Recurring expenses
Recurring expense templates for Estonian company bills that repeat — rent, hosting, subscriptions — generated as drafts on schedule, ready to finalise.
Office rent, software subscriptions, hosting, the accountant — most companies have a handful of bills that arrive on the same schedule with the same amounts. A recurring expense template records that bill once and then creates it for you on schedule, so the books stay current without anyone retyping the same invoice every month.
You'll find them under Expenses → Recurring Expenses in the sidebar.
Creating a template
There are two ways in:
- From scratch — go to Recurring Expenses and click New Recurring Expense.
- From an existing expense — open any expense you've already recorded and choose Make Recurring. The supplier, lines and amounts carry over. If one of its tax codes can't be used any more, for example because your company has left the VAT register since, Make Recurring says so and you can start from scratch instead.
A template holds everything a future expense needs:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Template name | For your own reference, e.g. "Monthly Office Rent" |
| Supplier | Picked from your suppliers list |
| Frequency | Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly |
| Next date | When the next expense will be generated |
| End date | Optional — leave blank to run indefinitely. It can't be earlier than the next date |
| Payment terms | Days from the issue date to the due date — 14 by default. Set it to your supplier's terms so the generated bill isn't due the day it appears |
| Line items | Description, amount excluding VAT (including VAT if your company isn't VAT-registered), tax code and expense category per line |
| Currency, notes | Same fields as a one-off expense |
The form shows estimated totals — subtotal, VAT and total — as you build the lines.
New lines start on the standard rate. If your company isn't VAT-registered on the template's next date, they start on Not subject to VAT instead, and the codes that reclaim VAT or self-assess it, such as Reverse charge, aren't offered. Without a VAT registration the VAT you pay is part of the cost, so enter each line's amount including VAT. Saving a template checks each line's tax code the way finalising its expenses will, so if your company leaves the VAT register, a template whose lines reclaim or self-assess VAT needs new codes before it can be saved again.
What gets generated
On each scheduled date, Arvello creates a draft expense from the template and advances the next date. Drafts behave like any other draft: you can adjust the amounts if this month's bill differs, attach the actual invoice, and then finalise — only finalised expenses post to your accounts and count towards VAT (see Purchase invoices).
If you don't want to wait for the schedule, Generate Now creates the next draft immediately and moves the schedule along.
Editing, pausing and stopping
- Edit a template at any time — changes affect future expenses only.
- Pause stops generation without losing the setup; Resume picks it back up on the next scheduled date. If that date falls after the template's end date, extend or clear the end date before resuming.
- Delete removes the template permanently. Expenses already created from it are untouched.
- Or set an end date and let the template retire itself.
A template or a reconciliation rule?
Both deal with repeating costs, so it's worth knowing which does what. A recurring template creates the expense in your books ahead of (and regardless of) payment — complete with VAT lines and a due date, which matters when you want the input VAT claimed and the liability visible from the day the bill exists. A reconciliation rule works from the other end: it waits for the payment to appear in your bank feed and categorises the transaction when it arrives, which suits charges that only ever exist as bank transactions — card fees, small direct debits — where a full supplier invoice would be ceremony. See Reconciliation rules.