Set Up Recurring Invoices

A recurring schedule generates invoices for the same customer at regular intervals. You define the cadence, the template line items, and whether InvoiceScript should send each invoice or hold it as a draft for your review.

Create a schedule

1. Open Sales > Recurring in the main navigation.
2. Click New schedule.
3. Fill in the schedule name (e.g. "Monthly hosting: Northwind Studio").
4. Select the customer and currency.
5. Under Frequency and duration, choose how often invoices should be generated:
   • Every 1 month generates on the same day each month.
   • Every 2 weeks generates every 14 days.
   • Every 7 days generates weekly.
6. Set the start date: InvoiceScript generates the first invoice on this date.
7. Optionally set an end date or max occurrences to stop the schedule after a certain point. Leave both empty to run the schedule without limit.
8. If you want generated invoices to be finalized and emailed to the customer without manual review, check Finalize and email invoices on generation.
9. Add one or more template line items. These are copied to each generated invoice. Each line needs a description, quantity, and unit price. Enter prices the same way you do on the regular invoice form: type the decimal amount (e.g. 50.00 for EUR, or 16500 for JPY) and InvoiceScript handles the conversion.
10. Click Create schedule.

Example: Northwind Studio monthly retainer

Northwind Studio pays a EUR 1,200.00 monthly retainer for design services.

On June 1, InvoiceScript generates a draft invoice with those line items, finalizes it (assigning the next invoice number), and emails it to Northwind Studio's configured invoice recipients. If no contacts are set to receive invoices, InvoiceScript sends to the primary billing contact or falls back to the customer's main email address.

Pause and resume

If a customer suspends their contract, you can pause the schedule:

1. Go to Sales > Recurring and open the schedule.
2. Click Pause.
3. No invoices will be generated until you click Resume.

Pausing does not delete the schedule or any invoices that were generated before the pause.

Edit the template

To change line items, pricing, or notes for future invoices:

1. Open the schedule and click Edit.
2. Update the fields. Changes apply to invoices generated after the save: existing invoices are not modified.

Manual generation

You can generate an invoice outside the normal schedule:

1. Open the schedule detail page.
2. If the schedule is due (the next invoice date is today or earlier), a Generate now button appears.
3. Click it to create the invoice. The schedule advances to the next period.

What happens when the server misses a run

InvoiceScript runs the recurring invoice generator once per day via php artisan schedule:run. If the server was offline and missed one or more scheduled dates, InvoiceScript generates one invoice per run until it catches up. It does not batch-create multiple invoices at once, so your customer never receives a burst of back-dated invoices.

For example: if the server was down from June 1 to June 4 and a schedule was due June 1, 2, and 3:

Schedule completion

A schedule stops generating invoices when either condition is met:

• Max occurrences reached: the schedule generated the configured number of invoices.
• End date passed: the next invoice date is after the configured end date.

The schedule status changes to Completed. You can still view it and its generated invoices, but no new invoices will be created.

Generated invoices

Each invoice created by a recurring schedule links back to its source schedule. The invoice detail page shows a "Generated from recurring schedule" label with a link to the schedule. Deleting a schedule does not delete the invoices it produced.