---
title: "Auto-generate invoices on a schedule"
description: "Turn on automatic invoice generation so every family is billed on their plan's cadence without you clicking anything."
type: guide
updated: 2026-10-12
canonical_url: https://help.nestlicare.com/owners/billing/auto-invoice-generation
roles: ["super_admin"]
platforms: [web, ios, android]
---
Once every enrolled child has a billing plan, NestliCare can create invoices for you automatically, on each plan's cadence. You set it up once and there's nothing to click each cycle.
Only the owner can change these settings. Center admins can see the panel, but their changes are refused.
## Turn it on
1. Go to **Invoices & Finances → Invoices**.
2. Near the top, the **Automatic invoicing** line shows whether it's on. Click **Set up** (or **Edit settings** when it's already on) to open the **Auto-Invoice Generation** panel.
3. Turn on **Enable Auto-Generation**.
The panel stays open on your next visits until you click **Hide**. Folded, it still sums up your settings in one line and shows any warning, such as families with no billing plan.
Three settings appear when you enable it:
- **Generate Ahead (days)**: how many days before a billing period starts its invoice is raised. Anything from 0 to 6. 0 raises it on the period's first day; 3 raises it the Friday before a Monday to Sunday week. Weekly and bi-weekly only; monthly always generates on the 1st.
- **Due After (days)**: how many days after an invoice is generated it's due. Anything from 3 to 90; the default is 15.
- **Auto-Send to Families**: on sends each invoice to the family as soon as it's generated; off leaves it as a draft for you to review and send. Read [the section below](#auto-send-sends-real-emails-treat-it-with-respect) before turning this on.
Once it's on, the **Upcoming** filter appears on the invoice list: a forecast of exactly what the next 30 days of runs will create, run by run, computed with the same logic the job uses. Make it a habit, especially after changing plans or discounts. See [See and skip upcoming invoices](/owners/billing/upcoming-invoices).
To see the same runs on a calendar, with each invoice's due date and whether it will be emailed or kept as a draft, use the [billing calendar](/owners/billing/billing-calendar). It works before you turn auto-generation on, too, as a preview of what it would do.
## When it runs
The job runs **each morning between 9 AM and noon in your organization's timezone** (set under **Settings → General**). The first run is usually around 9:40 AM. It creates invoices for whichever billing intervals are due that day:
- **Monthly** plans generate on the 1st of the month.
- **Weekly** plans generate every Monday.
- **Bi-weekly** plans generate every other Monday. Every family shares the same fortnight unless you give one a different [bi-weekly cycle start](#families-on-the-other-bi-weekly-week).
With **Generate Ahead** set, weekly and bi-weekly invoices are raised that many days before their Monday instead (the period on the invoice stays the same Monday to Sunday week). Monthly plans ignore Generate Ahead and keep to the 1st.
The week always runs **Monday to Sunday**. You can't pick a different start day, such as a Sunday to Saturday week, for automatic invoices. If your families are billed Sunday to Saturday, create those invoices by hand with **Create Invoice** on the Invoices page, where you set the **Period Start**, **Period End** and **Due Date** yourself (see [Create and send an invoice](/owners/billing/generate-and-send-an-invoice)). Due dates and late fees can still line up with your week: for example, Generate Ahead 3 with Due After 3 puts a Monday-to-Sunday invoice due on its Monday.
So turning it on midweek won't produce weekly invoices until the next Monday. It bills each family based on their child's plan, and it never creates a second invoice for a period **it** already billed, no matter how many times the morning job re-checks. Any active discounts and subsidies are applied automatically when the invoice is generated.
The generator's own duplicate check only covers invoices it created. To stop a hand-made invoice turning into a double bill, two guards apply when Auto-Send is on:
- If a family already has a tuition invoice you made for the same period (or, with no period on it, one made in the week before the period starts), their automatic invoice is **created as a draft instead of being sent**, and you are notified. Void whichever of the two you don't need. It counts as tuition if it has a tuition line or comes to at least half of the automatic invoice, so a small one-off charge like a field trip never holds a family's tuition.
- The [Upcoming view](/owners/billing/upcoming-invoices) marks those families **Already billed?** ahead of time, so you can **Skip** them before the run.
Invoices from another billing platform are invisible to NestliCare, so skip those families yourself. See Can auto-invoicing double-bill a family?
## Hourly plans bill after the period, not before
Everything above describes fixed plans, which are billed **in advance**: the Monday run covers the week that's starting.
[Hourly plans](/owners/billing/bill-by-the-hour) can't work that way, because the hours don't exist until the period is over. They're billed **in arrears** on the same schedule: the Monday run covers the week that just finished, and the 1st covers the month that just ended.
Two consequences worth knowing:
- A family with one child on a fixed plan and another on an hourly plan gets **two invoices** on the same morning, covering different periods. That's correct, not a duplicate.
- **Auto-Send never applies to hourly invoices.** They always land as drafts, because their amounts come from attendance records that may need a correction first. See [Review before sending](/owners/billing/bill-by-the-hour).
[Late pickup fees](/owners/billing/late-pickup-fees) ride the same weekly arrears run and follow the same rule: always drafts, never auto-sent. A family with no hourly plan but a late pickup that week gets a small draft with just the fee.
## Auto-Send sends real emails. Treat it with respect
With Auto-Send **off** (the default), every generated invoice lands as a draft. A wrong amount in a draft costs you nothing: fix it, or void it, and send when it's right.
With Auto-Send **on**, every generated invoice is emailed to its family the moment it's created. There is no draft stage and no review step, so a wrong billing plan becomes a wrong invoice in a parent's inbox, at scale, before you've had coffee.
**The first run is always drafts.** The first automatic run after you turn on auto-generation or Auto-Send is created as drafts and not sent, and you get a notification to review them. That is the week most likely to be billed twice: many daycares have just billed it by hand or on their old platform. From the run after, Auto-Send sends as normal.
While auto-generation is on, the **Invoices** page shows a **Next automatic run** card above your invoices: the date, how many invoices, the total, and whether they will be sent or kept as drafts. It turns amber when families already have an invoice for that period. Click **Review** to open the Upcoming view.
That's why turning it on asks you to confirm: the dialog shows you what the next run would email and asks you to attest that you've reviewed the [Upcoming view](/owners/billing/upcoming-invoices) and the amounts are correct. Don't tick that box as a formality. Open Upcoming, read the runs, and only come back when every family, amount, and date is exactly what you expect.
These guardrails apply even with Auto-Send on:
- **The first run after you turn it on is drafts only**, as above.
- **A family you already billed tuition by hand for the period** gets the automatic invoice as a draft, not sent.
- **Hourly and attendance-fee invoices are never auto-sent.** Their amounts come from attendance records that may need a correction first, so they always land as drafts. See [Review before sending](/owners/billing/bill-by-the-hour).
- **Skipped invoices are never created at all**, so nothing is sent for them either.
Your first run is created as drafts either way. Check a few, send them, and if they came out right, leave Auto-Send on. If they didn't, fix the billing plans first: the next run sends automatically.
## Families on the other bi-weekly week
Bi-weekly billing runs one fortnight for the whole center by default. If a family's contract started on the other week, you do not have to move them or invoice them by hand: give that family its own cycle start.
1. Open the family from **Invoices & Finances → Accounts**.
2. Under **Recurring billing**, find **Bi-weekly cycle**. It reads **Standard cycle** until you change it, and only appears for families with a bi-weekly plan.
3. Click **Change**, pick the Monday their fortnight starts on, and read the preview. It lists their next three invoices with the real generation and due dates under your current Generate Ahead and Due After settings.
4. Click **Save**.
From then on that family is billed every 14 days from that Monday, and the [Upcoming view](/owners/billing/upcoming-invoices) shows their runs on their own dates. Everyone else stays on the standard cycle. Choose **Use the standard cycle** on the same row to put a family back.
The date must be a Monday, because bi-weekly periods always start on one. And if the family already has a live invoice whose period does not line up with the new cycle, the change is refused and the invoice is named: void it, or wait for that period to end, so the same days are never billed twice.
## Skip a family, or skip a cycle
- **One family, one run** (an agreed absence, a family that paid another way): use **Skip** on the [Upcoming view](/owners/billing/upcoming-invoices). Every other family bills as normal, and the skip only covers that single run.
- **Everyone, one run** (a closure week, say): turn **Enable Auto-Generation** off before 9 AM on the run's morning, and turn it back on **after noon**. Nothing generates while it's off. If you turn it back on before noon, the morning's run still catches up and generates.
## Troubleshooting
**Nothing generated this morning.** Check the date. Weekly and bi-weekly plans run on Mondays (or the Generate Ahead day before them), and monthly plans on the 1st. If today isn't one of those, there's nothing to generate. Generation also runs from about 9:40 AM in your organization's timezone, so before then there's nothing to see. The [Upcoming view](/owners/billing/upcoming-invoices) shows the exact day of every run in the next 30 days.
**One family generated nothing while everyone else did.** Check the Upcoming view for a **Skipped** badge on that family; someone may have skipped them for the run. Undo the skip before the next run, or [bill them manually](/owners/billing/generate-and-send-an-invoice) for the missed period.
**One family wasn't billed.** Make sure their child has an active enrollment with a billing plan attached, and that a matching interval was due that day. See [Create a billing plan](/owners/billing/create-a-billing-plan).
**A line-item amount looks off.** The job uses whatever plan, discount, and subsidy are active at run time. Confirm the family's current plan and any discounts are correct.
**The toggle won't stay on, or says you need super admin access.** Auto-invoice settings can only be changed by the owner. Ask them to turn it on.
**I use the phone app.** In the iOS or Android app, the owner can turn **Auto-generate invoices** and **Send automatically** on from the Invoices screen, and tap **Generate** to run invoices right away.