Set Up Recurring Payments

If your business charges customers on a regular schedule — monthly subscriptions, weekly services, bi-weekly retainers, or anything in between — recurring billing automates the entire process. Set it up once, and payments happen automatically.

This guide covers:

Creating your first recurring subscription
Choosing the right billing schedule
Handling failed payments gracefully
Monitoring your billing activity

Why Automate Billing?

Manual invoicing is tedious and error-prone. You forget to send one, the customer forgets to pay another, and suddenly you're spending hours chasing payments instead of running your business.

With recurring billing:

Charges happen automatically on schedule
Failed payments retry without your intervention
You get alerts when something needs attention
Your customers get a consistent, predictable billing experience

Prerequisites

An IdealVibe account with billing features enabled
At least one customer with a payment method on file (credit card, ACH, or Stripe)

Step 1: Understand Billing Frequencies

IdealVibe supports five billing frequencies. Choose the one that matches your business:

Frequency	How It Works	Good For
Weekly	Charges every 7 days from start date	Weekly services, cleaning, delivery
Bi-Weekly	Charges every 14 days from start date	Payroll-adjacent billing, bi-weekly services
Every 4 Weeks	Charges every 28 days from start date	Consistent 4-week cycles (not calendar monthly)
Monthly	Charges on the same day each month	Subscriptions, SaaS, memberships, rent
One-Time (Future)	Charges once on a specific future date	Deposits, setup fees, delayed charges

Monthly vs. Every 4 Weeks: Monthly charges happen on the same calendar day (e.g., the 15th of every month). Every 4 Weeks charges happen exactly 28 days apart — which means the day of the week stays the same but the calendar date shifts.

A Note About Short Months

What happens when a subscription is set to charge on the 31st, but the month only has 30 days (or 28 in February)?

IdealVibe handles this automatically: if the scheduled day doesn't exist in the current month, the charge runs on the last day of that month. A subscription set for the 31st will charge on February 28th (or 29th in a leap year), April 30th, and so on. No configuration needed.

Step 2: Create a Subscription

Navigate to Billing → Recurring Subscriptions and click Create Subscription.

Fill in the details:

Field	Example	Notes
Customer	Acme Industries	Select from your customer list
Name	Premium Plan - Monthly	A description for your records
Amount	$99.00	The recurring charge amount
Frequency	Monthly	How often to charge
Start Date	March 1, 2026	When billing begins
Payment Method	Visa ending in 4242	Customer's card or bank account

Click Create and the subscription is active. The first charge will process on the start date.

Optional Settings

End Date: Set an end date if the subscription should stop automatically (e.g., a 12-month contract). Leave blank for ongoing billing.
Minimum Amount: The system skips charges below this threshold (default: $5.00). Useful for variable-amount subscriptions.

Step 3: Choose a Payment Method

Recurring billing supports three payment methods:

Credit Card

The most common option. The customer's card is charged automatically on each billing date. If the card expires or is declined, you'll get an alert.

ACH (Bank Transfer)

Lower fees than credit cards. Money is pulled directly from the customer's bank account. Takes 2-3 business days to settle.

Stripe

If you're already using Stripe, IdealVibe integrates directly with your Stripe account. Supports Stripe payment methods including cards, bank debits, and more.

Step 4: Monitor Your Billing

After creating subscriptions, you can monitor everything from the billing dashboard.

Transaction History

Every charge attempt is recorded with full details:

Date and amount
Success or failure
Response code from the payment processor
Card type and last 4 digits

Processing Runs

IdealVibe processes recurring payments in scheduled runs:

Daily processing handles weekly, bi-weekly, 4-weekly, and one-time subscriptions
Monthly processing handles all monthly subscriptions in batches

Each run is logged with:

How many subscriptions were eligible
How many succeeded, failed, or were skipped
Total processing time
Any circuit breaker events (see "Handling Failures" below)

Handling Failed Payments

Payments fail for all sorts of reasons: expired cards, insufficient funds, bank holds. IdealVibe handles failures gracefully:

Automatic Behavior

One failure per day: If a charge fails, the system won't retry it again that same day. This prevents hammering a customer's card.
Consecutive failure tracking: The system tracks how many times in a row a subscription has failed.
The charge retries on the next scheduled processing run (typically the next day).

Failure Types

Not all failures are the same. The system classifies them to help you take the right action:

Type	What Happened	What To Do
Cardholder-level	Card declined, insufficient funds, expired	Contact the customer to update their payment method
Merchant-level	Your merchant account issue	Check your payment processor configuration
Gateway unreachable	Payment processor is down	Wait — the system will retry automatically

Circuit Breaker

If the payment gateway becomes unreachable (the processor itself is down), the system activates a circuit breaker after 5 consecutive failures. This:

Stops processing to avoid piling up unnecessary failures
Alerts you that something is wrong at the gateway level
Resumes automatically on the next processing run

This protects both you and your customers from cascading failures during an outage.

Step 5: Managing Subscriptions

Pause a Subscription

Need to pause billing temporarily? Maybe a customer is taking a break or you're resolving a dispute. Click Pause on any subscription — no charges will process while it's paused.

When you're ready, click Resume and billing picks up from where it left off.

Cancel a Subscription

Cancelling a subscription stops all future charges. The subscription record stays in your system for history and reporting — nothing is deleted.

Update Amount or Details

You can change the amount, payment method, or other details at any time. A history entry is recorded every time you make a change, so you have a full audit trail.

Real-World Example

Let's say you run a web design agency with three types of clients:

Hosting clients pay $29/month for website hosting
Maintenance clients pay $199/month for ongoing updates
Project clients pay a one-time $2,500 setup fee

Here's how you'd set each up:

Client	Subscription	Frequency	Amount
Smith Co	Website Hosting	Monthly	$29.00
Jones LLC	Maintenance Plan	Monthly	$199.00
New Client Inc	Project Setup Fee	One-Time	$2,500.00

The hosting and maintenance charges recur every month. The setup fee charges once on the scheduled date and then automatically expires.

What's Next?

Your recurring billing is set up. Here are ways to build on it:

Connect to your CRM: Link subscriptions to customer records in your customer tracker for a complete view
Set up roles: Give your billing team access to manage subscriptions without exposing other data
Use the API: Build custom billing dashboards or integrate with your existing tools
Review reports: Check processing run reports weekly to catch trends in failures

Quick Reference

Term	What It Means
Subscription	A recurring charge set up for a customer
Frequency	How often the charge occurs (weekly, monthly, etc.)
Processing Run	A scheduled batch that processes all eligible charges
Circuit Breaker	Safety mechanism that stops processing when the payment gateway is down
Pause	Temporarily stop charging without cancelling
One-Time (DelayPay)	A single future charge that expires after it processes

Automated billing means less time chasing payments and more time growing your business. Set it up once and let the system work for you.