Recurring Invoices

A recurring schedule turns one invoice into a series. Plirin prepares each copy as a draft ahead of the day it is due to go out, so you see it before your customer does. You choose how far ahead, including not at all.

Setting one up

Open the invoice you want to repeat, choose Set up recurring from its actions menu, and fill in four things.

Field	What it means
How often	Weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly
First send date	The day the first copy goes out. Today or later. Leave it empty to start one period from today
Stop after	The last day a copy may go out. Leave it empty for a schedule with no end date
Review window	How many days before its send date each copy is prepared

The first send date is read on your own calendar, the one set in Settings, so a send on the 1st happens on the 1st where you are and not where a server is. Every date the schedule then bills on follows from it the same way.

A first send date later than the end date is refused when you save, because that schedule would never produce anything while looking in the dashboard exactly like one that works. The two dates landing on the same day is fine, and means a schedule that bills once.

A first send date in the past is refused too. A schedule does not begin from the next period when you backdate it: it owes a copy for every period since that day, so it would prepare a run of invoices at once, each consuming a number from your invoice series. Today counts as today on your own calendar, so a start of today is always accepted wherever you are.

Stop after is read on your calendar as well, and it bounds the day a copy goes out, not the day one is prepared: a monthly schedule with a three-day window and an end date of 30 June does not prepare a copy on 27 June for a 2 July send. A copy due on 30 June itself is still sent, wherever you are.

You cannot put a schedule on an invoice that a subscription already bills, so the action is not offered on those. Cancel or change the subscription instead.

You cannot put one on a voided invoice either, for the same reason the action is hidden there: a void invoice is a document you have withdrawn, and a schedule on it would prepare a draft every period from something that no longer stands. Duplicate it and put the schedule on the copy. A paid invoice is a different matter and is the most ordinary template there is, so the action stays on those.

Frequency

Frequency	Billing cycle
Weekly	Every 7 days
Monthly	Same day each month
Quarterly	Every 3 months
Yearly	Once per year

A monthly, quarterly or yearly schedule keeps the day of the month you started it on. When that day does not exist in a shorter month it falls back to the last day of that month and then returns: a schedule billing on the 31st bills on 28 February and then on 31 March, rather than moving to the 28th for good.

The review window

The review window is how many days early each copy is prepared. Set it to 3 and a copy due on the 10th appears as a draft on the 7th, for you to read, edit or delete before it goes anywhere.

Set it to 0 and there is no review window: the copy is created on its send date. If you are coming from Xero, that is the behaviour you are used to, and 0 is how you ask for it here.

The window is bounded by the frequency, because a longer lead would prepare the next copy before the previous one had gone out. A weekly schedule accepts at most 6 days, a monthly one 27, a quarterly one 89, a yearly one 364. The default is 7 days, or 6 on a weekly schedule.

A copy’s due date is measured from its send date, not from the day it was prepared, so a copy made a week early still gives your customer their full payment terms.

What each copy carries

You answer this once, when you set the schedule up, and every copy that schedule makes carries the same thing. It has to work that way: the copies are made for you while you are not there, so there is nobody to ask. To change the answer, set the schedule up again, which rewrites the whole schedule.

Two answers cover most cases.

An exact copy. Everything this invoice carries, including its tax, discounts, tip and notes. This is the default.
Line items only. The same goods to the same customer, and nothing that happened to be true of this one invoice.

If neither is quite right, tick the four groups yourself. Each group moves as a whole, because the figures inside one only make sense together.

Group	What it covers
Tax	The tax amount, the rate it was computed from, and the “of which tax” figure on a tax-inclusive invoice
Discount	The invoice discount and any per-line discounts
Tip	A tip added to that one order
Notes	The memo, the footer, and custom fields

The customer, the currency, the description and the line items are always carried. There is no setting that drops them, because dropping them would not leave you with a copy of anything.

A coupon is never carried. Its effect on the amount is part of the discount group, so a copy can repeat the money a coupon took off, but the coupon and the promotion code stay on the original invoice. A code can be dead by the time a copy is made, and a copy that quietly re-applied one would be charging on terms that no longer exist.

If the invoice is set to No late fees on this invoice, every copy keeps that waiver (see Late fees).

A copy is always filed in the mode of the invoice it came from: a schedule on a test-mode invoice makes test-mode copies and a live schedule makes live ones, whatever mode your dashboard is in when the copy is prepared.

Duplicating one invoice is a separate question

Duplicate on the actions menu asks the same checklist, but that answer applies to that one copy and is not remembered. Only a schedule’s answer is saved, because only a schedule has to act without you.

If you invoice under VAT, read this

A VAT invoice has to state its VAT, so a copy cannot drop the tax. Choose “line items only” and the tax comes back on rather than the choice being refused.

The discount can come back with it. Whenever this invoice’s tax was worked out on a discounted subtotal, dropping the discount alone would understate the tax, so Plirin keeps the discount too. That means a schedule you set up as “line items only” repeats last month’s discount on every copy from now on, which bills less than you probably intend.

Plirin tells you which groups came back when you save the schedule. That notice is the thing to act on: check the figures on the first copy before you let the series run.

While a schedule is running

The Recurring page lists every schedule you have, with the one about to bill at the top: how often it repeats, when the next copy goes out, when it ends, what each copy carries, and how many days in advance it is prepared. Expand a row to see the copies of it still sitting in your drafts, each with the day it is due to go out. Copies that have already gone out are ordinary sent invoices and live on the Invoices page.

The page reads your 200 most recent drafts. If you have more than that, it says so and tells you how many, because a schedule’s oldest copies can then be missing from the list and the count of copies waiting reads as “at least”. The Invoices page has every one of them.

Changes you make to a copy stay on that copy. The next copy is made from the original invoice again.

Stopping one

Stop on the Recurring page ends a schedule. Invoices it has already sent are not affected, and no further copies are prepared.

The copy already sitting in the review window is disarmed, not sent. It stays in your drafts for you to send or delete by hand, which is the one thing stopping a schedule must not decide for you.

A paused schedule

If a copy runs out of send attempts, Plirin pauses the schedule behind it rather than retrying forever. A paused schedule stays on the Recurring page, marked as paused with no next send date, so you can see what happened. It prepares nothing until you set it up again from the invoice.

Copies waiting to be sent never pause a schedule. They are a normal state, and the schedule keeps preparing the next one.

If a schedule falls behind

A schedule can fall behind its own dates: a long deployment, or a period when Plirin could not reach its database. When that happens Plirin catches the schedule up by preparing a copy for every period it missed, and none of them is sent. They arrive in your drafts, with no send date, for you to send or delete.

That is deliberate. Whether a customer owes you for two missed months or one is a question about your agreement with them, and it is not ours to answer.

A copy is only given a send date if that date has not already passed, so a short interruption inside the same day still sends on time. An interruption that outlasts the send day leaves that invoice for you.

Plans

Preparing the copies is free. Sending them without you is the part that is paid for, and it is available on Growth and Scale plans (invoicing_pro, invoicing_scale, growth and scale).

	Starter	Growth	Scale
Set up a schedule	Included	Included	Included
Copies prepared as drafts, on schedule	Included	Included	Included
The review window	Included	Included	Included
Sending a copy yourself, on the day	Included	Included	Included
Each copy sends itself on its send date	Not included	Included	Included
Scheduling a copy to send later	Not included	Included	Included
Sending copies in bulk	Not included	Included	Included

On Starter a copy waits in your drafts and you send it yourself, exactly as you would any other invoice. The Recurring page tells you how many are waiting. Nothing is lost while you wait: a copy that was never sent is still a draft you can send at any time, and upgrading releases the ones whose send date falls inside the period you are paying for.

A copy that has waited past its send date has its payment terms measured again from the day it actually goes out, so it does not arrive already overdue. The Recurring page says so against each waiting copy, naming the due date it would take if you sent it today and the payment terms that are being kept. Read it there: once the copy has gone out, the change is only in the audit trail.