Recurring Bills, Expenses and Journals
Every business has a handful of entries that are the same every month. Set each one up once.
Go to Accounting > Recurring Items. Recurring customer invoices are separate and live under Sales; this page covers what you buy, spend and post.
Set one up
- Select New recurring item and choose what repeats: a supplier bill, an expense or a journal.
- Give it a name you will recognise in a list, such as Office rent or Monthly depreciation.
- Fill in the detail exactly as you would when capturing it by hand. This is the template every future entry is copied from.
- Choose the frequency and the date of the first one. Ends can be left empty to run until you stop it.
- Select Save. The Next column tells you the date the first entry will appear.
The list shows what each item is worth every time it runs, with a total for each group, so you can see what the business is committed to without opening anything. Paused items are left out of the total.
What arrives, and in what state
| What repeats | How it arrives | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Supplier bill | A draft supplier invoice | Approving a bill books what you owe. The real invoice may be for a different amount, so it waits for you to check it against the one that arrives. |
| Expense | An expense awaiting approval | Approving an expense posts it to your ledger. Nothing reaches your books unattended. |
| Journal | A posted journal | You wrote the journal yourself when you saved the template, which is your approval given in advance. |
When a period is locked
A recurring journal due in an accounting period you have already locked is not posted, and it is not moved into an open period either. Redating it would put the figure in the wrong set of books and nobody would ever know. Instead it is skipped, your company administrators are emailed, and the schedule carries on to the next period. If you still want that entry, unlock the period or post it by hand.
An expense whose VAT you cannot claim
Choose a category whose input VAT is denied under VAT Act s17(2), such as entertainment, a club subscription or a motor car, and the amount field asks for the figure including VAT. There is no VAT to claim back on these, so the whole amount the supplier charges you is the cost. For every other category the amount is excluding VAT and the VAT is added on. The form tells you which it is asking for.
Manage a schedule
- Pause stops generation without losing the schedule or its history. Resume starts it again.
- Edit changes the template for everything still to come. Entries already generated are not touched. Moving the start date moves the next occurrence with it, and there is a separate Next one is due field if you only want to shift the next one.
- Run now generates the current one immediately rather than waiting for the overnight run. If it does nothing it tells you why: paused, not started yet, not due yet, already run, or a locked period.
- History lists every attempt, most recent first, and links straight to the bill, expense or journal each successful run produced. Runs are never rewritten.
- Delete stops it for good. Anything it has already generated stays exactly where it is.