Two settings decide when a recurring customer gets invoiced. Cycle type shapes the billing window. Billing timing decides whether the invoice covers the period that just ended or the one about to start (see Advance vs. Arrears Billing).
Both have an org-wide default in Settings → Finance → Invoices and a per-customer override in the Edit Customer modal, so one book can hold a month-end municipality and a subscription-style customer at the same time.
The four cycle types
| Type | Window | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Calendar month | The 1st through month end | Everyone bills together at month end. The default. |
| Anniversary | The customer's own day through the day before it next month | Each customer's clock started when their unit dropped. |
| Fixed-day | A fixed length (commonly 28 days) from an anchor date | 13 periods a year matching four weekly visits. |
| Manual | No automatic window | You set the service period on each invoice yourself. |
Anniversary billing: the subscription model
A customer who started on the 8th bills on the 8th, forever. The customer next door who started on the 15th bills on the 15th. Nobody is moved onto a shared billing date.
This is how consumer subscriptions work, and it's how most rental books actually run — the rental clock starts the day the unit hits the ground.
The billing day is 1–28
Days 29, 30 and 31 aren't offered on purpose. February has no 30th, so a customer set to the 31st would silently skip or shift months. A customer whose real anniversary falls on the 29th–31st is set to 28 — the same convention every consumer subscription uses, and it guarantees they bill every month.
Setting a whole book at once
A book coming off another system usually has each customer's billing day implied by its invoice history — the day of the month their invoices consistently landed. During onboarding those days can be derived from an invoice export and set in one pass, instead of asking you to recall a hundred dates.
Renters vs. swappers
Not every recurring customer belongs on a cycle. If you swap units for contractors — deliver, swap, pick up, on no fixed schedule — that customer bills from the work, not the calendar. Their charges come from completed jobs, and a busy contractor's charges can be grouped onto one combined invoice instead of dozens.
The quick test: if a customer's invoice count varies month to month with how busy they are, they're a swapper and shouldn't be on a cycle. Putting a swapper on a rate-card cycle is the most common setup mistake when a book comes off another system.
Troubleshooting
Every customer is billing on the 1st. Their billing day was never set, so they're on the fallback. Set it per customer, or have onboarding bulk-set from your invoice history.
No drafts appear for a customer. Check that automatic cycle drafts are on in Settings → Finance → Invoices, and that the customer has active Rate Card rows. A customer with no live billing line has nothing to draft.
Can I use the 31st? No — use 28. It's the convention that guarantees the customer bills every month including February.