Set up recurring invoices in Wave (and actually understand the fees)

By Marcus Webb · A tutorial — setup guidance; Wave fee schedule verified October 23, 2026 · Hands-on testing in progress — see note below

A monthly retainer that you re-invoice by hand every month is a small tax on your attention — and eventually a missed one. Wave's free Starter plan includes unlimited recurring invoices, which makes it the cheapest self-flying invoice machine available (verified in our Wave vs FreshBooks comparison). Here is the setup, and the fee arithmetic you should do before turning on card payments.

Step 1: the product, once

Before invoices can recur, the thing you sell needs a price entry. In Wave, create it as a product/service:

• Name it what the client calls it — "Content retainer — October", not "SKU-2041". The invoice is a document the client's accounts person processes; clarity there is paid speed.
• Price exactly the retainer amount. If the retainer varies month to month, set the base and accept that you will edit each generated invoice — recurring does not mean untouchable.
• Tax only if you must. Check your own jurisdiction's rules before adding tax lines; wrong-but-consistent tax on twelve invoices is a year of cleanup.

Step 2: the recurring profile

1. Create the recurring invoice from the client's record, add the product line, and set frequency (monthly is the sane default), start date, and — the setting that matters — end condition. "Until cancelled" is fine for retainers, but a 12-month end date on a fixed-term engagement is better: it forces a renewal conversation instead of an accidental auto-renewal.
2. Choose the trigger: "auto-send" on the generation date. Auto-send is the entire point; if you want to eyeball each one, the recurring feature is serving no one.
3. Set terms and due date: due on receipt or net-7 for card payments; net-14+ only for clients you invoice by bank transfer.
4. Turn on payment reminders (3 days before due, on due date, 7 days after). Wave sends them automatically; a reminder from software costs you nothing socially, which is why the third one exists.

Step 3: the fee decision — before you enable card payments

Wave publishes its processing schedule openly: 2.9% + $0.60 per online card transaction (3.4% + $0.60 for American Express), and bank-transfer processing at a lower flat rate. The arithmetic every retainer owner should do once, before the first invoice goes out:

• $2,000/month retainer by card: $58.00 + $0.60 = $58.60 — about $703 a year, silently, forever.
• Same retainer by bank transfer: a flat fee per transaction (a few dollars), under $50 a year all-in.

The full breakdown of where that 2.9% goes — and why the subscription being free is not generosity but a business model — is in where the fee on an $800 invoice goes. The practical setup consequence: enable card payment for convenience clients, and for the large retainers, put your bank details on the invoice template and let recurring do the paperwork while the money moves by transfer. The invoice can carry both doors; the client picks the expensive one only if you make it the only one.

Step 4: one habit, monthly

On the first business day of each month, open the invoices list and confirm three things: recurring invoices actually generated (automation fails silently, rarely, but it does), payments landed against the right invoices, and any overdue reminder fired. Ten minutes. The error this catches — a recurring profile that expired or a client whose card was reissued — is trivial in month one and expensive in month nine.

When Wave stops being the answer

• You need more than one user on the books: Wave's paid Pro tier covers this (its value case arrives around 32+ card transactions a month — the crossover is computed in the Wave vs FreshBooks piece).
• You want proposals, time tracking and invoicing in one system: that is FreshBooks's pitch, at a subscription, with the notable caveat that its card rates are not published — the disclosure gap is a decision-relevant fact we flagged in the comparison.
• You outgrow "invoicing" into "accounting with payroll": the stack question then belongs to the minimal software stack, not to any single tool upgrade.

What we cannot verify

Wave's fee schedule (2.9% + $0.60 online card; 3.4% + $0.60 Amex; bank-transfer flat fees), unlimited invoicing on the free Starter plan, and Pro at $19/month or $190/year were verified against Wave's published pricing on October 23, 2026. Setup steps reflect the product's general configuration flow; menu labels move between releases. We have not run a live recurring invoice through a full 12-month cycle on our own account, and regional fee variations may exist. See How We Test.