Recurring Transactions

Recurring Transactions — Complete Guide

🕒 12 min read 🕒 Updated 23 Apr 2026

What are Recurring Transactions?

The Recurring Transactions module lets you automate any financial event that happens on a regular schedule. Instead of manually adding your salary credit every month, your Netflix debit each month, or your SIP investment each cycle, you define a schedule once — and Wevanta creates the actual transaction entries in your account automatically, on the correct date, every cycle, forever.

This is different from the Reminders module. Reminders alert you to take action (you still pay and record it manually). Recurring Transactions actually create the transaction entries for you with zero manual intervention.

Step 1: Creating a Recurring Schedule

Go to Transactions → Recurring and click + Add Recurring. A modal opens with the following fields:

Field	What to Enter	Required?
Title	A clear name that will appear on every auto-created transaction. Examples: Monthly Salary, Netflix ₹649, HDFC SIP, Home Loan EMI, Office Rent Collection. This becomes the transaction description — keep it precise so your accounts stay clean.	✅ Required
Type	Expense — money going out (rent, subscriptions, utility bills, EMIs). Income — money coming in (salary, rental income collected, dividend). SIP / Investment — recurring investment debit. EMI / Loan — loan repayment outflow. The type drives the green/red colouring and the income vs. expense classification in your reports.	✅ Required
Category	A free-text label for grouping (e.g., Entertainment, Salary, Utilities). This appears as the category on every auto-generated transaction — used for filtering and reporting.	Optional
Amount (₹)	The fixed amount for each occurrence. Must be a positive number. If the amount varies month to month (e.g., electricity bills), use Reminders instead — Recurring Transactions are best for fixed amounts only.	✅ Required
Account	Which of your accounts this transaction applies to. The auto-created transaction will be posted to this account — affecting its running balance. Examples: link salary to your HDFC Savings account; link SIP to your Zerodha account; link Netflix to your credit card account.	✅ Required
Frequency	Daily — runs every day (pocket money, daily wage income). Weekly — runs every 7 days (weekly pocket money, web scraping subscription). Monthly — runs every month (the most common: salary, rent, EMI, SIP, Netflix). Quarterly — runs every 3 months (insurance premium, school fees). Yearly — runs once per year (annual subscription, property tax, renewal).	✅ Required
Next Run Date	The date of the very first occurrence (or the next upcoming occurrence, if this is an existing schedule you are migrating). Wevanta uses this date to create the first transaction and then auto-advances it after each run. Set this to the next calendar date this event is due — e.g., if your salary comes on the 1st, set this to the 1st of next month.	✅ Required

Step 2: The Automatic Processing Engine

This is the core of the module. Wevanta runs a background scheduler (Wevanta:process-recurring) every day. Here is exactly what it does:

It queries all Active recurring schedules where next_run_at is on or before today.
For each one, it creates a real Transaction entry in your account with the exact date, amount, type, category, and title from the schedule.
It records last_run_at = today on the schedule.
It advances next_run_at by the correct interval (Daily: +1 day, Weekly: +7 days, Monthly: +1 month, Quarterly: +3 months, Yearly: +1 year).
If the scheduler missed several cycles (e.g., a server was down for 3 days), it catches up — it loops and creates one transaction per missed cycle, correctly backdated.

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Result: The next morning, your salary, your Netflix charge, and your SIP are all already in your accounts as real transactions. You open Wevanta and your balances are already updated — with zero manual entry from your side.

Step 3: The Recurring Schedule List

The Recurring Transactions page shows all your active and paused schedules as cards. Each card shows:

📈 Green background for income / 📉 Red background for expenses.
The Title, Type badge (INCOME / EXPENSE / SIP / EMI), Frequency, Linked Account name, and Next Run Date.
The Amount in green (+) for income or red (-) for expenses.
Action buttons: ⏸ Pause / ▶ Resume, Edit, and Delete.

Paused schedules are shown at reduced opacity (60%) so you can see them but know they are inactive.

Step 4: Pausing and Resuming a Schedule

Click ⏸ Pause on any active schedule. The schedule is immediately marked inactive — the scheduler will skip it on its next run. No transactions are deleted or reversed. Click ▶ Resume to re-activate it. On resume, the Next Run Date remains what it was when you paused — so if you paused a monthly schedule and resume it 2 weeks later, it will run on the originally set date.

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When to Pause vs. Delete: Pause when an expense is temporarily stopped (e.g., a Netflix subscription you cancelled for 2 months but plan to restart). Delete when the recurring event is permanently over (e.g., a loan that is fully paid off, or a salary from a job you left). Deleting does NOT delete the historical transactions that were already created — only the future schedule is removed.

Step 5: Editing a Schedule

Click Edit on any schedule. The same modal reopens with all current values pre-filled. You can change any field — including the Next Run Date (to skip an already-missed cycle), the amount (e.g., salary increment), or the account (if you change banks). Changes take effect from the very next scheduler run.

Step 6: What Gets Created in Your Accounts

Every auto-created transaction has these exact fields populated from your schedule:

Date: The next_run_at date at the time of processing (accurately backdated if missed).
Amount: Exactly as defined in the schedule.
Type: Income / Expense / SIP / EMI.
Category: Exactly as defined in the schedule.
Description: "Auto-generated" (or your custom description if you filled it).

These transactions appear in your Account Ledger, Cash Flow Report, and Budget Actuals just like any manually entered transaction.

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Important: Recurring Transactions create entries at the correct amount every time, but they do NOT know about real-world account balance. If your linked bank account goes negative due to an auto-created expense, Wevanta will still create the transaction because it mirrors reality — your expense still happened even if the account was overdrawn. Monitor your accounts regularly.