Skip to main content
Use this page when a client has something that repeats: a monthly retainer invoice, rent paid by card, a weekly transfer to savings, a month-end accrual. Your assistant sets up the QuickBooks Online recurring template, and changes, or deletes one later. As with everything else, nothing changes in QuickBooks Online until someone at the firm approves the plan.

​
What a template can be

A template can make any transaction QuickBooks Online can repeat: an invoice, estimate, credit memo, sales receipt, refund, bill, vendor credit, check, expense or card charge, purchase order, journal entry, deposit or transfer. A payment against an invoice or bill cannot be a template in QuickBooks Online. Each template is one of three kinds, the same as in QuickBooks Online:
  • Scheduled. QuickBooks Online creates the transaction on its own, every period, and nobody reviews each one before it lands.
  • Reminder. QuickBooks Online reminds someone on a schedule, and that person creates each transaction.
  • Unscheduled. No schedule. It waits to be used by hand.
A deposit, transfer or card charge made from a template is matched to its bank line like any other entry.

​
Before you start

  • The client company is connected (see Connect a client).
  • The customer, vendor, items and accounts the template uses already exist. If they don’t, add them first, in the same plan or an earlier one.

​
Set up a template

Ask your assistant:
“Set up a monthly invoice for Ridgeline’s client Harbor Dental: one line of Bookkeeping at $800, on the 1st of each month starting November 1, and scheduled, so it goes out on its own.”
The plan has a Recurring templates section. For each template it shows:
  • What it makes (an invoice, a bill, a deposit).
  • When it runs: “Posts every month from 2026-11-01”, “Reminder every week”, or “No schedule”.
  • What each one comes to, when its lines say.
  • Why, in the assistant’s words.
A scheduled template is never shown as plain Ready. It carries a warning that it posts on its own, how often, from when and for how much, because once you approve it QuickBooks Online creates every one without anyone reading it first. Read that line before you approve.
QuickBooks Online checks the transaction itself, such as the customer, items and accounts, only when the template is created. If it refuses one, that line fails when the plan is posted and nothing is created.

​
Change a template

“Raise the Harbor Dental retainer to $850 from December.”
“Move Ridgeline’s office rent reminder to the 15th of each month.”
QuickBooks Online cannot edit a template, so a change is a Replace: Zeno deletes the old template and creates the new one in a single step of the plan. The plan shows what changes, from what to what. Anything you don’t mention is kept as it is.
  • The template gets a new id. Anything that pointed at the old id, such as a bookmark in QuickBooks Online, needs the new one.
  • The old template is deleted before the new one is created, so a client is never billed by two templates at once. If QuickBooks Online refuses the new one, Zeno re-creates the old one right away and the line fails.

​
Pause a template

Pause a template in QuickBooks Online itself. QuickBooks Online’s API makes every template it creates active, so Zeno cannot create or replace one as paused, and it says so if asked. A template that is already paused in QuickBooks Online can’t be changed through a plan either: the replacement would start running. Change it in QuickBooks Online, or delete it. Deleting a paused template can’t be undone by reversing the run, so the plan shows that line as a warning.

​
Delete a template

“Delete Ridgeline’s old weekly transfer template.”
Transactions the template already made stay where they are.

​
See every template on the client’s page

The client’s check-up page in the console (open it from the client’s row on Clients) lists the company’s recurring templates, read live from QuickBooks Online, with the scheduled ones that post on their own first. Each row shows its type, schedule, next date, what each one comes to, whether it is active, and who made it: Zeno, with a link to the plan and the run, or someone in QuickBooks Online. The list is for reading. To set up, change or delete a template, ask your assistant: it prepares the change as a plan for you to approve, as described above. Pause a template in QuickBooks Online. A paused template says so on its row, with what you can do: delete it through your assistant, or change it in QuickBooks Online.

​
Check the result and undo

The run lists each template it created, replaced or deleted. If a template was edited in QuickBooks Online after the plan was made, that line is skipped rather than overwriting the newer version; plan it again. To undo, reverse the run.
  • A template the run created is deleted.
  • A template the run deleted is re-created as it was, under a new id. A template that was paused is not re-created, because it would come back running; the reversal says so, and you set it up again in QuickBooks Online.
  • A template the run replaced is put back as it was, under a new id, and the replacement is deleted.
Transactions a template made while it ran are not touched by a reversal.