The Monthly Run

How the Monthly Run Works

At 5 AM Pacific on the 1st, once, when Make monthly drafts on the 1st is on in Billing Settings:

• Website usage comes in as Usage Months records, by import like any records. A workspace that has usage months waits for the month before's usage before making the drafts, and tries again every hour, so a monthly invoice never goes out without it.
• The month's drafts are made in Invoices, only for clients with Billing Active on from that month.
• With Live Billing and Issue Automatically on, Invoices finalizes and charges them right away.

The Monthly Run page, first in the Subscriptions menu, shows the last runs (action subscriptions.overview) and has Make Monthly Drafts.

The Rules

• Monthly invoices: each active monthly subscription item running on the 1st is billed for the month ahead, and each yearly one is billed in the month of its next bill date, for the year ahead. Invoices are due on the day they are issued. A discount stops after its end date.
• Partners: a resold or white-label client is billed to its partner on one combined invoice, at list price less the partner's discount. Each line names the client it is for. A subscription with its own bill-to company is billed to that company.
• Usage: each website's storage, bandwidth, and email for a month are frozen on the 1st of the next month and billed on that month's invoice. Usage is priced by the day the invoice is issued. On invoices issued before January 1, 2027, usage is priced the way Zoho Books prices it: storage at $5 per GB, bandwidth at $0.15 per GB, and email at $0.002 each, for all of it, with one line per kind of usage for each client. On invoices issued from January 1, 2027 (so December 2026's usage, billed on January 1, 2027, already uses the new prices), each website includes 2 GB of storage, 100 GB of bandwidth, and 2,000 emails a month; above that, storage is $4 per GB up to 10 GB, $3 up to 30 GB, then $2.50; bandwidth is $0.15 per GB up to 500 GB, $0.12 up to 2,000 GB, then $0.10; and email is $0.001 each, one line per website and tier. Hosting is billed from each client's subscription items, as Zoho Books bills it.
• A subscription with nothing to bill: an active subscription with no items is listed in the warnings, so staff can fix it, instead of being skipped quietly.

Make the Monthly Drafts by Hand

Action subscriptions.month.generate, with a month like 2026-11. Choose Preview only to see the drafts, totals, and warnings without making anything. Invoices writes them (action invoices.drafts.replace), so you need permission for both apps.

• One draft per client who pays, with a line for each subscription item and each usage charge. Partner clients are on their partner's invoice.
• Making the drafts again replaces that month's monthly drafts, so changes to subscriptions show up. A client whose invoice for the month is already finalized gets no new draft, and a warning says so.
• Clients without Billing Active are counted, not billed.
• Warnings name anything to look at: a resold or white-label client with no active partner, a subscription whose company does not exist, an active subscription with no items, an item with no price, or usage for a website with no company.