If you sell services on a recurring basis – accounting, IT support, software maintenance, hosting, marketing retainers, rentals, etc. – then invoicing is never “one and done”.
Every month or quarter you need to:
- Generate new invoices for the same customers
- Make sure prices, tax and terms are still correct
- Send reminders if clients pay late
- Keep finance, sales and support all on the same page
Many companies solve this by subscribing to a separate billing platform like Zoho Billing or other recurring billing tools, which offer subscription management and automated reminders but charge ongoing monthly fees per organization and often limit users or features.
The problem: your customer data lives in SuiteCRM, while invoices and payments are managed somewhere else. You pay extra every month and still have to synchronize data.
MTS Advanced Invoice was built to fix exactly that.
It turns SuiteCRM itself into a powerful recurring invoicing engine – so you can automate billing inside the CRM you already use, without paying per-user SaaS fees to a third-party system.
Why keep recurring billing inside SuiteCRM?
One central place for customers, contracts and invoices
With external invoicing tools, you end up with:
- Contacts, accounts, opportunities and activities in SuiteCRM
- Subscriptions, invoices and payments in another platform
Reporting becomes complicated and your team constantly jumps between tabs.
With MTS Advanced Invoice:
- Recurring invoice definitions, generated invoices and payments are SuiteCRM modules
- You can follow the full chain in one system:
Account → Contract/Service → Recurring Invoice → Invoice → Payment
Everything is stored, searched and reported from SuiteCRM.
Lower long-term cost than many billing SaaS tools
Most recurring billing platforms use a subscription model – you pay every month, often with limits on users, invoices or organisations. For example, Zoho Billing’s paid plans start around $29/month and go up as you need more advanced features and usage.
MTS Advanced Invoice takes a different approach:
- Available as a Yearly license or One-Time license
- Unlimited users for your SuiteCRM instance SuiteCRM Store
- Licensed per production instance, with unlimited dev/test instances
If you already run SuiteCRM on your own infrastructure, adding MTS Advanced Invoice is usually much more cost-effective than running a separate subscription billing stack.
What does MTS Advanced Invoice add to SuiteCRM?
According to the official product page and documentation, MTS Advanced Invoice helps you craft professional invoices, automatically generate new and recurring invoices, and send payment reminders – all from within SuiteCRM.
Here are the key capabilities.
1. Dedicated Recurring Invoice module
Instead of tracking repeating invoices in spreadsheets, you define them as records in a Recurring Invoice module:
- Select the customer (Account / Contact)
- Add products or services, quantities, taxes and discounts
- Choose the frequency (monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc.)
- Define start date, end date or number of cycles
Each record becomes a clear “contract” describing when and how SuiteCRM should generate invoices for that customer.
2. Automatically generate invoices by frequency
Once set up, the system can auto-create new invoices according to the frequency you configured:
- Monthly maintenance? → A new invoice every month
- Annual license fee? → One invoice per year
- Any custom schedule you define
New invoices are created in the standard AOS_Invoices module, so you can keep using your existing PDF templates, reports and accounting integrations.
You no longer have to clone invoices by hand or remember which customers need to be billed this week.
3. Email notifications and payment reminders
MTS Advanced Invoice helps you stay on top of due and overdue invoices:
- Notify internal staff when new invoices are generated from a recurring definition
- Send reminder emails to customers when invoices are overdue, using SuiteCRM’s Email Templates for branded messages
You control the wording and timing via SuiteCRM configuration, so reminders fit your tone and business rules.
4. Clear overview of recurring revenue
Within a Recurring Invoice record, the add-on provides an overview of the recurring invoice and its generated instances, helping you see:
- Total expected value over the contract
- Which invoices have already been created and paid
- What is still upcoming
That makes it easier to forecast recurring revenue directly from SuiteCRM
5. Track payments per invoice
The add-on also supports payment tracking per invoice, so you can record:
- Single full payments
- Multiple partial payments for one invoice (for projects or milestone-based work)
This gives you a clear status for each invoice: paid, partially paid, or unpaid.
6. Quickly convert existing invoices into recurring ones
Already have a “standard” invoice you use repeatedly for a customer?
MTS Advanced Invoice lets you create a Recurring Invoice from an existing invoice, so you don’t have to rebuild line items from scratch.
It’s a practical way to migrate from manual repeating invoices to a fully automated recurring setup.
Example workflow with MTS Advanced Invoice
A typical recurring billing flow inside SuiteCRM might look like this:
- Sales or account manager closes a deal
They create the initial Invoice in SuiteCRM with all products/services. - Create a Recurring Invoice
From that invoice (or directly), they create a Recurring Invoice record, choose frequency and schedule. - Scheduler runs
SuiteCRM’s scheduler/cron triggers MTS Advanced Invoice to generate new invoices when due and send internal/customer notifications. - Finance records payment
The finance user logs payments in the Payment section of each invoice and updates status. - Management reviews reports
Managers use standard SuiteCRM reports and dashboards to track recurring revenue, outstanding invoices and overdue amounts.
All of this happens inside SuiteCRM, with no external billing platform needed.
Who is MTS Advanced Invoice a good fit for?
This add-on is ideal if:
- You provide recurring services (retainers, maintenance, hosting, subscriptions, managed services, etc.)
- SuiteCRM is already your central customer system
- You prefer a one-time or yearly license instead of continuous per-user SaaS fees
- You want recurring invoices, reminders and payment tracking without sending data to another cloud service
If you only send a few one-off invoices per year, the built-in AOS_Invoices module may be enough.
But once recurring billing becomes a core part of your business, MTS Advanced Invoice can save your team a lot of manual work and keep everything aligned in CRM.
Turn SuiteCRM into your recurring billing engine
Instead of maintaining separate tools for CRM and invoicing – and paying for another monthly subscription – you can keep:
- Customer data, contracts, and communication
- Recurring invoices and payments
all in one system: SuiteCRM.
MTS Advanced Invoice gives you advanced recurring billing features, automated invoice generation and reminders, and payment tracking – while keeping costs predictable and your data centralized.
If you’d like help planning or implementing MTS Advanced Invoice in your SuiteCRM instance, the Mien Trung Software team can assist with installation, configuration and customizations tailored to your billing process.