Monthly Renters

Some renters are not events. The gymnastics club in the hall every Tuesday, the quilting guild on the first Saturday, the church using the arena all winter — they sign once for the year, put a deposit down, and get one invoice a month for whatever they actually used.

That is a different shape from an event booking, and it runs on a rental agreement.

Billed after, not before

An event booking is billed up front: sign, pay the deposit, invoice created, balance due before the date. A monthly renter is billed in arrears — they use the space through the month and the invoice follows. Everything on this page assumes that direction.

When to use an agreement

	Event booking	Monthly renter
Signs	Per booking	Once for the term
Deposit	Booking deposit, per event	One security deposit for the whole term
Billed	Before the event	After each month
Invoices	One per booking	One per month, covering many dates

Agreements live on the Agreements tab of a renter's profile. Setting the renter's renter type to recurring is a label for filtering and reporting; the agreement is what actually changes the billing.

Creating an agreement

New agreement from that tab asks for two things.

Term

Field
Title	What this agreement is called — "Rental Agreement 2026"
Term starts / ends	Defaults to a year from the start of this month

Deposit and billing

Field
Security deposit	Charged up front, returned at the end of the term. Leave at 0 if you do not take one.
Payment terms	Days from issue to due date on each monthly invoice
Bill on day of month	Your billing rhythm, for everyone's reference
Billing notes	Anything the person raising the invoice needs to know

The billing day is a note to yourself

Nothing fires on that date. Monthly invoices are deliberately generated by hand, because the whole point is to look at the usage before it goes out. The day is there so everyone agrees on the rhythm.

Saving lands you on the agreement's own page, where everything else happens.

Preparing and sending the contract

The Contract section renders the agreement from one of your contract templates — or from text you write there — and lists who signs. Add another signer if more than one person has to sign.

Agreement contracts have merge tags of their own:

Tag	Resolves to
{{term_start}} {{term_end}}	The term dates
{{term_range}}	Both, as a range
{{deposit_amount}}	The security deposit
{{payment_terms_days}}	Net days on the monthly invoices
{{billing_day}}	The billing day of the month
{{agreement_title}}	The agreement's title
{{renter_name}} {{renter_organization}}	Who is renting
{{renter_email}} {{renter_phone}} {{renter_address}}	Their details
{{account_name}} {{today_date}}	You, and today

The full list is on the page itself, under Merge tags you can use.

Send for signature emails the renter a link to a public page — no login — where they sign and pay the deposit in the same sitting. The signing link is shown on the page afterwards if you would rather send it yourself, and the page records when they opened it.

Set a signature deadline

The signature deadline closes the link after a date. An agreement sent in November that is still signable in March is not doing you any favours.

Once anyone has signed, the contract locks. Editing it after that means voiding and starting again — deliberately, because a signed contract must not change underneath the signature.

What the renter sees

The signing page opens with an at a glance panel — the term, the billing rhythm, and the deposit — then the agreement, then the signature, then the deposit.

They can draw a signature or type their name. The deposit section stays locked until at least one signature is in; nobody pays for an agreement they have not signed.

If your account adds a card processing fee, the page itemises it: deposit, fee, and total today.

The security deposit

A monthly renter's deposit is charged, not held.

Why not a card hold

Card authorizations expire in about a week. That works for an event on Saturday; it does not work for a term running to next December. So the deposit is taken as a real charge and refunded at the end.

Three ways it gets collected:

• The renter pays it on the signing page — card, at the moment they sign
• Charge the card on file — one button on the agreement, if they already have a saved card
• Record a payment — a check, cash, bank transfer, or anything else that arrived outside the system

Either way the deposit gets its own invoice, so the money has something to sit against, and it appears on the Security Deposits screen like any other.

Returning it

Return the deposit at the end of the term:

1. Enter anything you are deducting, with a reason. The reason is required as soon as the amount is above zero.
2. Choose how the rest goes back — refund to the original card (straight back through Stripe), check, or bank transfer.

The deposit settles as fully refunded, partially refunded, or forfeited depending on what you kept. A deduction larger than the deposit is refused.

The agreement goes active

An agreement becomes active only when it is both fully signed and the deposit is settled. A signed agreement with an outstanding deposit stays where it is.

Status	Meaning
draft	Being set up
sent	Out for signature
active	Signed, deposit settled, billable
expired	Term has run out
terminated	Ended early

Expired and terminated agreements are still billable, so you can invoice the final month after the term closes — which, billing in arrears, you always need to.

Monthly invoicing

This is the part you do every month, from Generate the monthly invoice at the top of the agreement.

• The period defaults to the month that just finished, because you bill after use
• Every unbilled usage date in that period is listed, ticked, and priced
• A running total shows what the invoice comes to if you bill everything shown

Untick anything that should not be on this invoice — a session they cancelled, a date somebody else is paying for — and press Create invoice.

To bill a different month, change the period dates and reload the page.

How each date is priced

From the rates on the booking the date belongs to:

Rate type	Charged as
Hourly	The rate × that date's actual hours
Daily	The rate × that date's days
Flat	The rate × quantity, once for the date

Add-ons on the booking are charged per date alongside the space.

Every date becomes its own line item with the date in the description, so the renter can see exactly what they are paying for and you can defend it on the phone.

Why not the booking's own quantity

A booking records hours or days for the booking as a whole, which says nothing useful once occurrences are billed one at a time. So each date is measured from itself — a three-hour Tuesday bills three hours, whatever the booking total says.

The invoice is still an invoice

Once created you can edit line items, add a discount, change the tax — everything on a normal invoice applies. The generator gets you most of the way; the rest is yours.

Sending and charging

Two checkboxes above the button:

• Email it to the renter — otherwise it is saved as a draft for you to look over first
• Charge the card on file — charges their default saved card for the full balance

Leave both off and you get a draft. That is the safe default, and it is what most venues want for the first few months.

If the email or the charge fails, the invoice still exists — you land on it with the reason shown, rather than losing the work and having to rebuild it.

Nothing gets billed twice

Each usage date is stamped with the invoice that billed it. Once billed it disappears from the list, and the generator refuses to raise a second invoice against a date already covered — even if two people press the button at the same time.

Dates outside the period are never touched, so a booking running across the month boundary bills in the right month.

Their bookings do not self-invoice

Normally sending a booking's agreement raises its invoice at the same time. For a renter whose booking falls inside an active agreement's term that would bill them up front and again on the month's roll-up, so it is suppressed automatically.

This applies only to bookings inside the term. A one-off wedding next year, outside it, invoices itself as usual.

Reading the Agreements tab

Column
Agreement	Title and term
Status	Draft through terminated
Signed	How many of the required signatures are in
Deposit	Amount, and whether it is outstanding or received
Balance due	What they actually owe on issued invoices

Watch for "not yet sent"

A draft invoice is not money owed — nothing has been billed until it goes out — so it is kept out of Balance due. If you have generated one and never sent it, the column says "+ $405.00 not yet sent" underneath. That line is how you catch a month you forgot to send.

A month in practice

1. The month ends.
2. Open the renter, Agreements tab, open the agreement.
3. Glance at the ticked dates. Untick the Tuesday they cancelled.
4. Tick Email it to the renter. Create.
5. Reminders chase it from there.

A look and a few clicks, once a month, per renter.