Set the retainer once and stop thinking about it

A monthly retainer is easy to agree and annoying to bill. On the first of the month you duplicate last month's invoice, change the date, and send. Some months you are on a train. The invoice goes out on the sixth. Their accounts office, which pays on a fixed run, misses you, and the money arrives in the next cycle. You did not lose the client. You lost three weeks because the ritual depends on you remembering.

Recurring invoices are Pro. Starter at $9 does not include them. If you have one retainer, you can still duplicate by hand. If you have several, the ten minutes multiplies and the forgotten month becomes a pattern. Pro is $29 a month, and that price is locked the same way the $9 price is. Do not turn a schedule on during a trial and assume it keeps running after the trial if you do not subscribe.

Read the sentence before you activate

Before a schedule goes live, Incusia shows a plain-English summary. It names the client, the amount including tax, the day, and whether the invoice is emailed, charged to a saved card, or left as a draft for you to send. Read that sentence. If it says the card is charged and the invoice is not emailed, that is what will happen. Clients hate a charge with no document. If you want both, the summary has to say both.

You can preview the next six occurrences before and after you start. A monthly $1,800 on the first shows six dates and six amounts. If you raised the fee, the preview shows the new amount on future dates, not on an invoice you already sent. That preview is how you catch 'I thought this ended in December' before December invoices itself.

Pause does not invent the months you skipped

You can pause and resume. A paused schedule does not backfill. If you pause in November and resume in January, December is not created behind your back. That is what you want when the client asked to skip a month. It is also what you want when you paused because you were not sure. Resume continues from the next cycle. If you actually need to bill the skipped month, create that invoice yourself. The schedule will not guess that you meant to.

A start date in the middle of a cycle can bill a part of the first period, if you turn proration on. A retainer that starts on the 15th does not have to charge a full month for half a month. The first invoice is the remaining share. After that, the full amount runs on the normal day. If you leave proration off, the first invoice is the full amount even if the start date is mid-cycle. Read the summary. It says which of those you picked.

A price change applies from the next cycle. The invoice already sent stays at the old price. You do not get a surprise credit note, and you do not get to rewrite history. Tell the client before the next date. The preview is the list you can paste into that email.

When the card is declined

If you charge a saved card and the card is declined, Incusia does not keep hitting it every night. It tries again after 13 days and again after 20 days. Two retries. Then the schedule pauses. The invoice that failed stays open so you can still collect it. The schedule stops so you do not stack a second failed month on top. Most declines are an expired card or a short shortage of funds. A short email with a link to update the card fixes more of these than a third silent retry would.

You can turn retries off. Then a decline pauses immediately. Use that if the client has told you to stop charging. Leaving retries on for a client who cancelled is how you produce an angry email. The pause is the safety. It is not a failure of the feature. A tool that charges forever after a decline is the failure.

Unbilled time and expenses for that client can be added to each scheduled invoice, if you turn that on. The summary says so. If you leave it off, the retainer is only the retainer. A photography day you logged does not appear by magic. Check the first two invoices after you enable it, because a forgotten expense from last quarter can ride along if it was still unbilled.

Reminders can still go out if the invoice is unpaid after three days. That matters when you email the invoice and do not charge a card. A card charge that succeeds does not need a reminder. A card charge that fails leaves an open invoice, and the reminder is useful until you have talked to them. Watch opens and bounces on those, the same as any other invoice.

What a schedule will not do

It will not renegotiate the retainer. It will not notice that the client has gone quiet and pause itself, except after the two failed card retries. It will not bill a different currency mid-stream unless you change the schedule. It will not create seats for a colleague to manage the list. And it will not run on the $9 plan. If your work is one-off projects, you do not need this page. Send the invoice when the work is done.

End dates are real. If the summary says the schedule stops after a date, it stops. If it says the schedule keeps going until you stop it, it keeps going, including through the month you meant to end it and forgot. Put the end date in when you know it. 'Until I remember' is how retainers outlive the contract.

Setting up the first three retainers

Start with the client who already pays you every month without drama. Copy the line items from last month's invoice rather than retyping a round number from memory. If last month included a one-off workshop, delete it before you activate. A schedule that quietly bills a workshop forever is an awkward email, and it is your fault, not the software's. The preview of the next six is where that workshop would show up six times. Look.

Decide email, charge, or both, and say it in the summary out loud if you have to. 'Emailed on the morning of the due date and their card is charged the same day' is the sentence most retainers want. 'Charged and not emailed' is for a client who asked for that and has a saved card that has worked. 'Created and left for you to send' is the halfway house when you do not trust the schedule yet. Use it for one cycle, check the draft, then turn sending on. Do not stay in draft mode for a year and call that automatic.

The second retainer is the one with a mid-month start. If they began on the 10th and the cycle is the 1st, proration is the honest first bill. Show them the summary sentence that says the first invoice is for the rest of this period and the later ones are full. If you would rather bill a full month and give them the extra days as goodwill, leave proration off and write that in the email yourself. The software will not add a goodwill note. You will.

The third is the one that might end. Put the end date in even if it feels pessimistic. A six month advisory retainer that 'might extend' should stop at six months and be renewed on purpose. Renewal is a conversation and sometimes a new price. A schedule with no end date skips the conversation. You can always extend a date. You cannot unsend a July invoice in August because you forgot June was the end.

When a card fails, your job in the first day is a human note, not a new invoice. Tell them the charge did not go through and the link to update the card. The retries at day 13 and day 20 are the backstop if they are slow, not the only message. If they reply that the project is paused, pause the schedule yourself the same day. Waiting for the second retry to pause it means you may charge them once more after they asked you to stop.

Once a quarter, open the list and read every active row against the contracts, not against your memory. Amount, next date, end date, whether unbilled costs are included. A retainer that has drifted $200 because you changed a saved line item will keep drifting until you look. Ten minutes a quarter replaces the ten minutes a month you used to spend duplicating, and it catches the mistakes duplication also caught only if you were awake.

If a client wants to pay annually, do not fake it with twelve monthly charges they did not agree to. One invoice for the year, or a schedule whose frequency matches the agreement. The frequencies you can run are the ones in the schedule form, not every interval you can imagine. If the form cannot say 'every 10 weeks', do not approximate it with monthly and a prayer. Bill it manually until the rhythm is a rhythm the product can state in a sentence.