Recurring invoices
Recurring invoices
Prepare draft invoices for regular clients on a fixed rhythm, then review and send them.
Updated: 2026-10-07
Before you start
- Clients with an email address
- Business details and bank account filled in under Invoice settings
- Email sending set up: your own mail server, or a verified business
Open related features
What a schedule does
A schedule prepares draft invoices for one or more regular clients on a fixed rhythm — monthly retainers, quarterly fees, yearly licences. On each date it creates one draft per client and emails you that drafts are ready. You review the drafts and send them. Nothing is ever emailed to a client on its own.
Drafts have no number yet. Each invoice gets its number, today’s date as the issue date, and its due date when you send it — so a draft you send a few days late is still dated and numbered correctly.
Create a schedule
Go to Invoices → Recurring → New schedule. The setup has four steps.
- Clients: name the schedule and pick the clients. Each client gets its own invoice every time the schedule runs.
- Invoice content: pick the template, then set the lines, invoice language, currency, payment terms (counted from the day you send), a note and the payment options for each client. “Use for all clients” copies one client’s setup to the others.
- Schedule: choose “On a schedule” or “Only when I ask”. For a schedule, set how often, the day of the month (or the last day), the start date and the period billed — the period just ended or the coming one. Choose when it ends: never, on a date or after a number of invoices. The upcoming dates are listed so you can check them. Dates follow your business time zone.
- Email: the sender name, and either the standard message in each client’s invoice language or your own text with placeholders such as client name, invoice number, total and due date. You can send invoices for a client to another address and add a note for that client only. “Send me a sample” sends you a watermarked example.
Review and send the drafts
When drafts are waiting, open the schedule and select Review and send. Select the drafts to send and confirm. Each one is numbered, dated today, turned into a PDF and emailed to the client; the list shows the progress of each row. A draft that needs fixing is not sent, and its row says why.
To change one invoice before it goes out, select Edit draft and change it in the normal invoice editor. Send a test to me sends you copies marked SAMPLE with a placeholder number; nothing changes on the drafts.
Pause, skip and create drafts now
- Pause: no drafts are created until you resume.
- Resume: dates that passed while the schedule was paused are not billed automatically. They are recorded as skipped, and you can create drafts for them if you want.
- Skip: skip the next invoice, or any upcoming date on the Overview tab. Undo brings it back.
- Create drafts now: creates this period’s drafts without waiting — useful for a schedule set to “Only when I ask”. Creating drafts twice for the same period never creates duplicates.
Runs and history
The Runs tab lists every date the schedule ran: the drafts it created, how many you sent and paid, and any problem with its reason — for example “Missed while paused” or “Invoicing setup isn’t finished”. A run that fails is tried again; drafts that were already created are not created twice.
VAT is checked again each time a draft is created, so a change to a client’s country or VAT ID is picked up. Changes you make to a schedule apply to drafts created afterwards; drafts that already exist are edited one by one.
Delete a schedule
Deleting a schedule stops all future drafts. Invoices you already sent and the run history stay. Unsent drafts stay as ordinary drafts unless you choose to delete them too. If you only need a break, pause instead.
Common mistakes
- Waiting for invoices to go out by themselves: schedules only prepare drafts. Watch for the “drafts ready” email and send them.
- A client without an email address: the draft can’t be sent. Add the address under Clients.
- Deleting a template a schedule uses: its drafts can’t be sent until you pick another template.
- Sending without a look: the review step is there to catch a changed price or a client who left.