OpenCRM has the ability to auto generate and email invoices or sales order based on a recurring pattern.

This is done by setting up a recurring Sales Order - setting the recurring period to reflect when the invoices or sales orders should be created and sent.

Click Here to learn about recurring Sales Orders

The recurring Sales Order will need to have an Invoice / Sales Order PDF Template selected, which is used to determine which Invoice or Sales Order style you wish to send out - this is the PDF that is attached to the email which is sent to your accounts contact.

To set up the feature (including setting individual elements for Monthly, Quarterly and Annual recurring types) go to Settings > Additional Settings > Auto Invoice/Sales Order Settings:

These parameters allow you to set different time schedules for the differing types of recurrence you may have. As an example, you may wish to send all of your monthly invoices or sales orders out on a common date, the 1st of the month but have Quarterly and Annual invoices/sales order sent out 30 days before their recur date. Setting these options will allow you to manage the individual schedules.

You are able to set a specific email template that will be used by these recurring types - so that you can explain in more detail what is attached - for example, your monthly invoices may be collected by Direct Debit and therefore there is nothing for your customer to do, if you expect payment for Quarterly invoices your email template can flag this up and even suggest the expected payment date to avoid any disruption of service.

You can enable / disable the feature, select whether the recurring sales order will generate a Sales Order or an Invoice, and whether the record should be created and emailed or just created.

Once the feature is set up and turned on whenever a recurring Sales Order is due for billing an Invoice or Sales Order will be created and saved with a copy of this emailed to the accounts contact. The attached PDF will use the template specified on the recurring sales order.

Accounts Contact : by default OpenCRM will send an Auto Invoice / Sales Orders in the following sequence, Accounts billing address, linked Contact and then linked Company. If there is no specified billing address, the contact email address will be used, if a contact is not linked or there is no email address on the Contact the primary email address that is held on the Company record will be used.

Error reports : If the Auto Invoice or Sales Order cannot be sent the record will still be created and saved and will be included in a notification of failed Auto Invoices. This is an email sent to the users that have been specified under the Auto Invoice/Sales Order settings section mentioned above.

To explain how the dates are set on the recurring sales order / invoice:

1. I have set my monthly recurring invoices to be generated on the 12th day of the month, at 9am:

2. Here is a Sales Order which I have set to recur every month:

3. Therefore, on the 3rd day of subsequent months (after 03-08-2018), whilst the Sales Order is still within its recurring period, an Invoice will be automatically generated and emailed. Here is an example that was generated on the 12-04-2019, as per the rules configured above. As you can see, the Due Date follows on the monthly sequence from the original Due Date of the Sales Order - the next available 3rd of the month being 03-05-2019. The date on which the recurring Invoice was generated is set as the Invoice Date.