ServiceCore offers two options for billing a rental: One-Time or Recurring.

By "Recurring" billing, we mean that you can create a recurring invoice with rental rates and service line items based on a specific billing interval. It's like a "template" for the rental that you set up once and then use to create new invoices for this rental every month, 28 days, or whatever billing interval you choose. Then each time you create an invoice from the recurring invoice, each service and rate will carry over to the next invoice.

Examples of when to use recurring billing would be for construction rentals, long-term rentals, events or festivals that last more than a few weeks or months, etc.

In this article, you'll learn how to create an invoice for a rental with billing type of "Recurring."

Before You Start

Here are a few things to keep in mind before you create a rental invoice with recurring billing:

1. Before creating a rental invoice, you must first create a rental
2. You must have Manager, Admin or Owner level permission to create a rental and an invoice for that rental
3. Rental invoices can only be created for one job site at a time
4. Rental invoices can only have jobs and services for one rental at a time

About One-Time Charges

Service line items on recurring invoices will appear on each subsequent invoice generated from the recurring invoice. This means that there are no one-time charges on recurring invoices. For example, if you charge a delivery fee at the beginning of a rental, you will need to manually remove the delivery fee from the recurring invoice before you create a second invoice. If you don't, each recurring invoice will show a delivery fee.

Instead, if you want to charge a one-time delivery fee, you can create a separate (non-recurring) invoice for this rental will a billing type of Event. Only services and rates you want to charge every time for each billing interval should be included on recurring invoices.

To Enable AutoPay for Recurring Invoices

Recurring invoices have the advantage of allowing you to setup AutoPay. This means that each time you create a new invoice from the recurring invoice, the credit card associated with the invoice will automatically be charged for the recurring invoice amount. After the card is charged, a receipt will be created automatically. If your customer is setup for email communication, the email receipt will send automatically to your customer. If your customer is setup for print communication, you will be able to print and send the PDF receipt to your customer.

To Enable AutoPay for recurring invoices, you will need to first:

1. Setup your ServiceCore account for credit card processing through Clover Connect or Authorize.net
2. Have a saved credit card for the customer that will be paying the recurring invoice (this article explains how to add a credit or debit card for a customer)

Create a Rental Invoice with Recurring Billing

To create a rental invoice with recurring billing, follow these steps:

1. Create a rental
2. If you have already created the rental, navigate to Rentals
3. Use the Filter by options and the search box to narrow your list of results
   
4. Locate the rental
5. Click View Rental
   
6. Scroll down to the Recurring invoices section
7. Click on Create Recurring Invoice
   
   
8. Review the information in the upper portion of the page for accuracy
9. Choose if you want to bill in Arrears or in Advance
   
10. Choose the billing Interval of daily, weekly, monthly or yearly
    
11. Choose how often from the every text box
    
12. If you choose Monthly, you will also choose what day of the month the interval should repeat
    
13. Choose a Start date for the recurring invoice (it will default to the same date at the first delivery job of the rental)
14. Any rental rates associated with this rental will appear in the Rental Rates section under Services with the prorated quantity calculated automatically
    
15. If you don't have rental rates for this rental yet, and you want to prorate rental rates for the time period you chose above, click Add Rental Rates
16. In the lightbox that appears, you will see the name and quantity of products on this rental
    
17. Click the Choose Service dropdown for the product that should have rental rates
18. Choose the service you want to add as a rental rate from the list of options that appear
    
19. After you add a service, you will see the default description, rate and billing period for this service and you can edit these if needed
    
20. Choose a class for each rental rate, if applicable (or click Apply to all to apply the same class to all rental rates)
21. Check the box for Tax if you want to charge tax on this rental rate
22. If you need to remove a rental rate, click the trash can icon
23. Continue adding services for all products
24. Once you're finished, click Save
25. Use the search box below the Services table to add any additional services to this recurring invoice
    
26. Choose a Tax Code
27. Finish filling out the rest of the form
28. If you have surcharges created in your company settings you will see a section on invoices called Surcharges
29. You can add surcharges to invoices by using the search box
    
30. Percentage surcharges will be automatically calculated on the Invoice Subtotal on all invoice
    
31. Once you're finished, click Save

Additional Resources

For additional information and further reading about the topics above, please check out these help articles:

1. About Proration
2. Create a Rental Invoice with One-Time Billing
3. Use Batch Billing for Recurring Invoices
4. Add Rental Rates
5. Assign a Service to an Inventory Product to Show as a Rental Rate Option