Schedule your invoices to the minute with iCount’s “Retainer” feature. Make it easier for your customers with fixed monthly fees to pay you!
iCount offers two retainer options, the tax invoice retainer and the pro-forma invoice retainer. Talk to your accountant or a tax professional to understand which type may be right for you!
Issued once a day by our system at 3pm, retainer invoices are in the hands of your customers immediately. If a fee is incurred after 3pm, the information for that transaction will appear on the following retainer invoice.
How to create a scheduled retainer
Creating a scheduled retainer is easy. Navigate to the Documents->New->Retainer
Once you select a customer, populate the data fields with information of your choosing.
Unlike a regular invoice, the retainer feature is more specific and contains more information. The new data fields are:
- Start date
- Every (number) of months
- Days for payment (days after document creation)
- Document type (tax invoice or proforma)
- Income type
- Currency
- Email/ receipt options
Paying Independently with a Credit Card on a Retainer
iCount’s system knows no bounds. If you have already linked your iCount account with a credit card portal, you are also able to send out a payment link with your retainer invoice. Your customer will receive an email with the information and an email with the payment link for easy access.
Once the retainer invoice is paid, the system will automatically record the transactions and issue receipts accordingly.
Populate Your Retainers with Dynamic Field Options
If you would like to auto generate some of your fields based on invoice details w, iCount has got your covered. Our easy to understand dynamic titles will ensure that your records are stored in an organized and retrievable way.
The following dynamic variables are available to you:
- {month_num} – will be replaced by the number of the current month
- {month_text} – will be replaced by the name of the current month
- {prev_month_num} – will be replaced by the number of the last month
- {prev_month_text} – will be replaced by the name of the last month
- {year} – will be replaced by the current year
- {prev_month_year} – will be replaced by the number of years from last month.
Imagine you want to charge a customer a fixed amount every month and show them the name of the month and year in the description. Simply put the field you’d like to populate in brackets and watch your preferred invoice titles generate.
In the above example, all retainers created will auto populate their month and year depending on when they have been generated.
