There are occasions when you may have a regular amount that you wish to Invoice over a recurring period (e.g. you wish to charge for a service every month, quarter or year).

To accomplish this within OpenCRM you can use the Recurring options on a Sales Order.

To set up a recurring Sales Order

Step 1. You will need to create a new Sales Order which can be done from a Quote using the create Sales Order option OR by selecting any of the New Sales Order options available in OpenCRM.

Step 2. When you are editing the Sales Order you will need to set some values telling this Sales Order that it needs to recur.

These settings are located on the Sales Order - Recurring Information panel;

• To activate the Recurring feature you will need to select the Tick Box on the left of this block
• You should set a date for the recurrence to begin
• As well as the recurrence period - the defaults here are Monthly, Quarterly and Annually. If you have any specific requirements for other recurrence periods speak to your account manager at OpenCRM and they will be able to advise you on the effort required and whether this will incur any additional costs to customise.
• You should also set the end date for the last recurrence
• You will need to set the 'Invoice Template' that you wish to trigger.

Note : the end date for the last recurrence is automatically set as the Sales Order DUE DATE. This SO will then appear on your Expiring Sales Orders grid when you need to review the last payment due.

Step 3. When you save the Sales Order (behind the scenes) a number of linked scheduled 'recurrences' are created one for each of the periodic payments.

Note : you can view all Recurring Sales Orders by filtering Sales Orders using the tick box that activates the recurring feature. Remember when dealing with tick boxes you would set the value to be 1 if you are looking for those records that have been selected.

How do I get to see when the recurring Sales Order is due?

On the Dashboard you are able to add a grid that is called "Recurring Sales Orders". To do this you should follow these steps;

• Select My Account
• Select the Homepage Order button
• By clicking and dragging move the Recurring Sales Order entry into the top section - position this where you would like it to appear
• Save changes by selecting the 'update system' button

This will add a grid to your Home page that looks similar to this;

This grid allows you to run reports/filters that show you what Recurring Sales Orders have recurrences due in the date period you select at the top of the grid.

There are also options to filter the Recurring Sales Orders by assigned user, cost centre, a specific company OR a recurrence type (Monthly, Quarterly, Annually etc...).

The main columns for this grid allow you to see the Subject of the SO, the related Company, the Total Amount for this recurrence, who the SO is assigned to, any cost centre that you have associated with this SO, the type of recurrence, the actual recurrence date and the current status of this specific recurrence.

Note : Recur Status - this column specifically shows the current status of this recurrence. If the recurrence has yet to be Invoiced it will be blank.

By selecting the New Invoice option on the right of the grid you are able to create an Invoice for this specific recurrence date. You can then save the invoice and process it in the same way that you would when creating an Invoice manually. The values that are set on the SO are automatically transferred across to the New Invoice.

The Recur Status will change to reflect that this recurrence has been Invoiced.

The foot of the Recurring Sales Order grid gives you some useful statistics, displaying the total value of the SO's listed in this filter, the total amount that has been invoiced and also how much is outstanding (not yet invoiced)