Automated charging in Flex helps ensure timely payments by charging invoices on their due date through your integrated payment gateway. You can also configure how and when receipts are generated and sent to members after successful payments.
This article explains how automated invoice charging works in different scenarios, what happens when payments are delayed or fail, and how to automatically generate numbered payment receipts.
To configure these settings, go to 
Settings > Billing > Invoicing.
How automatic charging affects existing invoices
When you turn on automatic charging, the system will apply it to all existing invoices. However, each invoice will still keep the company's payment method at the time it was generated.
For example:
Even if the company has a credit card saved and switches to Stripe as the default payment method, any previously generated invoices for that company will not update automatically. To ensure that due invoices are paid automatically via Stripe, you must edit each invoice manually and update the payment method to Stripe.
If an invoice was created when the company's payment method was bank transfer, it will still use this method, even if a credit card is now saved in their profile.
This behavior gives you full control over how each invoice is handled, but it also means updates to a company's payment method do not apply retroactively to existing invoices.
Configure invoice charging settings
Select Automatically to charge companies' or members' invoices through your integrated payment gateway. If you select this option, OfficeRnD will automatically charge invoices on their due dates if the company or member has entered payment details in the system.
This isn't possible for custom payment integrations.
Specific Scenarios
When the issue date matches the due date
When the invoice creation or issue date coincides with the due date, Automated Charging will trigger payment on that same day. This setup ensures that charges are processed immediately upon invoice issuance.
When the issue date differs from the due date
If the issue date and due date differ, Automated Charging will wait until the due date to process the payment. This flexibility accommodates varying payment terms, allowing businesses to control when they schedule payment collections.
General rule for automated charging
OfficeRnD's Automated Charging system processes payments based on the invoice due date, not the invoice creation or issue date. This ensures that payments align with the agreed-upon payment terms rather than with the timing of invoice issuance.
If a company or member enters their payment details after the invoice due date, OfficeRnD will attempt to charge them again daily, every hour at the 30th minute. For example, at 3:00 PM, 3:30 PM, 4:00 PM, 4:30 PM, and so on.
OfficeRnD will charge invoices with past-due dates if they were not previously charged.
If the payment fails (for example, due to insufficient funds), the system will not attempt to charge the invoices again.
Key takeaways
Automated charging triggers payment on the invoice due date. For direct debit with GoCardless, charging requests can be sent earlier to ensure funds settle on time.
If the issue date equals the due date, payment is triggered the same day.
If payment details are added after the due date, OfficeRnD retries every 30 minutes.
Failed payments are not retried automatically.
Automated Charging is not supported for custom payment integrations.
Configure automatic generation of payment receipts
A receipt is proof of a successful payment. It indicates the total amount applied to the invoice, along with any remaining credit.
Automatically
You can select Automatically to automatically send receipts to members after a successful payment.
Add receipt numbers
Select this checkbox to automatically generate unique, sequential numbers for each receipt. You can then define the total number of digits in the receipt numbers. They will be completed with leading zeroes. For example, enter "5" to format the receipt number 365 as "00365".
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