Scheduled Runs

A schedule generates documents on its own, on a repeat you set. Statements for every customer who owes you on the first of every month, or last quarter's sales register straight after the quarter ends, without anyone starting them.

Scheduled runs are part of the Advanced plan, alongside batch generation.

Before you start

Set your team's time zone under Team > Settings. A schedule starts at the hour you choose in the time zone your team works in, and it needs to know which one that is before the first run happens.

Setting one up

1. Go to Schedules in the sidebar and click New schedule
2. Give it a name you will recognize later — "Monthly statements" is a good one
3. Choose the document, the QuickBooks company, and the template
4. For statements, choose who to generate for and the statement settings. For a sales register, choose the period and which documents to include.
5. Choose when it repeats
6. Click Create schedule

You can also start from the customer list. Filter it the way you want, then click Schedule instead — the connection, template, and filters carry over. From a sales register, click Schedule this register.

Who to generate for

A schedule stores a description of who to generate for, not a list of customers. Tick Only those with a QuickBooks balance, and every run asks QuickBooks again on the day.

That is the point. Somebody who has paid up is simply left out of the next run, and a new customer who owes you is included, without you editing anything.

You can narrow it further by customer Type or by Sent by — the customer's preferred send method in QuickBooks — which is how you split a month-end run into the ones you email and the ones you post.

This is also why only statements and sales registers can be scheduled. A list of particular invoices would be the wrong list next month.

Open a schedule and its description says what it does in a sentence, including the statement settings and anything it leaves out. Check that line — it is what will actually go out.

Statements not worth sending

Nobody is watching when a schedule fires, so it is worth telling it what not to bother producing. Under Don't create statements, choose to leave out statements with nothing on them, with a zero balance, or with a balance less than an amount you set.

These work exactly as they do on the customer list. See Batch Generation.

A schedule stops itself after three runs in a row that produce nothing at all, so a rule set too wide does not go unnoticed.

Statement dates

A schedule sets its statement date as a rule rather than a day:

Choose "the last day of the month before the run" and a schedule that runs on the first of every month always covers the month that just ended.

You can still set a fixed date if you want every run to cover the same period.

Sales registers

A scheduled register covers one of two periods:

• The month before the run
• The quarter before the run

Each run works the period out on the day, so a register that runs on the first of every month always covers the month that just ended. Choose which documents to include, as you would on the Sales Register page.

A register is one file, so the email links straight to it rather than to a ZIP. Nothing is sent to your customers.

Choosing The quarter before the run switches a monthly schedule to Quarterly, so it runs right after each quarter ends.

When it repeats

Choose Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Quarterly. For the first three, also choose how many days, weeks, or months apart.

Quarterly runs in January, April, July, and October, whenever you set it up. Choose the day the same way as a monthly schedule.

A monthly schedule can run:

• On a particular day of the month
• On the 1st and the 15th
• On the last day of the month
• On a particular weekday — the first Monday, the last Friday

The last day of the month does what it says in every month. February gets the 28th, or the 29th in a leap year.

Underneath the controls, the panel tells you what the schedule means and shows the next five times it will run. Check that line before you save — it is the run that will actually happen.

A run starts within a few minutes of the time you set. Schedules are spread out slightly so that everybody's month-end run does not arrive at once.

While it runs

Scheduled runs work exactly like a run you start yourself. They appear under Batch runs, they produce the same ZIP or merged PDF, and the same 100-document per-run limit applies to each run the schedule starts.

You are always emailed when a scheduled run finishes, however quick it was — nobody is watching the page at nine in the morning on the first. The email names the schedule and says when the download expires.

The bundled download is available for 7 days. The documents themselves stay in your Documents history for as long as you keep them.

When something goes wrong

A schedule stops itself if it cannot do its job, and says why on its page:

• Its QuickBooks connection is no longer available
• Its selection matched nobody
• Three runs in a row produced no documents at all
• The team's subscription no longer includes scheduled runs

A run where some documents failed and others succeeded is not a reason to stop — one unreadable record among ninety-nine is ordinary.

Once the problem is sorted, open the schedule and click Switch on.

Managing schedules

Open a schedule to see when it next runs, what it covers, and every run it has produced.

• Switch off stops it without deleting it. It will not run again until you switch it back on.
• Edit changes anything about it, including the repeat. The next run is worked out again as soon as you save.
• Delete removes it. The documents it already produced are unaffected.

A team can have up to 10 schedules.