does not do anything at all, and the {module_shippingaddress} cited there only grabs the street name and number.
Using the {module_home*} may work, but really, that's a kludge. As a developer you have to remember what is what, and a client, managing customers on a day to day basis (especially in my situation where it's only B2B), has to remember that Home Address in the CRM is actually Billing Address. But the Billing Address, I would assume, has to be captured anyway in the checkout for the system to work properly on the back-end. So there's potential for Home Address to get mixed up with Billing Address in the client's mind, and Billing Address, if entered into the CRM manually to get overridden by something else upon checkout. Then there might be a situation where the customer needs to enter a Home Address, but is a contractor working from home and needs the Billing Address to be the company they contract to because they use the company credit card or something. Really, just a kludge.