Recurring Bills, Expenses and Journals

Every business has a handful of entries that are the same every month. Set each one up once.

Go to Accounting > Recurring Items. Recurring customer invoices are separate and live under Sales; this page covers what you buy, spend and post.

Set one up

  1. Select New recurring item and choose what repeats: a supplier bill, an expense or a journal.
  2. Give it a name you will recognise in a list, such as Office rent or Monthly depreciation.
  3. Fill in the detail exactly as you would when capturing it by hand. This is the template every future entry is copied from.
  4. Choose the frequency and the date of the first one. Ends can be left empty to run until you stop it.
  5. Select Save. The Next run column tells you the date the first entry will appear.

What arrives, and in what state

What repeatsHow it arrivesWhy
Supplier billA draft supplier invoiceApproving a bill books what you owe. The real invoice may be for a different amount, so it waits for you to check it against the one that arrives.
ExpenseAn expense awaiting approvalApproving an expense posts it to your ledger. Nothing reaches your books unattended.
JournalA posted journalYou wrote the journal yourself when you saved the template, which is your approval given in advance.

When a period is locked

A recurring journal due in an accounting period you have already locked is not posted, and it is not moved into an open period either. Redating it would put the figure in the wrong set of books and nobody would ever know. Instead it is skipped, your company administrators are emailed, and the schedule carries on to the next period. If you still want that entry, unlock the period or post it by hand.

Manage a schedule

  • Pause stops generation without losing the schedule or its history. Resume starts it again.
  • Edit changes the template for everything still to come. Entries already generated are not touched.
  • Run now generates the current one immediately rather than waiting for the overnight run.
  • The History panel lists every period, what it produced and anything that was skipped or failed.

OxyAccounting Docs

Last reviewed 1 August 2026. OxyAccounting does not submit returns to SARS or replace professional accounting or tax advice.