Monthly billing for account clients

When one invoice a month is the right choice

Corporate accounts, hotels and agencies often book many jobs a month and would rather pay one invoice than twenty. Their accounts teams match one number against one transfer, and so do you. Monthly billing is set per client on the commercial agreement, so your other clients keep being invoiced per booking.

Consolidated monthly billing needs a plan that includes it: Operations or Scale.

Setting it up

Open the client, select Commercial terms, and in the Commercial agreement set Billing mode to Consolidated monthly. Choose the Billing cycle day (1-28), the day the month closes for that client, and the Payment terms you agreed. The monthly invoice takes its terms from the agreement, so a client who negotiated longer terms gets them on the statement too.

How the monthly run works

4fleet checks every hour. On the client's cycle day, in your company's time zone, it collects the period since the previous cycle day and puts that client's completed bookings with no invoice yet onto one invoice. A booking that is not completed by then is not included and waits for a later run, so close your jobs on time.

The invoice is created as a draft. Whether it is then emailed depends on Auto-generated invoice status in Settings > Finance > Invoice automation: with Sent (automatically email to client) it goes out by itself, with Draft (review before sending) it waits for you to check and send it.

Why per-booking invoices skip these clients

The company switches that create an invoice when a booking is confirmed or completed leave consolidated clients alone, because an invoice on a single booking takes it out of the monthly run. The same applies to you: if you select Generate Invoice on one of that client's bookings, that booking is billed on its own and will not appear on the statement. Only do it when the client has asked for a separate invoice.

Keep the client in one currency

A monthly invoice holds one currency. If a client's bookings for the period are in more than one currency, the run for that client fails and no invoice is created. Book an account client in a single currency. After each cycle day, look in Accounting > Invoices for the client's statement; if it is not there and the client had completed jobs, check their bookings for a different currency or status before the client asks where their invoice is.