Recurring invoices, cards on file and late fees

For a retainer, a maintenance contract or a subscription box, a recurring plan raises the same invoice on a schedule.

Recurring invoices

A plan says who it bills, how often, from when and until when, and what to do with each invoice it raises. Every plan is on the Recurring tab beside Invoices, and a client's plans are on the Recurring invoices card on their Sales tab. Reports → Recurring revenue lists every plan.

The template invoice

A plan points at a draft invoice, written with the ordinary editor, and copies its lines onto every invoice it raises. To change what a plan bills, open its template and edit the lines. The template stays a draft. Each invoice raised from it gets a new number, today's dates and today's tax rates, and prints the workspace's current invoice terms.

Starting one

• Make recurring on an invoice you've written. It copies the invoice to a draft template and builds the plan around it, and leaves the original as it is. Deposits and late fees on the original aren't copied. The button isn't offered on a void invoice, or on a draft that's already another plan's template.
• New plan on the client's Recurring invoices card. Pick the client and one of their draft invoices.

The schedule

• Frequency: weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or every so many days. A monthly plan that started on the 31st bills on the 28th in February and goes back to the 31st in March.
• First invoice on: when the first one is raised. The schedule is checked every 15 minutes, so a plan starting today raises its first invoice within the quarter hour.
• Next invoice on (once the plan exists): when it runs next. Change it to skip a date or bring one forward. Until the first invoice is raised, changing First invoice on moves this too.
• Payable within: days from each invoice's date to its due date.
• Stop after a date, a number of invoices, or neither. A plan that has finished starts again when you set a later date or a bigger number.

What happens to each invoice

• Raise it as a draft, for someone to check.
• Raise it and email the client, with a link to pay.
• Raise it, email it and charge the card on file: the client's default card is charged on the due date, and a declined charge is retried.

Pause stops a plan without ending it. A plan resumed after its date has passed runs at the next date from now, instead of raising every invoice it missed. Run now raises the next invoice early, and the schedule won't raise a second one for the same date. On a plan set to email, Run now marks the invoice sent but doesn't email it.

Cancel plan asks first, then stops it. Invoices it already raised aren't touched. Resume brings a canceled plan back, the same way as a paused one.

A mistaken run is undone by voiding the invoice it raised, or deleting it while it's a draft. It then doesn't count toward Stop after, and its date can be raised again: set Next invoice on back to it. A plan that hasn't raised anything yet has Delete plan.

Cards on file

A saved payment method is a card or US bank account held by your payment processor. The number never reaches OrderDen. It's entered on the processor's own form, and OrderDen keeps a reference with the brand and last four digits.

You need a connected payment account first (Company Settings → Online payments).

Two ways to save one

• The client saves their own from their copy of an invoice, with "Pay automatically next time". They read the authorization wording and tick it themselves.
• You add one from the client page, once you confirm you have their written authorization.

Either way, OrderDen stores the consent with it: the exact words agreed to, when, from what address, and which of the two ways. That's what a dispute is decided on.

A client can have several methods. The default is the one a charge uses. Remove takes a method off file and removes it at the processor too.

Charging one

An invoice for a client with a card on file shows a Card on file panel: what's lined up, what happened last time, and a Charge now button that charges what's still owed.

When a charge runs, one of three things happens:

• It goes through. The payment is recorded like any other, with a receipt.
• The bank asks the cardholder to confirm it (3-D Secure). The client is emailed a link to confirm it, and the invoice waits. No automatic retry is made.
• It's declined. A scheduled charge is retried after 1, 3 and 7 days, then stops. The client is emailed after each decline that has a retry coming, and you're notified when the retries run out.

Every attempt is recorded on the invoice. Reports → Failed automatic charges lists the money that didn't arrive, split by whether another attempt is coming.

Late fees

Late fees are off by default. Turn them on in Company Settings → Sales defaults and choose:

• A percentage of the balance, which shrinks as the client pays, or a flat amount.
• A grace period: the days past due before any fee. Seven is common.
• A cap, as a percentage of the invoice, on the total fees can ever add.

Three limits always apply: no fee inside the grace period, at most one fee every 30 days per invoice, and never past the cap.

Turn on Never charge a late fee on a client's Money tab to exempt them, for the regular who always pays on the 20th, or a charity. Tax-exempt clients aren't exempt from late fees unless you turn this on.

A fee is added as an untaxed line on the invoice, and the client is emailed. An invoice's Details tab shows its Late fee card, with Waive for this invoice to stop fees on that one invoice. Make sure your terms say you charge late fees before you turn them on.

What it's worth

Reports → Recurring revenue shows what your running plans come to each month, per client, with what each has billed and when the next invoice is due. Frequencies are annualized before they're compared (a weekly plan is 52 invoices a year), so a mix of plans adds up correctly.

Through the API

Plans are /api/v1/recurring-invoices (with /pause, /resume and /run). A client's methods are at /api/v1/clients/{id}/payment-methods, and POST /api/v1/invoices/{id}/charge charges what's owed on one invoice. Saving a method isn't an API operation: it needs the processor's form in front of a person. See the API reference.