Auto-invoice rules let you define a recurring invoice and let Kiralytics generate it on schedule. The most common case: monthly retainers.
How rules work
A rule has:
- A client + optional project
- A cadence: monthly, weekly, quarterly (the three supported today)
- A start date — when the rule begins
- An optional end date and a cap on number of invoices
- A list of line items with fixed amounts (no time tracking in auto-invoices)
When the cadence tick fires (and you open the dashboard, which is the trigger today), Kiralytics:
- Generates a draft invoice for the current period.
- Allocates the next KLT number.
- Saves as draft, untouched, ready for you to issue.
Why manual issue, not auto-issue?
We deliberately stop short of sending automatically. Two reasons:
- Mistakes are costly — an invoice sent in error wastes client goodwill and needs recovering.
- You didn't get into this business to skip your own QA — but you did get into it to avoid repetitive copying.
So we generate the drafts on schedule, but you click Issue yourself. Most users batch-issue on the 1st of every month and the whole thing takes a few minutes.
Limits
- One rule per (client, project, cadence) — adding more to the same combination would create collisions.
- Currency is fixed at the workspace level, not per rule.
- No payment-gating — when you issue, Kiralytics doesn't wait for the client to pay; you do that out of band.
Failure modes we handle
- Skipped periods (you didn't open the dashboard for a month) — drafts are generated for every missed period, up to the cap. No silent skips.
- Failed generation (DB error, etc.) — rule moves to a failed state with the reason; you can re-run from the Auto-Invoice page.