Make a bill recurring
Create a copy of a bill on a schedule, as a draft or submitted through your approval rules.
- Who can do this
- Owners, or people with Create bills; submitting each one also needs Approve bills
- Where
- Expenses & bills, then Bills
- You'll need
- A bill that is not void, for an active, approved vendor
On this page
Repeat a bill you get on a schedule, such as rent. Each copy gets a new bill number and is dated on its scheduled day.
Make the schedule
- Open the bill from Bills.
- Select Make recurring.
- Check the copied lines under What repeats.
- Enter a Schedule name.
- Choose Repeats and Every, then the day in On for weekly or On day for monthly.
- Enter a Start date of today or later.
- Under Ends, choose Never, After a number of times or On a date.
- Choose Save as a draft or Submit for approval.
- Check the Person each bill is created as. It's you, unless you're an owner, chose Save as a draft and choose someone else.
- Select Save schedule.
What each bill gets
Each bill copies the vendor, project, billing address, tax, discount, notes, terms, 1099 tracking, currency and lines. The vendor's invoice number is left blank, because each number belongs to one bill. This holds even when your business requires the number on new bills. The due date stays the same number of days after the bill date as on the original. Nonprofit lines keep their coding.
Save as a draft leaves each bill on the Draft tab of Bills until someone approves it. You can approve several drafts at once there.
Submit for approval sends each bill through your approval rules, as the Approve Bill button does. A bill that needs approval waits in Approvals, unposted. A bill that doesn't need approval posts on its date. You need Approve bills to choose it, and so does the person it runs as. A schedule that submits bills always runs as the person who saves it, so your approval rules treat them as the one submitting.
Every run checks the lines again with the bill form's rules. A vendor that is inactive or not approved, or an account on a line that is no longer active, makes that date fail, and nothing is created for it. After 3 such failures in a row, the schedule pauses. See Recurring invoices, bills and journal entries for run history and failure emails.