One single invoice with payment plan

Creating a new recurring template with a single invoice and a payment plan starts off the same as with virtually any process in the marinacloud application - in the top left corner, click Action and select 'Create new recurring template'. Doing so will open up the following form (upper half):

The upper half of this form is the standard form for entering customer data.

The only added element worth mentioning is the description box. Here you can enter a general description for the recurring invoice that will later appear on your list of invoices. Adding a description might make a recurring invoice easier to track down and identify.

However, it is the bottom half that holds the core features of the recurring invoices feature.

Multiple recurring invoices vs. One single invoice with payment plan: This is the part where our two paths diverge. In this example, we will choose the option of one single invoice with payment plan.

You will immediately notice that choosing this option will remove the Conversion box on the right side of the form. This box is missing here because there will be no documents to convert – we will create only a single invoice and then the customer will pay it off in installments.

Start date: This box indicates the date when the recurring invoice plan is initiated

First invoice: This box indicates when the first invoice will be issued

Schema: Two options - Quarterly (send one invoice every three months) and Monthly (send one invoice every month)

Payment term: Enter the period in which the customer is expected to pay the invoice

Surcharge: When charging a customer for a contractual service, since your customer is paying for a service in installments, you can add a surcharge to their payment. Enter the percentual value of the surcharge here. This feature has not been released yet.

Once we have selected all of the traits of our new recurring invoices, we click Generate plan and the plan is generated below.

We can double-check if everything is alright and then move to the next trainstop:

This is where we add our service and potentially some other data, such as discounts and the like, same as with a regular invoice. Once we've taken care of that, we move to the following trainstop, where our invoice is generated. First, we have a Preview of the document and after confirming that everything is as planned, we generate the document with the appropriate invoice number, code etc. and once we finalize this process, we head over to our Invoices module and we find the invoice we just generated.

Notice that the invoice has the status Open. There are three possible statuses for each individual invoice:

Open: the invoice is unpaid, but its due date has not yet passed

Overdue: the invoice is unpaid and its due date has passed

Paid: the invoice has been paid

It is possible to filter the invoices by status. Therefore, in order to know which invoices are overdue and require your attention, simply apply the filter to show only Overdue invoices. Once you have located the recurring payment document that needs one installment settled, click the icon to the left of the document and a dropdown menu will appear.

Select 'Receive partial payment according to the payment plan' and the payment form will open up. Process the payment and you will return to the Invoice module, where you will see that a partial payment has been processed, and the invoice's due date has been pushed to the due date of the next partial payment.

Additionally, you can check the unpaid amount by clicking the OPEN box. 

Once all the installments have been paid, the invoice will automatically be transferred into the PAID status and you will not be able to receive further partial payments for this invoice.