Recurring costs: add monthly pricing to your deals

Not every deal is a one-time payment. If you sell hosting, maintenance contracts, retainers, or any kind of ongoing service, your proposals need to reflect that. Until now, you had to explain monthly fees in a text block and hope the customer understood the pricing structure. That changes today.

Dealight now supports monthly recurring costs as a first-class pricing concept. You can combine one-time startup charges with ongoing monthly fees in a single deal — and your customer sees both clearly separated when they review and accept.

How it works

Any line item in your deal can become a monthly recurring cost. Set the unit to /month, and Dealight handles the rest: it pulls the item out of the one-time total and groups it into a dedicated monthly summary.

A deal can now contain three types of charges:

| Type | Example | How it appears | | ----------------- | ---------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | | One-time | Design work, setup fee | Included in the deal total as before | | Monthly recurring | Hosting, support plan | Grouped in a separate "Monthly cost" section | | Optional monthly | Premium support add-on | Customer can select it during acceptance |

You don't need to restructure your deals. Just change the unit on the relevant line items — the pricing summary, PDF, and customer-facing view all adapt automatically.

Setting up a deal with recurring costs

Step 1: Add monthly line items

In your deal editor, create line items for the recurring services and you can select monthly billing in the sidebar. These can live in any section alongside one-time items.

Example: a web agency deal

Section: Development

| Line item | Quantity | Unit | Unit price | | ------------------ | -------- | ----- | ---------- | | Design & build | 80 | hours | 120 | | Project management | 20 | hours | 95 |

Section: Ongoing services

| Line item | Quantity | Unit | Unit price | | --------------------- | -------- | ------ | ---------- | | Hosting | 1 | /month | 49 | | Support & maintenance | 1 | /month | 299 | | Monitoring (optional) | 1 | /month | 99 |

Step 2: Choose your pricing model

When your deal contains monthly items, a new pricing model becomes available: Monthly Recurring. Dealight auto-detects this and suggests it, but you can also select it manually. Three variations are available depending on your deal structure:

• Fixed monthly — the entire deal is monthly (no one-time charges)
• Fixed monthly with startup — a one-time startup cost plus an ongoing monthly fee
• Monthly recurring (estimated) — for variable-usage services where the monthly amount is an estimate

Step 3: Send the deal

When you send the deal, the pricing summary is automatically split. Your customer sees the one-time total and the monthly total as separate figures — both in the digital deal view and in the generated PDF.

The PDF header adapts to your deal structure:

• One-time only: Shows a single price
• Monthly only: Shows "Per month: ..."
• Both: Shows "Startup cost: ..." and "Then per month: ..."

What your customer sees

When a customer opens the deal, the pricing is presented in two clear sections. The one-time costs appear in the standard summary table. Below it, a dedicated Monthly cost table lists every recurring item with its own subtotal, tax calculation, and grand total.

If the deal includes optional monthly add-ons, the customer can select them during acceptance. The monthly total updates in real time as they toggle options on and off. The acceptance confirmation shows both the one-time commitment and the ongoing monthly amount, so there's no ambiguity about what they're agreeing to.

Multi-currency support

Monthly costs work with multiple currencies. If you have recurring items priced in different currencies — say hosting billed in EUR and support in your local currency — Dealight groups them by currency with subtotals for each, then converts everything to the deal's base currency for the grand total. A currency disclaimer is included automatically.

Tracking recurring revenue

Once a customer accepts a deal with monthly costs, the recurring value is stored separately from the one-time order value. This feeds into your dashboard, where you can now see monthly recurring revenue projections alongside your standard deal pipeline.

The projection expands each accepted deal into monthly rows between its start and end dates, giving you a forecast of recurring income over time. Combined with the one-time revenue chart, this gives you a fuller picture of your business.

Recurring costs and change orders

One thing to note: change orders (modifications to an accepted deal) cannot include monthly recurring items. If you need to adjust the monthly pricing after acceptance, create a new deal for the updated terms. This keeps the billing lifecycle clean and avoids ambiguity about when pricing changes take effect.

A real-world example

Here's a complete deal for an indoor plant care company:

Deal: "Office plant setup & maintenance"

Section: Setup (one-time)

| Line item | Quantity | Unit | Unit price | | -------------------- | -------- | ----- | ---------- | | Plants | 30 | pcs | 45 | | Pots & saucers | 30 | pcs | 25 | | Delivery & placement | 1 | fixed | 200 |

Section: Monthly care

| Line item | Quantity | Unit | Unit price | | ----------------------------- | -------- | ------ | ---------- | | Plant maintenance (30 plants) | 1 | /month | 300 | | Seasonal rotation (optional) | 1 | /month | 75 |

The customer receives a deal showing:

• Startup cost: 2,300
• Then per month: 300 (or 375 if they add seasonal rotation)

Clear, professional, and no room for misunderstanding.

Getting started

If you already use Dealight, you can start adding monthly line items to your deals today — just set the unit to /month. No setup, no configuration. Your existing templates work as before; add monthly items when you need them.

If you're building templates for services that always include a recurring component, consider creating a dedicated section template for your monthly services. Insert it into any deal, and the monthly summary generates automatically.