How to automate invoice reminders without annoying good clients
Send a heads-up three days before the due date, a reminder each Monday after it and a phone call at 30 days, and pick out who needs a firmer note.
Send good clients a heads-up three days before an invoice is due, then one reminder each Monday it stays unpaid, firmer by the third, and pick up the phone at 30 days. QuickBooks Online can send up to three reminders by itself, but every client gets the same words, so someone still reads the overdue list each week and decides who gets a call.
If you invoice clients on terms, chasing the late payers is a weekly job. You open QuickBooks, find every invoice past its due date, decide who needs a phone call and write everyone else a reminder. In a busy week, it slides to the week after. When you catch up, you send everyone the same curt template. Even the client who’s paid on time for years gets it, and they only missed this one because your invoice went to the wrong inbox.
Timing and wording for each reminder
Until a client shows you otherwise, assume a late payment has a dull cause and write the reminder for that. Often the invoice is sitting with your project contact, or their accounts payable team won’t pay without a purchase order (PO) number.
Send one courtesy reminder around the due date. It’s the only one a client who pays on time will see. A heads-up three days early beats a reminder on the day, because it leaves time to fix a missing PO number before anything’s late.
In the heads-up, list the invoice number, amount, due date and how to pay. Ask if they need anything from you before they can pay it. If you skip the heads-up, send two lines on the due date itself: the amount and how to pay.
After the due date, send one reminder a week, on Monday. Write the first as if it’s an oversight, and ask them to confirm it’s in their next payment run. By the third, make it firmer: give the days overdue and any late fee your terms include, and ask for a specific payment date. Leave out sarcasm and any threat you won’t carry out. At 30 days, stop emailing and call, then confirm the amount and date you agreed in writing.
Clients who get a phone call or a firmer reminder
Phone these clients as soon as their invoice is overdue, whatever the schedule says:
- A client who’s always paid on time and is now late. Something changed on their side, and one call tells you what.
- Anyone who’s complained about the work. A cheerful reminder on top of an open complaint reads as if you didn’t hear it. Settle the complaint, and hold the reminders until you have.
- A client whose invoice is big enough that a week’s delay changes what you can pay out this month.
- A client whose payment is stuck in their own process, waiting on a PO number or a form from you. Call their accounts payable team directly.
The client who promised a date and missed it gets a firmer reminder without a call. Quote their date back to them and ask for a new one.
If your contract or invoice terms include a late fee, QuickBooks can add it. In Settings > Account and settings > Sales > Late fees, turn on Default charge applied to overdue invoices and set the fee, how often it applies and any grace period. A grace period spares the client whose check crossed in the mail.
Intuit says to confirm what your jurisdiction allows. It also warns that clients won’t know about a fee unless a reminder tells them. For a client you don’t want to charge, switch late fees off on their Late Fees tab.
QuickBooks Online’s reminder settings and where they stop
QuickBooks Online can send scheduled reminders by itself. In Settings > Account and settings > Sales, select Edit in the Reminders section and turn on Automatic invoice reminders. Switch on Reminder 1 and set it for three days before the due date. QuickBooks also lets you add a second and third reminder, each up to 90 days before or after the due date. Each has its own subject line, and a message that can include the invoice number.
These reminders only go out for invoices you’ve already emailed from QuickBooks. An invoice you attached to your own email never gets one. Your templates apply to every invoice reminder: your most reliable client reads the same words as your slowest. A client in the middle of a complaint gets the same cheerful reminder, because nobody looks at the account before one goes out.
When one client needs a firmer reminder, open their invoice in Sales & Get Paid > Invoices and choose Send reminder from the Receive payment dropdown. Edit the message there before you send it. On QuickBooks Online Advanced, Intuit’s reminder page adds that you can create invoice reminders with workflows, which set the conditions for when a reminder goes out.
A Monday chase list in Slack, with drafts in Gmail
You can hand the weekly chase to WebRun or another automation tool. WebRun, an AI agent, runs its template for chasing overdue invoices every Monday at 9:00 AM. It opens QuickBooks in a browser with your saved login and lists every overdue invoice: client, invoice number, amount and days overdue. The oldest and largest go first. WebRun skips any invoice already flagged with a reminder sent that week.
In Gmail, it writes each client a short reminder naming the invoice number and amount, under a subject line that starts “Friendly reminder”. Every one stays unsent in Drafts. Then it posts the chase list to you in Slack, with each client’s amount and days outstanding, plus a count of the drafts waiting.
Because the run starts from the overdue list, it also catches invoices you sent from your own email, the ones QuickBooks’ automatic reminders skip. QuickBooks counts an invoice as overdue once it has an open balance past its due date. You can rewrite a draft like any other email, and it goes from your own Gmail address when you send it.
To set it up:
- Check the terms and due date on each open invoice in QuickBooks, since every reminder counts from the due date. In the Terms field, “Net” is the number of days until payment is due.
- Switch off any QuickBooks reminder set for after the due date, so a client doesn’t get your draft and QuickBooks’ email in the same week.
- Start the template and sign in to QuickBooks and Gmail once.
- Give WebRun a sample to follow: a reminder you’ve written to a client you like.
Your part on Monday morning
You know things the chase list doesn’t show: which client is unhappy with the last round of work, whose bookkeeper just left, who promised to pay on Friday. So on Monday morning, with the list open in Slack, you decide who gets a call. Mark those clients and delete their drafts in Gmail. Read each remaining draft as if you’d written it, and fix whatever sounds wrong for that client before you send it. For anyone into their third week overdue, make the draft firmer.
Drafts that need a second look in the first month
- If a client’s payment is in the mail or you haven’t matched a bank transfer yet, the invoice still shows an open balance and gets a draft. Record payments in QuickBooks before 9:00 on Monday, or look at the bank before you send.
- A client who agreed to longer terms than the invoice shows gets a reminder before they’re late. Fix the terms on the invoice.
- After a part payment, check that the amount in the draft matches the balance still open.
- For a client with several overdue invoices, see whether WebRun drafted one email or one per invoice, and merge them so the client gets one.
- Check the To line on the first few drafts. Make sure the reminder reaches whoever pays your invoices, and copy your project contact if they should see it.
