How billing schedules become invoices

Setting up a billing schedule doesn’t bill anything immediately — it tells Flamingo what to do later. Here’s how each schedule turns into a real invoice.

Scheduled and recurring invoices

On the schedule’s due date, Flamingo automatically issues the invoice:

• A scheduled invoice issues once on its date, then the schedule is finished.
• A recurring invoice issues each cycle and stays active for the next occurrence (until its end rule).

The newly issued invoice then either is auto-approved or goes for review, depending on the schedule’s settings (see below), and from there it’s paid like any other invoice — see How do I review, approve, and pay contractor invoices?.

What time they’re issued

Scheduled and recurring invoices are issued in the morning of their due date — around 7 AM in your organization’s time zone. So on the day an invoice is due, expect it to appear early that morning rather than at midnight or later in the day. The exact clock time depends on your time zone.

Adjustments

Adjustments don’t become their own invoice — they fold into the contractor’s next invoice as a line item. If the current invoice is finalized, the adjustment waits as Pending application and applies to the next one. See Schedule adjustments explained.

One-off payments

A one-off payment is different — it creates its own off-cycle invoice right away, separate from the regular cycle.

Auto-approval on schedules

When you create a schedule, you’re told that invoices it generates may be automatically approved and sent for payment without manual review. Whether that happens depends on the schedule’s auto-approval setting:

• Off — issued invoices wait for manual approval.
• Always — issued invoices are auto-approved.
• Within a cap — auto-approved only if the amount (or the running series total) stays within a limit you set.

This is separate from contract-level auto-approval — see How does contractor invoice auto-approval work?.