# Recurring transactions

Set rent, salary, Netflix, and gym fees up once. Flow records them on schedule, every time.

## Where it lives

Recurrence isn't a separate screen — it's a section _on the transaction itself_. Open any transaction (or create a new one), scroll down past the basic fields, and you'll see a **Recurrence** section. Tap **Recurrence setup** to open the schedule editor.

The transaction you set this on becomes a template. Flow uses it to generate copies on the schedule you choose.

## Picking a schedule

The setup sheet offers presets for the common cases:

- Every day
- Every week
- Every 2 weeks
- Every month
- Every year

And three ways to end the rule:

- **Never** — runs forever (until you turn it off).
- **On a date** — the rule stops after that date.
- **After N occurrences** — Flow shows you the total it'll generate.

## How generation works

Flow doesn't pre-generate every future occurrence. When you open the app, it walks the rule forward and creates transactions **up through today, plus exactly one occurrence in the future**. That single look-ahead is the same regardless of how far behind the rule is — whether it owes you 1 occurrence or 10, you only ever see at most one future-dated transaction at a time.

The next future occurrence is generated only after the current future one moves into the past (i.e. its date arrives). So a monthly rule keeps exactly one upcoming occurrence visible at any given moment.

What happens to those generated transactions depends on a setting in **Profile → Preferences → Pending transactions**:

- If **Require confirmation** is on, the future-dated look-ahead lands as a [pending transaction](/content/guide/pending/index.html) you'll need to approve when its date comes.
- If it's off, the look-ahead is confirmed automatically as soon as its date arrives.

Past and present occurrences (the catch-up backlog) follow the same rule — they're confirmed or pending depending on that setting.

## Catch-up generation

If you don't open Flow for a few weeks, every missed occurrence is back-dated to the right day on the next launch — plus one fresh look-ahead in the future. Your history stays correct without flooding you with future-dated rows.

## Editing the rule

Editing the recurring transaction changes the template for _future_ occurrences only. Already-generated transactions in your history keep their original values, so a rent increase doesn't silently rewrite the past.

## Stopping a rule

To stop a rule, open the source transaction and either:

- Set the recurrence end date to today (or a date in the past).
- Remove the recurrence entirely from the transaction.
- Delete the source transaction — past generations are kept; no new ones run.

## Recurring transfers

Transfers can recur too. Set up a transfer between two of your accounts, then add a recurrence to it — Flow will duplicate the transfer on schedule. Useful for automatic monthly savings deposits.