Let’s face it: invoicing can be a pain. It’s repetitive, easy to forget, and often one of those last-minute tasks that eats into your evenings or weekends. But if you run a business that relies on recurring payments — like retainers, subscription services, or ongoing client work — you can’t afford to miss an invoice. Not only do delayed invoices hurt your cash flow, but they also make your business look unprofessional.
Thankfully, there’s a better way.
If you’re already using Gravity Forms on your WordPress site, there’s a simple plugin that can help: Recurring Form Submissions for Gravity Forms. This lightweight tool quietly automates your invoicing process, freeing you up to focus on what actually matters — running your business.
Why Recurring Invoices Slip Through the Cracks
Even the most organized business owners occasionally forget to send an invoice. When you’re juggling sales, customer support, operations, and everything else, billing can get pushed to the bottom of your to-do list.
That’s especially true for businesses that bill the same clients over and over for predictable services. It might feel too simple to warrant automation, but those are exactly the kinds of tasks that benefit most from it.
- You charge a client $500 on the 1st of every month
- You invoice a subscription customer every 30 days
- You send internal chargebacks to departments each quarter
Every time, it’s the same form. So why are you filling it out by hand?
How the Plugin Helps
The Recurring Form Submissions plugin lets you automate specific Gravity Forms to auto-submit themselves at any interval you choose: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or custom.
You can create a form with all the billing details that stay the same each time, and the plugin takes care of submitting it on schedule. This works best for invoices with fixed amounts or structures. For dynamic invoices that change month to month, additional customization or integration with dynamic data sources may be needed.
Each submission gets saved like any other entry in your Gravity Forms database. From there, you can send notifications, generate PDFs (using add-ons like Gravity PDF), or even integrate with other tools using third-party add-ons like Zapier or Gravity Flow to trigger external workflows.
The Real-World Benefits
1. Never Miss an Invoice
Missing an invoice means delaying your income. This plugin makes sure that never happens again. Set it up once and you can rest easy knowing the form will go through like clockwork.
2. Free Up Mental Space
Automating small, repetitive tasks gives you more time and energy to focus on high-impact work. No more “did I send that invoice?” moments while brushing your teeth. You can check out this Forbes article, which delves deeper into the benefits of automation, if you want.
3. Create a Clean Audit Trail
Because each form submission is logged and timestamped, you have a full record of when each invoice was generated. This is invaluable for bookkeeping, audits, and end-of-year reporting.
4. Look More Professional
When your invoices are timely and consistent, your clients notice. It signals reliability, maturity, and respect for their time — which goes a long way in maintaining long-term relationships.
5. Reduce Errors
Humans make mistakes. Automated forms don’t. Pre-fill your values correctly once, and avoid typos or math errors that can cost you time and credibility.
Use Case Examples
- Agencies & Freelancers billing retainer clients every month
- Subscription Box Businesses logging orders for fulfillment
- Nonprofits charging recurring donors or creating internal records
- IT Services generating monthly maintenance logs
- Accounting Firms auto-generating client summary reports
If it happens more than once, it can probably be automated.
Adapting to Your Business Needs
If your billing amounts change during the year, you can manually update the form values or feed settings to reflect new data. For businesses with variable billing structures, this may require occasional adjustments.
Need to change a client’s billing frequency? The schedule can be updated through the plugin settings to accommodate new intervals.
And because each submission is treated as a standard Gravity Forms entry, it integrates smoothly with existing workflows. If you’re using tools like Gravity Flow or Zapier, you can connect submissions to notifications, CRM updates, and more — though these capabilities depend on additional plugins or setup.
Final Thoughts
Recurring invoices shouldn’t be a chore. With the right tools in place, they can run like clockwork, freeing you up to focus on the bigger picture.
The Recurring Form Submissions plugin won’t revolutionize your entire business, but it will eliminate a tedious task that never should have been manual in the first place. That alone makes it worth considering.
Ready to stop worrying about whether you remembered to bill your clients? Contact BrightLeaf Digital today.