Recurring invoices
Set up a template that creates invoices weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly, with optional automatic validation, FTA submission and email.
A recurring invoice is a template with a schedule. On each due date Alya Books creates a normal tax invoice from it, numbers it from your series, and can validate, submit to the ASP and email it without anyone opening the editor. Use it for retainers, subscriptions, rent and service contracts.
Create a recurring invoice
- Go to Documents → Recurring Invoices and click New recurring invoice, or open the row menu of an existing invoice under Invoices and choose Make recurring to start from its content.
- Template: give it a name, pick the Customer, and fill currency, payment terms, language, project, references, subject, texts and notes as on an invoice. If the contact has contact persons or delivery addresses you can pick them here.
- Lines: add items with the product picker or type descriptions, quantities, unit prices and VAT. Price lists of the customer are applied when you pick an item.
- Schedule (right column):
- Frequency weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, yearly or custom dates, and Every N periods.
- Day of month (or Last day) for monthly and longer; Weekday for weekly.
- Start date, optional End date and Max invoices.
- Billed period: previous period (in arrears), current or next period (in advance). With Write the period into the invoice on, the invoicing period (BT-73/74) is filled.
- Period text is appended to the subject, for example
for {{periodMonth}} {{periodYear}}. - Issue date offset moves the invoice date a few days before or after the run date. The card lists the next six dates and their periods as you type.
- Automation: Validate on creation (off keeps drafts for review), Submit to the ASP, Email the invoice with recipients (or the contact person / customer email), and Test template.
- Click Save draft, then Activate.
Running
- Alya Books checks twice a day (02:00 and 18:45 UAE time) for active templates whose next run date has come and creates the invoices. If the app was paused for a while, up to twelve missed dates are caught up, one invoice per date.
- Generate now on the template (or Run N due now on the list) creates the invoice for today immediately.
- The Runs card on the template shows each date with the result and a link to the invoice; failures show the error and are retried at the next run. A date that falls in a locked period (filed VAT return or lock date) is skipped with the reason, and you get a notification.
- Pause stops the schedule; Resume continues from the next date. Cancel ends it for good. When the end date or the maximum number of invoices is reached the status becomes Completed.
Good to know
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When the invoicing period is filled in, weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and yearly schedules also state the Frequency of billing on the e-invoice. Custom dates and other intervals state none.
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Generated invoices are ordinary invoices: they appear under Invoices, follow the usual statuses, and can be edited while they are drafts. The invoice list can be filtered to one template through the Generated invoices entry of the row menu.
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Only one invoice is created per template and date, even if the runner is triggered twice.
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Submission needs a working ASP connection; with Test template on, invoices are marked TEST and never reach the live ASP.
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Owners, admins and accountants can create and run recurring invoices.
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Integrations can manage templates through the API and the MCP server (see docs.alyabooks.ai).