Recurring invoices & contracts

Retainers, subscriptions, and service plans bill the same way every period. A contract holds what you charge and how often. Each cycle, a daily scheduler creates the draft invoice, and you review, post, and send it like any other invoice. Contracts work in both directions: customer contracts generate invoices you send, supplier contracts generate the vendor bills you receive on a schedule.

Create a customer contract

1. Open Invoicing and go to Customers → Customer Contracts, then click New.
2. Pick the customer. Payment terms, pricelist, and fiscal position fill in from the contact.
3. Set the schedule: Recurrence (weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, and more) and Invoice Every for the interval — every 1 month, every 3 months, and so on.
4. Choose the Invoicing type: Pre-paid invoices at the start of each period, Post-paid at the end.
5. Set the Date Start, and a Date End if the contract has a fixed term.
6. Add lines: product, description, quantity, and price.
7. Check the Date of Next Invoice. It is computed from the schedule, and you can edit it.

From then on, the scheduler runs daily and creates a draft invoice whenever a contract's next-invoice date arrives.

Make lines keep themselves current

• Auto-price? on a line takes the price from the customer's pricelist at invoice time, so a price change reaches every future invoice without editing the contract.
• Put #START# and #END# in a line description and each generated invoice replaces them with the start and end dates of the period it covers, so the customer sees exactly what they are paying for.
• Recurrence at line level? gives each line its own schedule. One contract can bill a monthly service and a yearly fee together.
• A Discount (%) column is available on lines when your access rights allow discounts.

Review and post the generated invoices

The scheduler creates drafts, not posted invoices, so nothing goes out without your eyes on it.

1. Open Invoicing → Customers → Invoices and filter to drafts. Each generated invoice carries a note naming the contract that created it.
2. Review the lines, then post and send it like any other invoice — see Create & send invoices.

Two shortcuts:

• To invoice ahead of schedule, open Customers → Manually Invoice Sale Contracts, pick the invoice date, check the count of contracts due, and click Create Invoices.
• The Invoices button at the top of a contract lists every invoice it has generated.

Start from a template

If you sell the same plan to many customers, build it once. Go to Configuration → Contracts → Contract Templates and define the lines, journal, and pricelist. Picking the template on a new contract copies them in; you only set the customer and the dates.

Stop or change a contract

• To stop billing, set the Date End on the contract, or on a line when recurrence is at line level. Invoicing stops after that date, and invoices already posted are untouched.
• Edit lines at any time; changes apply from the next generated invoice.
• Record what changed on the Modifications tab. Followers on the contract receive the note by email.

Send the contract itself

Click Send by Email on the contract to mail it to the customer with a cover message, or Preview to see it as the customer does. The contract also prints as a PDF.

Supplier contracts

The same mechanics cover costs that recur — rent, software, insurance. Create them under Vendors → Supplier Contracts; the scheduler generates draft vendor bills instead of customer invoices.

Where your clients see their contracts

Clients with portal access find their contracts under Contracts in your client portal, at /my/contracts. The contract's customer contact follows it by default, so each client sees their own contracts and nothing else.

Related

• Invoicing overview
• Create & send invoices
• Get paid
• Vendor bills
• Your client portal