How to set up a recurring invoice?

You can now easily set up and create automatic recurring invoices for your clients at a specific frequency (weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or custom frequency) directly from your Qonto account to make your invoicing process more efficient and less time-consuming.

This feature is available for Smart, Premium, Essential, Business, and Enterprise plans, and can be accessed using the 💻 web app by Owners and Admins.

Setting up your recurring invoice

You can access this feature from Invoices > Clients > Recurring invoices. When setting up a recurring invoice, you need to select:

Start date: this indicates the start of the recurrence (i.e. when the first invoice will be created).
End date: this indicates the end of the recurrence (optional). If you don’t select an end date, invoices will continue to be created indefinitely until you decide to suspend or cancel the recurring invoice.
Frequency: this indicates how frequently invoices are created (weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or at a custom frequency).
Payment terms: this indicates the due date of each created invoice. For example, if the payment terms are 15 days, each invoice will need to be paid within 15 days from the issue date.
Email details: here, you can enter the recipient's email address (or addresses) and the email subject and message that will be used when each invoice is automatically sent.
Client, product and services, and payment details remain unchanged from normal one-off invoices ⚠️ Invoices created automatically will all have the same amount, but the recurring invoice can be edited during the invoicing period.

The individual invoices created from a recurring invoice will be listed together with normal one-off invoices. They will be identified with an informational disclaimer saying: “This invoice was created automatically as part of a recurring invoice.”

☝️ Good to know: This feature will be available only on the web app, but users on mobile devices will be able to see the informational disclaimer saying: “This invoice was created automatically as part of a recurring invoice.”

What are the different recurring invoice statuses, and what actions can I take?

Recurring invoices have 5 statuses:

Active → this is a recurring invoice that is currently running
Suspended → this is a recurring invoice that has been paused
Scheduled → this is a recurring invoice that has a start date in the future
Completed → this is a recurring invoice that has ended
Canceled → this is a recurring invoice that has been canceled

You can only perform some actions if the recurring invoice has the Active, Suspended or Scheduled statuses:

Edit → You can edit Active, Suspended or Scheduled recurring invoices.
Suspend → You can suspend Active recurring invoices. No invoices will be created while a recurring invoice is suspended. On the end date, the recurring invoice will move to Completed.
Reactivate → You can reactivate Suspended recurring invoices. By reactivating a recurring invoice, we will resume creating invoices.
Cancel → You can cancel Active, Suspended, and Scheduled recurring invoices. By canceling a recurring invoice, we stop creating invoices.
You can also view all invoices created from a recurring invoice and their status (Paid, To be paid, Canceled) by clicking on the table row and opening the right-hand side panel.

What should I take into account when managing my recurring invoices?

⚠️ Important: We recommend that you cancel or suspend a recurring invoice the day before the next invoice is due to be issued since we create an invoice automatically on the day, so you will not have to cancel it manually.

You cannot edit the start date or frequency of an Active or Suspended recurring invoice.
If you delete a client that is used on an Active, Suspended, or Scheduled recurring invoice, we’ll mark this recurring invoice as Canceled.
If an organization is deactivated, all Active, Suspended, or Scheduled recurring invoices will be marked as Canceled.
For recurring invoices, we apply automatic numbering. This means that, if you have a recurring invoice that is Active, Suspended, or Scheduled, you will not be able to switch between automatic numbering and manual numbering whenever you want to create one-off invoices or quotes. If you have no recurring invoices or all recurring invoices are Completed or Canceled, you will then be able to switch again between the two numbering modes.

🇮🇹 Note: For Italian businesses, invoices created automatically as part of a recurring invoice are no different from normal one-off invoices and are, thus, forwarded directly to the SDI, to comply with e-invoicing requirements for Italy.