+1 for this here. Also yes for some things that are in arrears (by necessity), the recurring invoice can have this already correct.
Previous and next month and whatnot can be great. But what about an annual service that we bill on December 31 that goes January 1 through the next December 31? The ‘current year’ will look like the previous year, by billing. We would have to note (manually) when revising it (each year) to make sure it has {{next_year}} or something on there. Or {{next_month_with_year}} or similar would also work.
We have a use case where we invoice two months in advance. In this specific case the client needs the invoice roughly 6 weeks ahead to get approvals and checks cut. Therefore using “{{next_month}}” does not work. I’m not sure how common this is. It would be ideal for this use case if we could use a syntax like {{current_month + n}} in a template where we update “n” for the particular customer.
This may be a fringe case, but I thought I’d throw the feedback out there.
Thanks for the feedback. It definitely isn’t a common flow. But now you have me curious, the customer(s) in question are having to get approval each month for your recurring services bill? Would it be possible to bill them 30 days in advance and just change their due dates for 6 weeks out?
Just curious to learn more about our flow in general.
The client needs to submit received invoices by the 20th of the month for net 30 payments. We invoice them around the 15th to get into that window. Approvals are required for invoices over a certain limit, which includes ours. The approval process can take a week or so which delays payment into the following month. So far we have not been granted an exception or waiver to the approval process. This is a relatively new client (less than one year), so we’re still monitoring the actual time to pay in this case. So far the two month in advance method is working for us, but it’s far from ideal.
Got it. Thanks for the detailed explanation. So two follow-up questions if I may. This is only for one customer in total then, right? The second is if you kept everything the same and just shifted them to net 60 does that resolve this for you or no?
I didn’t realize I failed to reply here. This scenario, or a very similar one, impacts only two of our clients. Both are in the government space with long tails on invoices. Changing their net wouldn’t make a difference as the issue is the billing period reflected on the invoice, not the payment or payment due dates. For now we’re relying on calendar reminders for us to manually enter the invoice each month with the correct period indicated.