Recurring invoices for retainers and subscriptions

A monthly retainer, a support contract, a yearly licence, a desk you rent out: some invoices are the same every time. Retyping them is slow, and forgetting one is worse, because nobody pays an invoice that was never sent. A recurring invoice is a template with a schedule. Set it up once and Nefin creates each invoice on the day it's due to go out.

Before you start

• Recurring invoices are part of the Professional and Business plans.
• The client must already exist in Nefin. Add them under Clients first.
• If you bill from your items list, set up the items and VAT rates you'll use, so each line fills in its price and rate.

1. Create the schedule

Open Sales, then Recurring invoices, and choose New Recurring Invoice. Give it a title you'll recognise in the list, such as "Monthly retainer, Oak Dental", pick the client and choose how often it repeats:

The start date is the date of the first invoice; each one after it follows the frequency. Add an end date if the contract has one. Payment terms set how many days the client has to pay, from 0 to 365 (30 by default), so each invoice gets its own due date counted from the day it's created.

Then add the lines, exactly as you would on a normal invoice: an item or a description, the quantity, the unit price and the VAT rate. The form shows the subtotal, tax and total of each invoice the schedule will create. Anything you put in Notes is printed on every one.

2. Choose drafts or auto-send

Nefin checks every schedule once a day. When one is due, it creates the invoice with the next number in your invoice sequence, dated that day, and adds it to your Invoices list. By default the new invoice is a draft, so you get a chance to look at it first: add this month's extra hours, adjust a price, or delete it if the client paused the work. When it's right, use Mark as Sent and then Email, and the client gets the PDF with a link to view the invoice online.

If the invoice never changes, tick Auto-send invoices on the schedule. Each new invoice is then marked as sent the moment it's created, so it's in your receivables straight away.

Once an invoice is sent, it behaves like any other: it goes overdue after its due date, takes payments, and is followed up by your payment reminders if you've set them up.

3. Pause, resume or end it

• Pause: a client takes a break, or you're renegotiating. A paused schedule creates nothing.
• Resume: the schedule picks up at its next date that's today or later. Periods missed while it was paused are not created afterwards, so you won't find a pile of back-dated invoices.
• End date: after the last invoice on or before that date, the schedule is marked Completed.
• Delete: removes the template. Invoices it already created stay exactly as they are.

4. Change it when the deal changes

Edit an active or paused schedule at any time: a new price from January, an extra line, different payment terms. Changes apply to the invoices it creates from then on. Invoices already created don't change; edit those one by one if you need to. If you change the frequency or the start date, Nefin works out the next date again from the new schedule.

Each schedule's page shows when the next invoice will be created, how many it has created so far, when the last one was, and a list of every invoice it produced with its status. That's the quickest way to see whether a client is keeping up.

What lands in your books

A draft posts nothing. When the invoice is marked as sent, by you or by auto-send, it posts like any other invoice: the total to accounts receivable, the amount before VAT to revenue and the VAT to VAT output. Pausing or deleting a schedule never touches invoices that already exist.