Recurring Invoices

Overview

Configuration at a glance

How to access

What you can do today

• Enable or disable recurring invoices for the whole business.
• Set a default send day of month (1–28) for monthly, quarterly, bi-annual, and annual schedules.
• Set a default send day of week for weekly and bi-weekly schedules.
• Choose Send automatically or Create drafts for manual review when the daily job generates invoices.
• Mark invoices as recurring templates when creating or editing (when the feature is enabled).
• View all templates on the Recurring tab with schedule, next send date, and active/paused status.
• Pause or resume a template without deleting it.
• Override send days per customer (optional) in the customer form Advanced section.

Prerequisites

• Recurring invoices enabled under Settings → General → Recurring Invoice Settings.
• A customer with bill-to email (and phone if you use dual SMS) when Send automatically is on.
• Email integration (Mailgun or similar) configured for auto-send.
• API server running with the daily recurring-invoice cron (enabled by default on single-instance dev; see Environment & deployment below).

Step-by-step configuration

1. Enable recurring invoices (business)

1. Go to Settings → General (/settings/general).
2. Scroll to Recurring Invoice Settings (below Late Fee Settings).
3. Turn on Enable Recurring Invoices.
4. Set Default Send Day of Month (1–28) — used for monthly, quarterly, bi-annual, and annual templates.
5. Set Default Send Day of Week — used for weekly and bi-weekly templates (Sunday through Saturday).
6. Under Invoice Delivery, choose:
   • Send automatically — generated invoices are emailed when the daily job runs (and SMS if Send Text Messages with Emails is on under Customer Notifications on the same page).
   • Create drafts for manual review — generated invoices stay in draft until staff review and send from the invoice list or detail page.
7. Click Save Settings at the top of General Settings.

2. Optional: customer send-day overrides

1. Open Customers and Edit the customer (/customers/edit/:id).
2. Expand the Advanced section at the bottom of the form.
3. Below Payment Terms (and credit limit when applicable), set either or both (leave blank to use business defaults):
   • Recurring Invoice Send Day (Month) — overrides the business default for monthly+ schedules.
   • Recurring Invoice Send Day (Week) — overrides the business default for weekly/bi-weekly schedules.
4. Save the customer.

3. Create a recurring invoice template

1. Go to Invoices → New Invoice (/invoices/new).
2. Complete Basic Information, Addresses, and Items & Services as for any invoice.
3. On the Review & Submit step:
   • Turn on Recurring Invoice.
   • Choose Recurring Schedule: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, bi-annual, or annual.
   • Optionally use Send to customer on save if you want the template itself delivered immediately (separate from future scheduled copies).
4. Save the invoice.

4. Edit an existing template

1. Open Invoices → Recurring (/invoices?tab=recurring) and click View, or open /invoices/:id/edit.
2. Update line items, amounts, or schedule on Review & Submit.
3. Save — future generated copies use the updated template content.

5. Manage templates on the Recurring tab

1. Open Invoices (/invoices).
2. Select the Recurring tab (/invoices?tab=recurring).
3. Review Customer, Schedule, Next Send, Status, and Amount.
4. Use View to open the template, or Pause / Resume to stop or restart scheduled generation without deleting the template.

6. What happens on each billing cycle

1. ServiceFlow clones the template (line items, amounts, customer, addresses).
2. Assigns invoice number {templateNumber}-{sequence}-{MMDDYYYY} where sequence is the count of prior generated invoices for that template plus 1.
3. If Send automatically is on, emails the customer; otherwise leaves the copy in draft for review.
4. Advances the template’s next send date by one period (week, month, quarter, etc.).

7. Stripe / Helcim subscriptions (optional)

Environment & deployment

{
  "recurringInvoiceConfig": {
    "enabled": false,
    "defaultSendDayOfMonth": 1,
    "defaultSendDayOfWeek": 1,
    "autoSend": false
  }
}

Troubleshooting

Current limitations

• Customer send-day fields live in the Advanced collapsed section—expand Advanced on edit to find them.
• Email notification when drafts await review is not automated yet; staff should monitor the invoice list or Recurring tab when using manual review mode.
• The daily job runs in-process on the API (recurringInvoiceCronService). On multi-instance production, coordinate with your deployment so only one instance runs scheduled jobs, or add an external scheduler later.
• Mobile app does not yet expose the Recurring tab or business recurring settings.

Related features

• Invoices — list, send, and collect on all invoices
• Customer Management — edit customer billing overrides
• Stripe Payments — payment links and subscriptions
• Maintenance Schedules — recurring jobs (different from recurring invoices)