Recurring Billing Timing and sync to Ledger

This article explains when OnboardMe Recurring Billing creates bills, what happens if a proposal is accepted after the schedule start date, and when those bills are sent to your ledger (Xero is the example). It complements the setup guide OnboardMe Recurring Billing.

Before you start

• The proposal uses OnboardMe Recurring Billing (not Xero Repeating Invoices).

• The schedule is active, and the proposal is Accepted (Completed, Due for Renewal, and Renewed also qualify). Draft or sent proposals are not billed.

• Check Recurring billing catch-up under Settings > Business details > Payment Settings (the same setting also appears under System Settings > Billings).

How often bills are created

OnboardMe does not create recurring bills at the moment a proposal is signed. A background process runs three times a day and creates bills for every active schedule that is due on that calendar day.

Each run:

• Creates one OnboardMe bill per due period (or several, if Bill missed periods is on: see below).

• Advances the schedule to the next period.

• Records the result in the schedule's Run history.

For Australian practices, recurring bills are created at:

• 2:30 am

• 11:30 am

• 7:30 pm

Those times are Sydney time. UK and South Africa practices use the same clock times in their local time. New Zealand practices follow the Sydney schedule; OnboardMe shows the converted New Zealand times in the app.

If you do not want to wait for the next window, open the schedule in Bill Payments > Recurring Billing and use Run due bills (same process as the background job) or Run next bill now (creates today's bill only, and does not catch up missed periods).

How often bills sync to Xero

Creating the bill in OnboardMe and pushing it to Xero are two separate jobs. Recurring billing runs 30 minutes before the Xero invoice sync, so a bill created in a window is usually ready for that same window's ledger push.

For Australian practices, unsynced bills whose bill date is today (or earlier) are pushed to Xero at:

• 3:00 am

• 12:00 pm (noon)

• 8:00 pm

Again, those times are Sydney time. You can also sync a bill manually from the Bills tab before the next scheduled push.

Other ledgers use the same three daily windows, with a short offset: QuickBooks about 15 minutes after the hour, GreatSoft / MYOB about 30 minutes after the hour. FreeAgent is not auto-synced on this timetable; sync those bills from the Bills tab.

Recurring billing catch-up

If a proposal is accepted after the recurring start date, one or more run dates may already have passed. The practice setting Recurring billing catch-up controls what happens on the next background run.

Bill missed periods

OnboardMe creates a bill for each unbilled period from the schedule start date through today.

• Up to 24 missed periods are created in one run. Any remaining periods continue on the next scheduled run.

• Each catch-up invoice is dated today, not the original period date. Line descriptions and date placeholders still describe the period they cover.

• For those past periods, the due date is set to the day after the bill is generated (not your usual invoice due days). That keeps payment collection (including Pinch) from treating the bill as already overdue.

Reset schedule (no missed bills)

Missed periods are not billed. For a newly accepted proposal that has never billed, OnboardMe resets the start and next run to today and creates one bill dated today. Future runs then follow the frequency from today.

Example: proposal accepted today

A monthly recurring schedule starts on 1 July. The client accepts the proposal today, 9 September. Nothing is billed at the moment of acceptance. The next background run after acceptance does the work.

If catch-up is Bill missed periods

1. The next recurring run creates three bills: 1 July, 1 August, and 1 September.

2. All three invoices are dated 9 September.

3. About 30 minutes later, the Xero job pushes those bills (they are dated today, so they are eligible in the same window).

Typical wait, in Sydney time:

So a proposal accepted at 2:00 pm today, with Bill missed periods, would usually create the catch-up bills at 7:30 pm and sync them to Xero at 8:00 pm.

If catch-up is Reset schedule

1. July and August are not billed.

2. One bill is created, dated today.

3. The next run is one month from today (for a monthly schedule).

4. That single bill syncs to Xero on the same timetable as the table above.

What to check if bills have not appeared

1. Confirm the proposal status is Accepted (or Completed / Due for Renewal / Renewed).

2. Confirm the schedule is active and the start date is not in the future.

3. Wait until the next recurring window, or use Run due bills.

4. Open Run history on the schedule for errors.

5. If the bill exists in OnboardMe but not in Xero, wait for the next ledger window or sync it from the Bills tab.

Related

• OnboardMe Recurring Billing

• Bill Narration placeholders