Accounting — Recurring Bills
The Accounting ▸ Recurring Bills page manages standing vendor charges — monthly rent, software subscriptions, retainers — that generate a vendor bill automatically each period, so you don’t re-enter the same bill over and over.
How it works
Section titled “How it works”Set up a template with a vendor, one or more expense lines, and a frequency (weekly / monthly / quarterly / annually) starting from a start date (with an optional end date). Each period a daily job generates the bill, dated on the due date, and catches up any periods it missed.
| Behavior | Effect |
|---|---|
| Draft by default | Each generated bill lands as a draft for a bookkeeper to review and post |
| Auto-post | Turn this on and each occurrence posts to the ledger immediately (and, for matter lines, runs the cost-recovery loop just like a hand-entered bill — see Matter-allocated lines) |
| Payment terms | Set the generated bill’s due date (Net-N days) |
| Active toggle | Stops future generation without deleting history; bills already generated are untouched |
Matter-allocated lines
Section titled “Matter-allocated lines”A line assigned to a matter is a recoverable client cost: it capitalizes to the 1210 recoverable asset and bills to the client through invoicing, the same as on a hand-entered vendor bill. Leave a line as Org overhead for firm costs (rent, software).
Three things are specific to a template, because the bills it generates post unattended:
- A matter line needs no expense account. It capitalizes to 1210 and never touches a 5xxx expense account, so the expense account is left blank. An Org overhead line still requires one.
- Its client-facing description is required, and is written once — here. That text is what your client reads on their invoice. Bills from this template post overnight with nobody present to review the wording, so the review happens at the one moment somebody is in the room: template creation. The line’s own description stays the firm’s internal A/P note and is never shown to the client.
- Acting as agent carries through to every generated bill. On an agent (pass-through) line the firm paid the cost as the client’s agent, so no input tax credit is claimed: the tax-inclusive total capitalizes to 1210 and recovers from the client in full, with no output tax on the recovery. A principal line capitalizes the pre-tax amount and its input tax flows to 1290. Agency is fact-specific — the authorities, and counsel’s note on them, are on Matters ▸ Accounting ▸ Disbursements.
Permissions and scope
Section titled “Permissions and scope”| Role | View | Manage |
|---|---|---|
| Owner / Admin / Bookkeeping Management add-on | ✓ | ✓ |
| Member | ✗ | ✗ |
Troubleshooting
Section titled “Troubleshooting”| Symptom | Most likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| No bill generated this period | Template is inactive, or start date is in the future | Activate the template; check start/end dates |
| Generated bill not on the ledger | Auto-post is off (draft) | Review and post the draft, or enable auto-post |
| Duplicate bills | Manual bill entered alongside the recurring one | Delete the duplicate draft |
| Bill auto-posted, but the matter shows no recoverable cost | The bill’s journal entry could not be written — most often the 1210 Client Disbursements Recoverable account is missing from the chart of accounts | Add the missing account under Settings ▸ Accounting ▸ Chart of Accounts, then void and re-post the bill. The recoverable cost is deliberately not created when its 1210 debit was not, so the ledger and the matter cannot disagree |
Related pages
Section titled “Related pages”- Accounting ▸ Vendor Bills — one-off vendor bills (the same posting model)
- Accounting ▸ AP Reports — outstanding payables aging