If you bill your clients weekly or monthly for your services, you can use Melio to do it automatically for free via ACH bank transfer.
The entire process can be summed up in 3 steps:
- Go to your client’s Melio account.
- Add your invoice as a recurring bill.
- Schedule a recurring payment.
Go to your client’s Melio account
1. Sign in to your firm’s Melio account.
2. Make sure you’ve already added your clients to Melio.
3. Go to Clients in the left sidebar to view all your clients.
4. Select the client you want to bill.
Add your invoice as a recurring bill
After selecting a client you’ll get to their account. Follow these steps to add your invoice as a bill.
1. Go to the Bills tab, and click Create a bill.
2. Enter the bill details, including your Vendor’s business name, Bill amount, and Due date. Or, if you uploaded a bill, check the details and make sure they’re correct.
3. To turn this into a recurring bill, fill in these fields:
a. Bill amount: Enter the amount that will be deducted every time.
b. Payment frequency: Set the payment frequency.
Note: Payment frequencies explained
- Weekly - Payment is taken every week on the same day* of the week you scheduled the first payment.
- Every 2 weeks - Payment is taken every other week on the same day* of the week you scheduled the first payment. This is limited to a total of 26 payments a year.
- Every 4 weeks - Payment is taken on the first payment date, then every 28 days* from the previous payment date.
- Twice a month - Payment is taken on the first payment date, then after 15 days. These 2 dates* will be used every month. Total of 24 payments a year.
- Monthly - Payment is taken every month on the same day* of the month you scheduled the first payment.
- Every 2 months - Payment is taken every other month on the same day* of the month you scheduled the first payment.
- Every 3 months - Payment is taken every third month on the same day* of the month you scheduled the first payment.
- Every 4 months - Payment is taken every 4 months on the same day* of the month you scheduled the first payment.
- Every 6 months - Payment is taken every 6 months on the same day* of the month you scheduled the first payment.
- Annually - Payment is taken every year on the same day* of the month you scheduled the first payment.
*Payment on a weekend/federal holiday
If the due date of the payment falls on a weekend/federal holiday, the payment will arrive on the next business day.
c. First payment to arrive on: Select the date you want your first payment to be delivered.
d. Choose an end date or occurrence:
-
- If you choose Until an end date, select the date you want your payments to stop.
- If you choose Until number of payments made, add the number of payments you want to set up for this recurring payment.
- You can also select Until I decide to cancel.
e. (Optional) Invoice No. and Note to self: Add a note to remind yourself and the client what this payment is for.
Note: Line items
Line items won’t be available after you select recurring payment.
Note: Is the account synced with accounting software?
- QuickBooks Online- You’ll be able to see extra attributes such as QuickBooks category and class. See a full list here.
- Xero- The line items will show you the fields that match with the ones in Xero.
Schedule the recurring payment
Now schedule the recurring payment for that bill.
1. Click Continue to pay.
2. Select how to pay.
3. Select how to receive your payments.
Note: If this is the first time you’re paying yourself.
You’ll need to fill in the payment delivery details. Enter the bank account details or business address if you want to receive checks.
4. You can leave a memo to yourself. The default is the invoice number. This will be attached to every recurring payment.
5. Make sure all the payment details are correct. You can see this is a recurring payment by the details under RECURRING PAYMENT.
6. Click Confirm and schedule to finish.
View your recurring payment details
You can easily view the details of your recurring payment.
Here’s how:
1. Go to the Payments tab. and select the relevant vendor.
2. Find the payment you made.
3. Under the Amount column, you see that this is a recurring payment, and how many payments are set.
4. Click View payment to see the details of all payments set up, including the next delivery date.
Note: Sync with an accounting software?
Melio will sync the recurring payments that you scheduled to the accounting software one at a time, according to the time frame you set (every month/week). This way, you’ll always know which payment is next.
Note: Why does my payment say Pending approval?
If your client has a payment approval workflow set up, the payment will be labeled Pending approval until it’s approved.
That’s it! You can do this for each of your clients that you want to bill frequently.