Subscriptions: recurring orders and expenses

Why it matters

A service billed every month, or a rent paid every quarter, is easy to forget when you have to re-enter it by hand. A subscription recreates the document at each due date: all you have to do is collect it or pay it.

Summary

A Genuka subscription automatically repeats an order (a recurring sale to a customer) or an expense (a rent, a supplier subscription): at each due date, a copy of the reference document is created, awaiting payment. It is an internal automation for the merchant: the customer does not subscribe by themselves online.

Prerequisites

• orders.view to see the Subscriptions page; orders.create or orders.update to create and manage a subscription.
• An existing order or expense to repeat (or to create at the same time, see below).

Where to find it

There is no entry in the side menu: Settings › Sales › Subscriptions (/subscriptions), "Manage your recurring orders and expenses". Page search also finds it ("subscriptions", "recurring").

Steps: from the Subscriptions page

1. Click New subscription.
2. Document to repeat: choose Order or Expense, then the existing document to repeat.
3. Recurrence: Frequency (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Half-yearly, Yearly), Interval (e.g. 2 for "every 2 months"), Start date, and an optional End date: the last day billed, included.
4. Create subscription. Message shown: "A copy of this order will be generated automatically on every due date."

Steps: directly from an order or an expense

1. In the order (or expense) form, Subscription card, tick Recurring order (or Recurring expense).
2. Choose the Frequency and the Interval.
3. Save: "This order will be automatically recreated every … starting from the order date (at the time of the order)."

What happens at each due date

• Every day, Genuka generates the documents of active subscriptions that have reached their due date.
• Order: a copy of the reference order, new reference, dated today (at the time of the original order), payment and delivery set back to pending. The copy becomes the new reference.
• Expense: a copy of the expense, payment pending.
• The first copy is created one period after the start date: the reference document covers the first period.
• If several due dates were missed, one catch-up document is created, then the schedule restarts.
• End date: no copy is created for a due date that falls after that day (included, in the company's time zone). A due date falling on the same day is still generated. The next day, the subscription becomes Expired, whether it was active or paused.
• Generated documents carry the mention "Automatic subscription renewal" with the Manage subscription link.

Manage a subscription

Actions menu of each row (or in bulk, up to 200 at a time):

Statuses: Active, Paused, Canceled, Expired. The tiles at the top of the page count active, paused, canceled and the total.

Edge cases and common mistakes

• Generate now after the end date: refused with the message "This subscription ended on …: no document can be generated after its end date."
• An expired subscription cannot be restarted: "Resume" only applies to paused subscriptions. To keep billing this customer, create a new subscription.
• The customer is not notified. Generating a subscription order sends no message to the customer. To notify them, create an automation triggered by "An order is created" with the "Send a WhatsApp message" step (see "Get notified of orders and payments").
• No automatic collection. Each copy arrives awaiting payment: collect it like a normal order.
• Changing the frequency: go through the reference order or expense (Subscription card), then save.

FAQ

How do I bill a customer automatically every month? Create their order once, then a monthly subscription on that order. A new order awaiting payment will be created every month.

Can I stop a subscription on a specific date? Yes: fill in an end date. The last document is the one whose due date falls on that day or before; the subscription then becomes Expired. To stop it right away, use Cancel.

Can my customers subscribe by themselves on my online store? No, subscriptions are created by the merchant from the dashboard.

See also

• Create an order (creer-commande)
• Get notified of orders and payments (notifications-commandes)