Recurring Invoices are used to generate Invoices automatically and send them to the Customer, and there are a couple of ways to create recurring invoices.
Recurring invoices run at 6:00 AM local time. Note: On peak days (the first of the month, for instance) they can take a couple of hours to finish.
What it Does
- Automatically creates scheduled Invoices.
- Sends invoices automatically to the customer when generated if you want.
- If using an integrated Payment Gateway and a Saved CC, can have the invoice automatically charge the customer.
- Associates to a Contract and have a ticket generate to remind you of the Contract expiring.
- Automatically clears PrePaid Hours so they do not stack up month to month.
- Can charge based on the Assets a customer has.
What it Doesn't Do
- You cannot send a Recurring Invoice before it is generated.
Table of Contents
- Access Recurring Invoices
- Add a New Recurring Invoice
- Convert Invoice into Recurring Invoice
- Duplicate (clone) an Invoice
- Recurring Invoice Fields and Settings
- Add Recurring Line Items
- Items Added to Invoice
- Change History
- Invoice History
- Identifying Recurring Invoices
Access Recurring Invoices
There are two ways to get there.
The first is, navigate to the Invoices tab. Then in the upper right, click Invoice Modules > Recurring Invoices.
The second is, navigate to Admin > Invoices - Recurring Invoices.
Once you are here, you have a few options.
- Search for a recurring invoice by its template name, invoice name, or customer name. You can enter a partial name and it will find all invoices that match your string.
- Select one or more invoices (check the boxes by them), then click Bulk Actions to modify one or more fields in the selected invoices.
- Select one or more invoices (check the boxes by them), then click Bulk Run to immediately generate the selected recurring invoices, and then advance the billing date to the next billing cycle.
- Create a new recurring invoice.
- Click a template name to edit that invoice.
- Click the three dots to edit, duplicate, or delete the invoice.
Add a New Recurring Invoice
To create a new Recurring Invoice, on the Scheduled Invoices screen (pictured above), in the upper right click New Schedule. Then search the for the customer/business you want to create the invoice template for and click Proceed.
Click Proceed and you will be taken to the New Recurring Invoice screen where all the fun is.
Another way to create a recurring invoice is, when on a Customer's detail screen, in the upper right, click New > Recurring Invoice.
See Recurring Invoice Fields and Settings for a description of all the fields to fill out.
Convert Invoice into Recurring Invoice
- Navigate to the Invoices tab.
- Edit an existing invoice or create a new one.
- Add any desired labor and/or inventory to the invoice.
- In the upper right, click Actions > Make Recurring.
- The Name of Invoices that are generated will be carried over from the original invoice if it had a name. Feel free to change it.
- Select the Frequency—how often the recurring invoice will be generated.
- Change the Start At date if desired.
- Change any other settings as desired.
- Click Create Schedule.
- This will then be added to your list of Recurring Invoices.
Duplicate (clone) an Invoice
To clone an existing recurring template,
- On the Scheduled Invoices screen, to the right of the recurring invoice, click the three dots and select Duplicate.
- Select the customer for whom you want the invoice duplicated and click Proceed.
- All of the line items, communication settings, and scheduling settings will be carried over to the new invoice automatically. You can update any settings, change the invoice name, etc.
- If Add any pending Ticket charges is enabled, any selected Ticket Statuses will be included in the clone.
- When finished, click Create Schedule.
- The newly duplicated invoice will now be saved with the same settings as the original invoice.
Recurring Invoice Fields and Settings
When you add a new recurring invoice or edit an existing one, here are all the settings to edit. Required fields are preceded by an asterisk (*).
Recurring Schedule section
Template Name: Name of the actual recurring invoice template. This is usually the name of the business, but feel free to use whatever convention you want.
Frequency: Select how often the invoice generates.
Run Next At: The next generation date for the invoice.
Period mode: There are four options here:
- In Arrears — Billing period ENDS on the day OF invoice creation. You are collecting for past work that was already completed. For example, a billing period that is "the last 30 days."
- In Arrears Exclusive — Billing period ENDS on the day BEFORE invoice creation.
- In Advance — Billing period STARTS the day AFTER invoice creation. You are collecting for work to be done in the future. For example, a billing period that is "the next 30 days."
- In Advance Inclusive — Billing period STARTS ON the day of invoice creation.
Last day of the calendar month: Have the invoice generate on the final day of the calendar month.
Invoice section
Name of Invoices that are generated: This is used to assign a name to all invoices that will be generated from the template.
The tag {{invoice_name}} can be inserted into the Invoice Template so that the name is visible on your Invoice PDFs.
The Invoice Name can also be optionally enabled in the Customer Portal. To enable that, head to Admin > Customers - Preferences > Additional Settings > enable Show Invoice Name in Customer Portal > Save.
Employee (for commission): Select from your techs to give them Commission credit, if any, for the invoice. Also includes them on the Employee Sales and Commission report.
Invoice Billing Terms: If you are using Billing Terms (hopefully you are) you can select them here. When you select one, it will cause the Charge card on the Invoice's due date rather than on its creation date setting to appear below the Auto charge credit card on file setting.
Invoice Memo: Any notes you want to include. Add the {{invoice_message}} tag to the Invoice Template to include this memo.
Allow generation of blank invoices: Allows you to have the Recurring Template generate even if there are no line items. The default behavior will be to not generate invoices if there are no line items (can also be updated in bulk edit settings).
You can also bulk edit this setting on a bunch of invoices on the Scheduled Invoices page.
Email customer the PDF: This will automatically email the customer when the invoice is generated.
Email customer payment receipts: If Email customer the PDF is enabled, you can enable this setting to include with the invoice email the Paid Invoice PDF receipt.
Mail Physical Invoice (costs money): This will email a physical invoice to the customer upon invoice generation. Make sure the customer has a valid physical address and that you have purchased stamp credits first.
Add any pending Ticket charges: This will gather any pending charges on a ticket and collect them on a single invoice for you.
Ticket Status: When Add any pending Ticket charges is enabled, by default, all ticket statuses will be included in the pending ticket charges. Here you can select only those Ticket Statuses you want to be included in the generated invoice.
Sort Pending Charges By: Lets you sort those pending charges as desired.
Clear/reset Prepay Hours (before this runs): This resets any leftover Prepaid Hours so they do not roll over.
Keep prices in sync with products if they change: This will make the template automatically update product prices upon invoice creation.
Pause this recurring Invoice: This will pause the Recurring Invoice from generating until you disable it again.
Billing section
Automatically Apply any Customer Credit: When enabled, if there is any customer credit on the account, it will be applied toward the total owed prior to generating the balance. If the credit applied is larger than the balance due, the remaining credit will be reflected on the customer record.
Auto charge credit card on file: If the customer has any stored payment profiles, this checkbox will be visible. Check that box and a new section will appear where you can select a credit card from a dropdown with a few extra options.
Charge card on the Invoice's due date rather than on its creation date: This will delay the payment until the Invoice Due Date and then process the payment on that date. This only appears if you select an Invoice Billing Term with a delayed due date.
Retry the card later if the billing fails: The system will attempt to charge the card again if the payment is declined. In Invoice Settings, if you have Retry failed payments for Recurring Invoices enabled, then it will do that regardless of the setting here.
Subscription Related:
This is handy for making sure the Recurring Invoice expires/pauses when a Contract ends. In this section you can select a Contract and link it to the Subscription (recurring invoice). A few things happen when you do this:
- Subscriptions with a contract attached will not show the "Cancel" button in the customer portal.
- Notification Sets can be created to alert you when a saved card fails payment on a subscription.
Create a ticket if the billing fails: This only shows if the Customer has a credit card on file. When checked, this will create a ticket if charging the credit card fails.
Create a ticket one month before contract expires: Enable for a reminder. The reason we create tickets, rather than send notifications, for this and the prior setting is because tickets are much harder to ignore than notifications. A ticket becomes a to do item that must be resolved before it goes away.
After making your selections, click create Create Schedule or Update Schedule. Don't worry, you can come back to make changes later.
Add Recurring Line Items
Once you have created the template, the screen will reload to say Edit Recurring Template at the top and you will be able to add line items. Scroll down to the Line Items section of the template and select the line item type you want.
- Standard Line Item
- Data Backup
- Asset Counter
- Customer Contact Counter
- Remote Access - Contact Counter
- Policy Folder
Standard Line Item
This is a product or service from your Inventory like Labor or a physical good you sell each time the invoice is generated. Type in the Name field to look up and select a desired item like normal, change any details you want, then click Add Item to Template.
Data Backup Line
This works with the CloudBerry Integration to automatically bill customers for Automated Backups. Once the integration is set up, select a Cloudberry user, select the Cloudberry package they are paying for, and click Add Item to Subscription.
Asset Counter
This type is used to add line items based on the Assets your Customer has. Once you select the line item that is to be added (such as "charge per workstation"), you can then either enter a Fixed Quantity to add or a dynamic quantity based on Asset type or Search.
If you select an Asset type from that dropdown, it will count how many Assets that Customer has that are of the selected Asset type, and it will add that number as the line item quantity. For example, if a Customer has three Assets with the type "Router" and you selected that type in the Asset type dropdown, it will add a quantity of 3 of that line item to that recurring Invoice.
Alternatively, you can charge by the dynamic quantity of assets that appear from an Asset Saved Search. Click the Asset Search dropdown, select a saved search, and it will bill for all assets that meet that search criteria.
Once you make your selections, click Add Item to Template.
Customer Contact Counter
This line item type allows you to set the name of the product you will be billing your customer's employees against and automatically update the line item quantity to match the number of contacts attached to a customer.
You can also optionally click the Contact field type dropdown to select a Contact Custom Field and the counter will count the Contacts with those fields entered rather than all Contacts for the customer.
Remote Access - Contact Counter
This line item type enables you to bill your clients for Remote Access services. The line item type will automatically update to count the number of contacts with Remote Access enabled in their Contact Settings so that you always automatically bill your clients accurately for this service.
Policy Folder
This type counts the number of assets in the selected Policy Folder and multiplies that number by the Price. This dynamically updates each time the recurring invoice generates. For example, if you bill $10 per asset and a customer has 12 assets in the Servers folder this month, it will charge them $120. If next month they add three assets to that folder for a total of 15 assets, it will charge them $150. Set it and forget it!
Items Added to Invoice
Once you have selected the Line Items you want on the invoice, they will be collected and listed on the template like this.
If you are using a Data Back Up line, there will be a CloudBerry section below the line items that details the CloudBerry package info.
Display billing period on invoice
To display the billing period on a recurring invoice, just add the tag {{billing_period_range}} in a line item description on that invoice like this:
When the recurring invoice is generated, this line item will look like this:
Change History
Click View History (Admin only) to show changes made to the Template with time stamps and the User account making the changes. It will also list any time the invoice generates.
Invoice History
The Invoice history will list and link to any invoices that have been generated by this template.
Identifying Recurring Invoices
You can identify if an invoice is a Recurring Invoice by a circular icon showing on the Invoice Tab screen or the Customer Detail Screen.
You can also get to a customer's Recurring Templates by clicking the Show Recurring Templates button on the Invoices section of the Customer Detail page.
