You may have heard of the term “recurring billing/invoicing.” It is a way for your customers to pay you automatically without having to manually enter their payment details every time they buy something from you. 

This can be very useful if you sell products on a subscription basis; you may want to send them an invoice every month or so for the amount due in advance. 

This article will show you how to set up and use a simple recurring invoice.

Step 1: Create a New Recurring Invoice

• Navigate to Payments > Invoices
• Click + New in the top right and select New Recurring Template

• This will navigate you to the Recurring Invoice Builder. Once you are there you can click on New Recurring Template at the top of your screen to rename this template if you choose to.

Step 2: Customize the Recurring Invoice’s Frequency Settings 

• Customize the Frequency Settings to determine how often you want the invoices to be sent.
  • Select if you want the invoices to go out Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly and select the relevant days or dates that you want the invoices to be sent.
    • You can also select to have invoices sent in intervals of days, weeks, months, or years. 
    • For example, if you want to have an invoice sent every 3 days, you would select Daily and then specify of every 3 days.
  • Select the start date for your invoices to begin to be sent
  • Select the ending parameters for invoices to stop being sent
    • These options are Never, By, and After
      • If you select Never, Invoices will be sent at your chosen frequency indefinitely
      • If you select By, you will need to specify a date for the invoices to end by. On that specified date, no invoices will be allowed to be sent and the Recurring Invoice will end.
      • If you select After, you will need to specify a date for the invoices to end after. This will allow invoices to be sent on that specified date, and then the Recurring Invoices will end. If there are not any invoices that would normally be sent on the selected date, then no invoices will be sent and the Recurring Invoice will end.
  • Select how many days in advance for the invoices to be sent or leave this section blank to have invoices sent the same day they’re due
    • For example, if a weekly invoice is due on Mondays, you can send them 2 days in advance so your customer has 48 hours to review

Step 3: Customize the Invoice to be Sent to Your Client

• For your invoices you will see several customization options
  • Press the blue box that says Select a File to upload you logo to the invoice
  • Press + Add a Client and select which of your existing clients you want to send the invoice to, or create a new client
  • Press + Add an Item to select the product(s) that your client will be billed for
    • You can edit the price and quantity once the item is selected by clicking on these parameters when they appear
  • Finally, press Add Notes/Terms at the bottom of the invoice section to add any notes or terms that you want your client to see on the invoice.

Step 4: Save and/or Schedule your Invoice

• In the top right of this page, press Save
  • If you would like to Save and not schedule the Recurring Invoice yet, you can either press Save and then < Back in the top right, or press the drop down arrow next to the Save button and then select Save and close. Both of these options will save your Recurring Invoice as a Draft
• Once you are ready to finalize your Recurring Invoice, select Schedule in the top right of your screen and Press Schedule again in the confirmation window that will appear
  • BE AWARE: Once you schedule your invoice, you will not be able to edit it any more. If you need to make changes after you schedule it, you will need to delete the Recurring Invoice and make a new one.
  • In the confirmation window, you will also see Auto Payment options. These can be set up here or after your Recurring Invoice is scheduled. For a detailed overview of setting up Auto Payments, see our article “Auto Payments in Recurring Templates”

Now your Recurring invoice is set up and your clients should be automatically sent their invoices!

Viewing Sent Invoices and Payment Status

• Click “Details” under the Template Name to check the status of the recurring invoice series. A popup window will appear in the right panel, showing invoice statuses as sent, overdue, paid, or not sent.

• Here’s a description of what each status means:
  • Sent: invoice was successfully sent to the customer
  • Overdue: invoice was successfully sent on time but has not been paid by the customer
  • Paid: The customer has paid for the invoice
  • Not Sent: There was a system error in delivering the invoice to the customer and the invoice needs to be resent.
• Invoice statuses can also be checked from inside the builder once the recurring template is Scheduled.
  • To do this, click the three dots on the right of the Recurring Invoice line item while viewing your Invoice tab and click view.

• This will take you to the Recurring Invoice Builder. Once in the Builder, you can select Show Invoice History at the bottom of the Frequency Settings. This will give you a view of the Invoice Statuses

Pro Tip: You can also set up Autopayments in the Recurring Invoice builder both when and after you publish your recurring invoice. This will make it so that your client’s credit card will be automatically charged when you send their invoice. For information on how to set this up, see our article, “Auto Payments in Recurring Invoices”.

How to Stop Sending (Cancel) Future Invoices

• Recurring invoices that are active or scheduled may be canceled/stopped from sending out future invoices. There are two ways to stop sending these invoices:
  • Select the End option from the Actions dropdown on the Recurring Invoices page, and confirm the message in the popup window.

• The other way is within the builder. Click the 3-dot dropdown menu to end the recurring invoice and confirm the message in the popup window.

Additional Pro Tips:

• The list shown on the Recurring Templates page represents the recurring templates created by the user, which are creating and sending individual invoices to the defined customer as per the frequency settings defined in them individually. Put simply, the list shows the parent invoice creator, which creates and sends out invoices per the frequency settings and customer details specified inside them.
• Various notifications for recurring invoices can be automatically set up using Workflows
• Canceled and Completed invoices can only be deleted if no invoice has been sent to the customer, or if the invoice was marked as complete manually.
• Deleted recurring templates are not shown in the standard list view on your Invoices page.
• Only one-time and recurring products are eligible for the recurring invoices. For recurring products, only the price for the recurring product is used and the frequency needs to be defined inside the invoice frequency setting. (For example, if you charge $500.00 one-time up front for a service and then $50.00/month for an ongoing service, the recurring, ongoing $50.00 is eligible for the recurring invoices.)