cannot create recurring transactions in the new customer invoicing experience

I have been using Recurring Transactions for many years. After I entered a transaction, I could create a recurring transaction from it. I save an enormous amount of valuable time with recurring transactions.

And every time I created, edited and saved a new transaction from the recurring transaction template, QuickBooks Online (QBO) asked me if I want to update the template to reflect my changes. It was tedious to be asked constantly, but now that I can’t use it, boy, do I miss it.

I recently migrated a new bookkeeping client from QuickBooks Desktop to QBO. Without being asked, I was forced to be in “the new experience” for customer invoicing. I could go on for hours with how bad this experience is, but the grievous sin is that I can no longer create recurring transactions or update recurring transactions.

These Support pages say I can create a recurring invoice from an existing invoice by opening the existing invoice, clicking on Automation on the right, and clicking on Recurring Invoice. But that doesn’t make the existing invoice be recurring, doesn’t create a template identical to the invoice I have open. No, it takes me to a screen where I can create entirely from scratch an invoice, then save it as recurring. Guess what, I just spent a lot of time creating the invoice I wanted, and I want that one to be the recurring transaction. I was able to do this in “the old experience,” I’ve been doing it for years.

And if I create an invoice from a recurring transaction and change it in a way that I will want to use again, that I want saved as the existing recurring template, too bad, it does not ask me if I want to save the changes to the template.

I have to keep a separate log of all the invoices where the recurring invoice template is partially incorrect or a recurring transaction doesn’t exist. I have to keep track of how I need to change the invoice created from the partially incorrect recurring transaction, or I have to copy the previous invoice that was unable to be made into a recurring transaction. Have I already said how valuable my time is?

Here are two more complaints about the new customer invoicing experience.

One, the invoice total does not appear anywhere on the screen as I am creating the invoice, I cannot see the total without saving the invoice and creating a PDF of it. Who creates customer invoices without being able to see the invoice total?

Two, if I am editing an invoice I created from a recurring transaction and I need to add a line, I cannot insert a row as I could in the old experience. No, I have to add the new line at the bottom, or else re-create all the lines I wanted moved down so I can put the new line higher up on the invoice.

Why do I not revert my customer invoicing back to the old experience? Because I’ve been using QuickBooks Online for ten years and I am wise to Intuit’s ways: I feel certain that the new experience will soon become required for all users, and telephone support people have agreed with me on that. I suspect I need to master it now, and it may be the most frustrating, time-wasting thing I’ve experienced in ten years of QBO.

I don’t think I had any complaints about the old customer invoicing and certainly not about recurring transactions. Either I am missing a huge volume of credible complaints that other users made about the old customer invoicing experience or Intuit is fixing something that isn’t broken and is rolling the changes out before they are fully functional.