Recurring billing and the finance catalog - Pacten Guides
Two Setup screens that quietly remove work from every other one. Under Finance → Recurring and Finance → Catalog.
RECURRING
Charges that repeat
Raised without anybody remembering to.
A recurring charge bills a customer on a cycle — monthly or annually — without somebody raising an invoice each time. Each one has a state, and the states are what make a problem visible.
- Active — billing normally.
- Paused — deliberately stopped, and resumable.
- Cancelled — ended.
- Expired — reached its natural end.
- Failed — an attempt to bill did not succeed. This is the one that needs a person.
Watch out
Failed is not the same as cancelled. A failed charge means the customer still owes you and nothing has stopped — it simply did not go through. Left alone, it is revenue quietly not collected, which is why it has its own state rather than being folded into inactive.
THE CATALOG
The priced list documents draw from
Define it once, use it everywhere.
The finance catalog holds what you sell with its description and price, so invoice lines are consistent across everybody who raises one. Pulling a line from the catalog rather than typing it means the same thing is described the same way and priced the same way every time.
Tip
One-off lines are still fine — the catalog is a default, not a restriction. But if you find yourself typing the same line for the third time, it belongs in the catalog, and everything raised afterwards gets it right for free.
Back to the app
The five groups, and who can open them.