When a business charges customers recurrently, it needs a reliable billing system to track payments, avoid errors, and maintain a sustainable cash flow.
For example, companies that provide SaaS services, memberships, or other subscription-based products can easily lose track of renewals or payment delays when invoices are created manually.
Odoo brings structure to this process. It automatically generates and posts invoices, processes payments, and keeps each subscription consistently updated across Sales and Accounting.
See how to set up Odoo recurring invoices, and ensure that your subscription billing runs without errors and every invoice is posted on time.
Odoo recurring invoices automate your subscription billing
Businesses that rely on ongoing contracts or subscriptions often struggle to keep billing consistent across customers and service periods.
When invoices are created manually, it’s easy to miss renewal dates or lose track of which payments belong to which contract. This delay disrupts both cash flow and a customer’s trust in your service.
Odoo solves this by linking invoices directly to each subscription and syncing them with accounting.
Every active subscription automatically:
- Generates its invoices on schedule
- Posts payments to the right accounts
- Updates the customer record in real time
- Keeps track of future invoices.
Kanban view of Subscriptions in Odoo 19, split by Recurring Plans.
You can set up Odoo recurring invoices to manage all ongoing subscriptions, define when and how often each customer is billed, and keep your accounting books accurate for past and incoming subscription payments.
In short, Odoo’s recurring invoice feature offers several benefits:
- Invoice accuracy: Each invoice is generated directly from the customer’s active contract, making sure that billing stays aligned with service periods and renewal terms
- Automated reconciliation: Invoices are automatically posted and reconciled with incoming payments; future invoices are also trackable in Accounting
- Predictable cash flow and revenue: Automated billing and collections keep cash flow stable and reduce the risk of delayed or missed payments
- Centralised renewal management: Subscription statuses, next invoice dates, and payment histories are tracked in one place, making it easy to monitor recurring revenue.
Step-by-step guide to set up Odoo recurring invoices
Learn how to set up and automate Odoo recurring invoices in version 19:
1. Check your Scheduled Actions setup
In Odoo Subscriptions, a Scheduled Action initiates a recurrent billing process for subscriptions.
This is turned on by default and can be accessed when you’re in Developer mode. To check this, go to Settings → Technical → Automation → Scheduled Actions.
There, type in Subscription and you’ll see the following:
Click on Sale Subscription: generate recurring invoices and payments, and if the checkbox is green with a check mark, it means that the Scheduled Action is active.
For this Scheduled Action to work properly, you need to have your Deferred Expense and Deferred Revenue accounts set up in Accounting.
To set them up, navigate to Accounting → Configuration → Settings. Both accounts can be configured in the Default Accounts section.
2. Define your Recurring Plans and set a billing period
Before you can create a recurring invoice, you need to set up your subscriptions with the right recurrence periods to inform billing.
To do so, go to Subscriptions → Configuration → Recurring Plans.
By default, Odoo includes commonly used periods (Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly, etc.)
To create a custom Recurring Plan, click on New and fill out the fields accordingly.
- Billing Period: How often a subscription is billed
- Automatic Closing: If the subscription is not paid on time, how long will it take to close it automatically
- Invoice Email Template: Template to send the invoice automatically
- Products: If you want this plan to be specific to select products/services only.
Please note: Using days as a unit of time for subscription recurrence is not supported in Odoo Subscriptions to avoid daily billing. This unit of time is only available in Odoo Rentals.
3. Create a new subscription
As an example, we’ll be using an IT services provider that bills its clients monthly for hosting.
First, you need to make sure that your product is configured correctly. For that, go to Subscriptions → Products and select your product.
On the General Information tab, check that only the Sales and Subscription boxes are ticked, that Create on Order is set to Nothing, and that Invoicing Policy is set to Prepaid/Fixed Price (see image below).
On the Recurring prices tab, check that you have added the Recurring Plan you set up and are using for this product.
Once this is in order, you’re ready to create your subscription. Go to Subscriptions → Subscriptions → New. There, you can create a new subscription by filling in the following fields:
- Customer
- Quotation Template (if applicable)
- Quotation Date
- Recurring Plan (add the one you created)
- Pricelist
- Payment Terms.
Odoo will use the information you set up in the Recurring Plan field to update the next invoice dates going forward.
4. Confirm the subscription and trigger your Odoo recurring invoices
Once your Sales Order for the subscription has been set in place and confirmed, you can click on Create Invoice. When the pop-up window appears, confirm that it’s a regular payment and click on Create Draft.
Confirm your Draft Invoice, which will include all your recurrent plan information, to post your invoice.
The invoice will now show the terms of payment for your subscription – in this case, that this invoice is applicable from October 2025 to November 2025.
Now, you can go back to the Sale Order. You’ll see that it’s marked as In Progress, and a new Next Invoice field will appear, where you can see when it will be posted to the customer – in this case, for next month.
In your Accounting app, you’ll also be able to see that next month’s invoice is already marked as a journal entry in draft.
Your Odoo recurring invoices are now ready to be posted once the ongoing billing we have set up is automatically triggered.
Let’s discuss how to set up your subscriptions in Odoo
Talk to our Odoo experts to discuss your current subscription setups and how we can help you improve your cash flow and sales scalability with Odoo!