mcp-recurring
Say "bill Acme 12 hours at 90 EUR on the 1st of every month" once, and stop remembering it. This MCP server stores recurring invoice schedules, client, line items, cadence, start and end dates, and then, when you ask, creates the invoices that have actually fallen due as real records in the invoice server, with its number series, its clients and its A4 PDF. Generation is idempotent: one invoice per schedule per period, keyed by the occurrence date, so running the billing run twice on the same day creates nothing the second time. It also answers "what falls due in the next 30 days" and "what will I invoice per month for the next year". Everything is stored in plain JSON files on your own machine; nothing is uploaded anywhere.
In the official MCP Registry (io.github.theluckystrike/recurring-invoice-scheduler-subscription-billing-due-reminders).
Define a repeating invoice once, generate the due PDFs from chat, no billing SaaS required.
60-second install
npm publish for @theluckystrike/mcp-recurring is pending. Until then, the .mcpb one-click bundle or a clone+build
is the working path, both are verified below.
One-click (.mcpb): download recurring.mcpb from the latest release and double-click it in Claude Desktop:
https://github.com/theluckystrike/mcp-servers/releases/latest
(claude_desktop_config.json):
{
"mcpServers": {
"recurring": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@theluckystrike/mcp-recurring"]
}
}
}
Claude Code:
claude mcp add recurring -- npx -y @theluckystrike/mcp-recurring
(.cursor/mcp.json):
{
"mcpServers": {
"recurring": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@theluckystrike/mcp-recurring"]
}
}
}
The npx form above starts working the moment the package is published. Until then, use the .mcpb bundle above, or
build from source with exactly these three commands:
git clone https://github.com/theluckystrike/mcp-servers.git && cd mcp-servers
npm install
npm run build -w packages/mcp-license -w servers/invoice -w servers/recurring
Then point your client's command at node with one arg: the absolute path to servers/recurring/dist/index.js.
To run in Pro mode set MCP_LICENSE_KEY in the same config block, or call license_activate once with your key.
Pairs with
- mcp-invoice, required in practice, not by code. This server writes into the invoice
server's data directory and shares its number counter, its client list and its business profile, so every
generated invoice appears in
invoice_list, counts in overdue_report and can be re-rendered with
invoice_pdf. Set your issuer details once with business_set there; this server has no business_set
of its own on purpose, so there is only one profile to keep right.
- mcp-time-tracker, for the hours that are not on a retainer. Track them, invoice
them ad hoc, and leave the fixed monthly part to a schedule here.
- mcp-expense-tracker, rebillable costs that change every month belong on an ad
hoc invoice; a schedule is for the amount that does not change.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|
schedule_create | Define a repeating invoice: client, items, cadence, start date, optional end date, due days, notes |
schedule_list | Every schedule with cadence, amount per period, next due date and status |
schedule_get | Full record for one schedule, plus how many invoices it has generated |
schedule_update | Change client, items, currency, cadence, dates, due days or notes. Periods already invoiced are never re-issued |
schedule_pause | Stop generating without deleting; history is kept |
schedule_resume | Make it active again. Periods that fell due while paused are still due |
schedule_delete | Remove the schedule. Invoices it made stay in the invoice server and its history is kept as an audit trail. A re-created schedule gets a new id, so invoice_generate_due warns when it re-covers a period the old one already billed |
schedule_skip | Skip ONE occurrence for good, without pausing the schedule -- the answer to "do not bill this client for October". undo: true puts the period back |
schedule_upcoming | What falls due in the next N days, with amounts and totals per currency, plus any period that already fell due and was never invoiced. Free covers 30 days |
invoice_generate_due | Create the invoices that are due as of a date and render their PDFs. Idempotent, keyed by period; reports created and skipped. At most 60 invoices per call, oldest period first, and it says how many are still due. dry_run shows the run first. Free and unlimited |
schedule_history | Pro: the audit log for one schedule -- every period, invoice number, dates, amount, paid status and PDF path |
forecast | Expected revenue per calendar month per currency, with paused schedules listed separately rather than dropped. Free covers 3 months |
license_status | Show free or Pro mode |
license_activate | Activate a Pro key (verified offline) |
Resource: recurring://upcoming returns the next 30 days of occurrences as JSON.
Prompt: monthly_billing_run, dry run, generate, list what is coming, then report who needs a payment reminder.
What you can say
| You say | Tool |
|---|
| "Bill Acme 12 hours at 90 EUR every month from the 1st." | schedule_create |
| "What recurring invoices do I have?" | schedule_list |
| "What is due in the next 30 days?" | schedule_upcoming |
| "Run this month's billing." | monthly_billing_run / invoice_generate_due |
| "Show me what would be created before you create it." | invoice_generate_due {dry_run: true} |
| "Pause the Beta Corp retainer, they are on hold." | schedule_pause |
| "Do not bill Acme for October." | schedule_skip |
| "Put the Acme retainer up to 100 EUR an hour from now on." | schedule_update |
| "How much will I invoice per month next year?" | forecast |
| "Show me every invoice this retainer has produced." | schedule_history |
Worked example
You: Bill Acme 12 hours at 90 EUR a month, starting 1 June, 14 day terms.
schedule_create {
client: "Acme Retainer", currency: "EUR", every: "monthly",
start_date: "2026-06-01", due_days: 14,
items: [{ description: "Retainer hours", quantity: 12, unit_price: 90 }]
}
-> schedule 9f2c1a04, next dates 2026-06-01, 2026-07-01, 2026-08-01, 2026-09-01
You (on 3 September): Run the billing.
invoice_generate_due {}
-> as_of 2026-09-03: created 4 invoices, skipped 0 already invoiced.
INV-2026-0001 Acme Retainer period 2026-06-01 EUR 1080.00 due 2026-06-15 .../pdf/INV-2026-0001.pdf
INV-2026-0002 Acme Retainer period 2026-07-01 EUR 1080.00 due 2026-07-15 .../pdf/INV-2026-0002.pdf
INV-2026-0003 Acme Retainer period 2026-08-01 EUR 1080.00 due 2026-08-15 .../pdf/INV-2026-0003.pdf
INV-2026-0004 Acme Retainer period 2026-09-01 EUR 1080.00 due 2026-09-15 .../pdf/INV-2026-0004.pdf
Total: EUR 4320.00
You (five minutes later, having forgotten): Run the billing.
invoice_generate_due {}
-> as_of 2026-09-03: created 0 invoices, skipped 4 already invoiced.
The second run is the point: the period, not the calendar day, is the key, so a repeated billing run is a
no-op rather than a duplicate invoice sitting in a client's inbox.
Free vs Pro
| Free | Pro |
|---|
| Active schedules | 3 | Unlimited |
invoice_generate_due | Yes, unlimited | Yes, unlimited |
schedule_upcoming horizon | 30 days | Up to 10 years |
forecast | 3 months | Up to 120 months |
schedule_history audit log | No | Yes |
End-of-month and anchor-day rules (anchor_day, end_of_month) | No, bills on the start date's day of month | Yes |
| Pause, resume, update, delete, dry run, multi-currency | Yes | Yes |
Pro is a one-time $19, or $39 for every server in the collection, lifetime.
Dates: what happens at a month end
Every date is a local ISO calendar date, YYYY-MM-DD. An occurrence is the k-th step from start_date, and
occurrence 0 is start_date itself, so a schedule starting today is due today.
weekly = +7 days per step. {days: n} = +n days per step.monthly = +1 month, quarterly = +3 months, yearly = +12 months.- Month ends. The month step keeps the day of month of
start_date and clamps it to the length of the
target month; it never carries the clamp forward. From 2026-01-31 the series is 01-31, 02-28, 03-31,
04-30, 05-31, February does not silently turn a month-end retainer into a 28th-of-the-month retainer.
- Feb 29. The same rule makes a yearly schedule starting
2028-02-29 fall on 02-28 in common years and
back on 02-29 in the next leap year.
anchor_day / end_of_month (Pro). anchor_day replaces the day of month before clamping, so
anchor_day: 31 means the last day of every month; end_of_month: true does the same explicitly. Both are
ignored for weekly and {days: n}, which have no month to anchor to. An anchored first occurrence that
would land before start_date is dropped, never billed early.end_date is inclusive. An occurrence landing exactly on end_date is generated; the next one is not.- Long-lived schedules. Looking up what is due does not replay the schedule from
start_date: it jumps to
an estimate near the date you asked about and scans forward from there, so a daily schedule created in 2010
still reports what is due in 2026 instead of exhausting its per-run occurrence cap walking there one day at
a time.
Money
Amounts are held as integer minor units by the invoice engine, the same ISO 4217 table, the same
round-per-line-then-sum contract, so a schedule's amount and the invoice it produces can never disagree. Each
line's gross is rounded first, tax is computed and rounded per line and grouped into one line per rate, and
the totals are integer sums of those already-rounded values. A schedule bills in its own currency, or your
business default currency if it has none; nothing here converts between currencies.
How it stores data
Schedules and the generation log live in
${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/mcp-servers/recurring/ as schedules.json and history.json. The
go into the invoice server's directory, ${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/mcp-servers/invoice/,
with their PDFs under its pdf/ subfolder, the same files invoice_list, overdue_report and
invoice_pdf read there.
Every mutation runs under an advisory lock file. Anything that writes an invoice takes two locks, always
in the same order, recurring/.lock first, then invoice/.lock, so two billing runs (or a billing run
and a hand-written invoice in the other server) cannot interleave, cannot allocate the same invoice number
and cannot deadlock. Invoice numbers are allocated inside the lock; the PDFs are rendered after it is
released, so a slow render never holds up the counter. Saves go to a temporary file and are renamed into
place.
If schedules.json or history.json is unreadable or not valid JSON it is never treated as "empty": the
file is moved aside byte-for-byte as <name>.json.corrupt-<timestamp>, a <name>.json.corrupt marker is
written, and every tool fails loudly until you restore a good copy and delete the marker. This matters more
here than anywhere else in the collection: a history.json silently read as empty would re-bill every period
the schedule has ever covered.
Limits and honest caveats
- Nothing runs in the background. This is a stdio MCP server: it exists while your client runs it. No
daemon, no cron, no email. Invoices are created when you (or the
monthly_billing_run prompt) call
invoice_generate_due. auto_generate is a marker for that prompt, not a scheduler.
- Nothing is sent to the client. The server produces the invoice record and the PDF; delivering it and
chasing payment is still yours to do.
overdue_report in the invoice server tells you who to chase.
- Free tier allows 3 active schedules. Pausing one frees a slot; the paused schedule's history is kept.
- Deleting a schedule keeps its history rows, deliberately: a re-created schedule with the same id cannot
double-bill a period. Invoices already generated are never touched by anything here.
schedule_update changes future periods only. A period already invoiced keeps the amount that was billed;
correct it in the invoice server instead.- No proration and no mid-period cancellation credit: a period is billed in full or not at all.
- No currency conversion; a schedule bills in one currency.
Troubleshooting
npx hangs or fails to find the package: npm publish for this package is pending. Use the .mcpb
bundle or the clone-and-build path above until it lands.- Using the clone path: build
servers/invoice before servers/recurring, the engine is imported from
it. npm run build -w packages/mcp-license -w servers/invoice -w servers/recurring does that in order.
- "No business profile yet": run
business_set in the invoice server (mcp-invoice), not here.
Generation is never blocked by it; the PDF just carries the placeholder issuer "Your business".
- The invoices are not in my invoice server: both servers must see the same
XDG_DATA_HOME. They write
to .../mcp-servers/invoice/ under it; if one client sets that variable and the other does not, you have
two stores.
- A period was skipped:
invoice_generate_due only skips a period already present in history.json.
schedule_history (Pro) or the file itself shows exactly which invoice covered it.
- Node version: requires Node >= 18. Check with
node -v.
Privacy
All data stays local: schedules, the generation log, invoices and PDFs are plain files under your own home
directory. The server makes no network calls at all, and license keys are verified offline.
Built by theluckystrike. MIT. Support: support@zovo.one
One business profile for the whole suite
Your identity is stored once, at ${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/mcp-servers/profile/business.json,
and every server in the suite reads it: the invoice issuer, the docx letterhead, the recurring
issuer, expense-tracker's default VAT rate, time-tracker's and timezone's home zone, and the
resume and contract letterheads. Set it once with business_set (invoice or docx) - you never
repeat it anywhere else. An email address is only ever taken from that profile or from an explicit
argument; when none is stored, documents show [add: email] and the tool says so rather than
letting anyone improvise an address.
Use these docs as an MCP server
Any MCP client (Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code) can read this repository's documentation directly via GitMCP - no install: