This functionality is available only for Team and Business level plans. It is not available for Starter or Solo plans.
There is no additional charge or fee associated with this functionality. Only those invoices with payment terms set to auto-charge stored cards will be subject to an additional 0.5% processing fee through Stripe. The action of auto-generating and sending invoices to clients has no associated fee.
Invoicing is an important part of any business, but it can also result in a lot of administrative work. BusyPaws makes it easy to ensure all of your bookings get invoiced by allowing you to set up automated invoicing on a pre-set schedule. Whether you run a pet care business that prefers to invoice clients for the days their pet attended at the end of each week, or you simply wish to make sure you haven't missed invoices for any manually scheduled bookings, automated billing helps ensure you have your invoicing bases covered. With this functionality enabled, you can rest easy knowing that none of your bookings will go unpaid!
In this help guide we will explore everything you need to know about setting up automated billing on your account.
Note that you can also configure invoices to be automatically generated when a client self-books. For more information on those settings, see the Configuring Invoicing for Self-Booking section of our guide on Invoice Basics.
Enabling Automated Billing
To configure automated scheduled billing on your account, start by clicking the gear icon at the bottom of the left-hand menu bar.
Then select "Invoices" from the "Product Configuration" section.
The Automated Billing section is located near the bottom of the Invoice & Payment Settings page, beneath the Payments section.
Use the "Enabled" and "Disabled" buttons to control whether or not automated billing is active on your account. The selected option will display highlighted in purple. By default, automated billing will be disabled.
After selecting the "Enabled" button additional automatic billing settings will populate.
Start by selecting the payment term you wish to use. The "Payment Term" drop-down will include all of the payment terms you have configured for your account.
Set the Billing Frequency field to Weekly (once a week), Bi-Weekly (once every 2 weeks), or Monthly (once a month). If Weekly or Bi-Weekly is chosen, the "Bill On" section will include buttons to choose the weekday on which invoices will be sent to clients. Click on any weekday to set invoicing to that day.
If Monthly is chosen, the weekday buttons will be replaced with an integer field that can be used to set the day of the month on which invoices will be sent. Type a value into the field or use the up/down arrows to adjust the value in increments of 1. This field has a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 31.
Once you've set the invoicing frequency, use the toggles near the bottom of the setting options to control which bookings are included on your invoices. When "Invoice Past Bookings" is enabled (purple), the generated invoices will automatically include any past bookings that are yet uninvoiced. Similarly, when "Invoice Future Bookings" is enabled (purple), the generated invoices will automatically include any future bookings that are yet uninvoiced.
When the past/future toggles are enabled, an additional field will appear below. The "Up to X Days in the Past" and "Up to X Days in the Future" fields are used to further control which bookings the system includes in your automated invoicing. Only bookings falling within the selected range will be automatically invoiced.
Enter a value into the field or use the up/down arrows to adjust the value in increments of 1.
When you are happy with your chosen settings, click the "Update Automated Billing Settings" button to apply them to your account.
If you navigate away from the settings page prior to selecting the update button your changes will not be saved to your account.
Managing Automated Invoices
When automated billing has been enabled on your account the system will begin generating invoices automatically for you. To allow you to easily track what invoices will be sent out on your scheduled invoice date, the system will generate invoice previews leading up to that date.
Invoice previews are similar to draft invoices in that they are not visible to clients, however (unlike drafts) they cannot be manually edited. Previews are generated and updated once daily (around midnight) every day leading up to your set invoice date. On the invoice date they are sent to clients for payment.
To locate your previews, start by clicking the "Invoices" icon in the left-hand menu bar to navigate to your Invoices Index.
From there, open the "Preview" tab.
This tab will list all of your existing invoice previews. Each invoice is listed with its number, associated client name, the date on which it was last updated. Select any listed Preview to open its information page.
Invoice previews show much of the same information as regular invoices. The biggest difference is the available actions. Previews can only be converted to a draft (for manual edits or payment) or deleted. Buttons for both actions can be found at the top of any preview invoice's information page.
If an invoice preview is deleted, and nothing changes for the bookings that were included (i.e. the bookings are not deleted or invoiced) the system will automatically generate a new preview for those same bookings the next time your previews are updated.
After a preview invoice is manually changed to draft status, the system will treat it as any other draft. This means that the invoice will not be automatically sent out with your the other preview invoices on your set billing date. Draft invoices need to be sent to clients manually.
Any changes made to your automated billing settings will update at midnight. This includes changing the invoice date, adjusting the payment terms, and enabling/disabling automated invoicing altogether.
To learn more about invoicing in BusyPaws, check out our other available help guides on the topic: