What recurring billing is, why you should automate it, what features you need and how to comply with VAT and Verifactu on every invoice.
If your business charges monthly fees — whether a coworking space, a gym, a clinic or any subscription service — you know what the 1st of each month means. Reviewing active customers, generating invoices one by one, sending them, chasing payments and reconciling with the bank. Multiplied by dozens or hundreds of customers, manual billing becomes a time-consuming, error-prone task. Automated recurring billing solves this problem at its root.
Recurring billing is the process of generating invoices periodically — monthly, quarterly, annually or at any other frequency — for a service provided on an ongoing basis. Unlike a one-off sale, it involves an ongoing commitment between provider and customer that is reflected in a membership or subscription.
Any business that charges periodic fees needs it. Coworking spaces, gyms, clinics, academies, SaaS services, consultancies with retainers — all share the same challenge. The volume of invoices grows with the number of customers, but the time available to generate them does not. Without automation, recurring billing becomes administrative work that adds no value to the business.
With 50 customers, generating invoices manually takes over two hours a month. With 200, an entire day. But time is not the only problem. Copying amounts by hand, updating prices, maintaining sequential numbering, applying the correct VAT rate — every step is a chance to make a mistake. And an error on an invoice can prevent your customer from deducting VAT or create an inconsistency in your tax records.
Payment tracking multiplies the work. After issuing invoices you need to know who has paid and who has not, send reminders and reconcile bank movements. Without automation, this process is managed with spreadsheets and memory — a combination that does not scale. When your business is ready to grow, manual billing becomes the bottleneck.
Good recurring billing software must let you configure memberships per customer or company, with independent products, prices and frequencies for each one. Bulk invoice generation should be instant — one click and all invoices for the cycle are created with the correct tax data.
Integration with a payment gateway is essential. Generating the invoice is pointless if you then have to chase payment manually. The system should automatically charge customers who have authorised card payment and give you clear visibility of the status of each collection.
Traceability is also key. Each invoice should be linked to the membership that generated it, with information on when it was created, which period it covers and whether it has been paid. This simplifies accounting, dispute resolution and tax compliance.
Recurring billing has two sides — generating the invoice and collecting the money. The most efficient method is automatic card payment through a gateway like Stripe. The customer authorises payment once and in each cycle the system charges the amount automatically. The invoice is marked as paid without intervention from either party.
For customers who prefer bank transfer — common in Spain in the corporate world — the system should allow you to register the payment manually and mark the invoice as paid. The important thing is to have full visibility of the status of each collection without cross-referencing data between your bank and your invoicing software.
Every recurring invoice must meet the same legal requirements as any other invoice. There is no special regime for periodic invoices — all must include the data required by RD 1619/2012, with VAT broken down and sequential numbering. In Spain, most recurring services are taxed at 21%, although some specific services may apply reduced rates.
Under Verifactu, every invoice generated by the recurring cycle must be registered and sent to the AEAT. If you generate 200 invoices on the 1st of the month, all 200 must carry a digital fingerprint, record chaining and be submitted to the Tax Agency system. Good recurring billing software handles this transparently — it applies tax compliance automatically to each invoice without manual intervention.
CokuApp includes a memberships module that automates your monthly billing. Set up the plan once and forget about generating invoices by hand.