Recurring invoices: the ones that issue themselves

In the first days of every month, a share of your invoices goes out not because anything happened, but because a new month started. Rent, a retainer, a maintenance fee, a contracted block of hours — same customer, same line, same amount. The work isn't hard. It just repeats, and it repeats once per client, every month, forever.

The hard part isn't typing — it's remembering

Thirty near-identical invoices can be keyed in a morning. What actually costs money are the questions around them: has this client already been invoiced, is the contract still running, was a new price agreed in July, is the customer who cancelled in February still being billed? Every one of those is answered by hand, and answered again next month.

The usual workaround is to copy last month's invoice. That copies everything that was wrong with it too: the old period in the description, last month's date, last year's price, and the one-off line that only ever belonged on that single invoice.

A template, not a copy

In Ezura a recurring invoice is a template with a schedule, not an invoice with a flag. The template holds everything that doesn't change — customer, lines, VAT, currency, payment term, dimensions and notes — and you set what does: the cadence (monthly, quarterly or yearly), the date of the first invoice, and the day of the month it should land on.

From then on each period produces an ordinary sales invoice: the same one you would have keyed in yourself, with the same review, the same PDF and the same hand-off to your accounting system. The list shows what you actually need to see — when the next invoice is due, how many have been issued, and which templates are paused.

Draft or issued straight away — your call

The default is the cautious one: the template produces a draft. A draft carries no number, does not enter your VAT records, and waits for a person to review it and issue it. For the templates you trust — fixed rent, a flat subscription fee — you can switch on automatic issuing, and the invoice is numbered and finished the moment it is created. The difference between the two matters too much to hide in a tooltip, so the consequence is spelled out next to the switch itself.

Why a draft doesn't take a number

Lithuanian VAT invoice numbers must run in ascending order within one or more series. If a number is reserved when a draft is created and that draft is later deleted, the series is left with a hole that somebody will eventually have to explain. So the number is assigned at the moment of issue and never before. The practical consequence: your sequence follows the order invoices were issued, not the order they were prepared, and a recurring template cannot damage the series simply by preparing something.

Proformas need a series of their own

This one is worth checking in your own system, whatever you run. A proforma is not an accounting document: it isn't recorded in the books, it creates no obligation to declare VAT, and the buyer cannot deduct VAT against it. If proformas draw their numbers from the same series as your VAT invoices, that series starts jumping for no visible reason.

Recurring templates multiply that mistake — one proforma a month becomes twelve a year. So proformas get their own series with their own number pattern, exactly like credit notes do.

Short months and month ends

If a template is set to the 31st, February's invoice lands on the last day of the month and March goes back to the 31st — the day doesn't drift forward and the schedule doesn't slowly slide. A detail, until you find a rent invoice for February issued on 3 March.

When one month has to be different

This is the most common case and also the most dangerous habit. If August needs three extra consulting hours on it, the temptation is to edit the template. The line then stays there, and the client is overbilled every month until they notice it themselves.

The right move is to change that one invoice, not the template. While the invoice is still a draft it can be edited freely — add a line, apply a discount, rewrite the period — and the template is untouched. That is exactly why draft mode is the default: it leaves room for the change before the invoice becomes a document.

Once an invoice is issued it can no longer be changed — it is a VAT document with a consumed number. The only way back is a credit note.

Knowing when to stop

Contracts end, and the invoicing has to end with them. The end condition is set when the template is created:

• •no end — it runs until you stop it
• •until a fixed date — the one written in the contract
• •after a set number of invoices — twelve months, four quarters

A template can also be paused and resumed later, which is what you want instead of deleting it — the invoices it already produced have to stay. And if something is missing, say the customer is no longer in your lists, the template stops and is flagged as needing attention. What it will not do is quietly skip a month, because that is the failure you only discover at quarter end.

What isn't there yet

One thing is deliberately missing: automatic emailing to the customer. The invoice is created and, if you chose that, issued — but you send it. Worth knowing up front if you were expecting to be out of the loop entirely.

What this actually buys you

The gain isn't the keystrokes. It's that the start of the month stops being a checklist exercise: every invoice that should go out does, and none that shouldn't. The more recurring customers you have the bigger the difference — and the more expensive the one forgotten invoice that nobody notices until the quarter closes.