Recurring invoices
Have an invoice created again every week, month or year, as a draft to review or issued and emailed for you.
A recurring invoice is an invoice Bookmaker creates again on a schedule: every week, every month, every year. Each one arrives as a draft for you to review, or is issued and emailed for you.
Before you start#
- You need a role that can edit documents: owner, admin, accountant, sales or operations.
- Write the invoice first, in the editor, as you would any invoice. It can be a draft. A recurring invoice copies it.
Create one#
- Open the invoice to repeat and choose Make recurring. Or open Scheduled, then Recurring invoices, choose Create recurring invoice and pick the invoice.
- Give it a Name. Only your team sees it.
- Under When, set how often it repeats, the date of the first invoice, the time of day and the Time zone.
- Choose when it Ends: never, on a date, or after a number of invoices.
- Read Next invoices on the right: the next five dates, each with its time, time zone and due date.
- Under What happens each time, keep Generate drafts for review or choose Issue and email automatically.
- Set the Payment terms used for each invoice's due date.
- Choose Create recurring invoice.
What is copied, and what stays live#
A recurring invoice keeps its own copy of the invoice you chose: the lines, quantities, prices, discounts, taxes, totals, currency, customer name, notes and terms. Changing a product, a tax rate, the customer or the original invoice afterwards does not change what is billed.
Read fresh each time an invoice is shown or printed: your organization's details, your logo and brand, and the design of the template.
To bill something different from now on, write it as a new invoice, open the recurring invoice, choose Edit and pick it under Invoice content. Invoices already created are not changed.
Each invoice that is created is new. It has no number until it is issued, and it does not carry the original's number, payments, signature, customer link or sent date.
Dates#
Each invoice is dated with the day it falls on, in the time zone you chose, and is due the number of days in Payment terms after that.
Months of different lengths. A recurring invoice started on the 31st runs on the 31st where a month has one, and on the last day where it does not: 31 January, 28 February (29 in a leap year), 31 March, 30 April. The following month always returns to the 31st.
The last day of the month. If the first date is the last day of its month, you are asked which you mean: that day number (the 30th, say), or The last day of the month, which is the 28th, 29th, 30th or 31st, whichever is last.
29 February. A yearly recurring invoice started on 29 February runs on 28 February in other years.
Clock changes. If the time of day does not exist on a day the clocks go forward, the invoice is created at the next valid time. If it happens twice on a day the clocks go back, it is created the first time. The preview says when this applies.
Drafts, or issue and email#
Generate drafts for review is the default. A draft appears in Documents on each date. Nothing is numbered or sent until you do it.
Issue and email automatically gives each invoice its number and emails it, without anyone looking first. You enter who it goes to, an optional message, and whether to attach the PDF. Those addresses are saved with the recurring invoice: if the customer's address changes, change it here too.
Pause, skip, edit or stop#
Open the recurring invoice from Scheduled, then Recurring invoices.
| To | Choose | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Stop for a while | Pause | No invoices are created. Resume continues with the first date still in the future; dates that passed while paused are not made up for. |
| Miss one date | Skip next invoice | No invoice for that date. The one after is not affected. |
| Change the schedule, the recipients or the content | Edit | Applies to invoices not yet created. If you change the schedule, the form shows the dates as they are now beside the dates after saving. |
| End it | Stop | No more invoices. This cannot be undone; create a new recurring invoice to start again. |
The History on the same page lists every date reached, what happened on it, and the invoice it created.
If an invoice is missed#
An invoice is missed when Bookmaker could not create it within 12 hours of its time, for example during an outage. A missed invoice is never issued or emailed automatically, even on a recurring invoice set to do so.
You choose what happens instead, per recurring invoice:
- Create it as a draft for me to review (the default). The draft is dated with the day it should have been created.
- Skip it. It is listed as skipped in the history.
After a long outage, at most the 12 most recent invoices are created per recurring invoice; earlier ones are listed as skipped. Any skipped invoice can still be created: choose Create draft beside it in the history.
Reminders for these invoices#
Under Payment reminders for these invoices, choose whether the invoices it creates follow your reminder settings, always get reminders, or never do.
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