Most late payment is forgetfulness rather than refusal, which is why chasing is on from the moment you sign up. A business that installs an invoicing tool wants to be paid, and having to find the switch first is the feature not working.
When a reminder goes out
The days are counted from the invoice’s due date. Negative is before it, zero is on the day, positive is after:
| Day | What it is |
|---|---|
| −3 | A nudge before it falls due |
| 0 | The ask, on the day |
| +7 | A week late |
| +14 | A fortnight late |
| +30 | A month late |
The first two do most of the work. All five are yours to change in Settings → Invoicing, and the whole thing can be switched off there.
One sweep a day, deciding fresh
Reminders are not queued when an invoice is issued. Once a day, Paylent looks at every unpaid invoice and works out from its due date and its own history whether a reminder is owed today.
That is the difference between a reminder arriving for something already settled and one that never does. An invoice may since have been paid, voided, edited, or had its due date moved, and a decision made this morning knows all of that.
It is self-correcting for the same reason. An invoice that nobody chased for a month gets one email saying it is a month overdue, rather than four working up to it through “due soon” and “due today” — things everybody can see are untrue by then.
Chasing one by hand
You can chase an invoice yourself rather than waiting for tomorrow, from the invoice itself. It goes out by the same path, so it is recorded the same way and moves the schedule on — the sweep will not follow up an hour later.
Only an invoice that has actually been sent can be chased. Asking somebody to pay something they never received is not a reminder.
The invoice list marks which ones have already been nudged, so scanning Outstanding does not mean chasing somebody twice or not at all.
The client you handle yourself
There is always one customer you would rather ring. Chasing can be turned off per customer, on their record, and their invoices are then left alone by the sweep while everyone else’s are not.
Archiving a customer does not stop their unpaid invoices being chased. Archiving means “stop offering them” for new work; money already owed is still owed.
What is never chased
- Anything without a due date. An invoice with no due date is never overdue, which is why the due date is filled in from your payment terms rather than left to be typed.
- Drafts, void invoices and anything already settled — by payment or by a credit note.