Chase overdue invoices

Personas: Billing clerk / Accountant (works the overdue list, records reminders) · Modules: Sales Invoices Money that is invoiced but not collected needs chasing. The suite gives you the overdue worklist, a weekly automatic reminder e-mail, and a per-invoice reminder history with an escalation ladder — so who was chased, when and how hard is always on record.

Before you start: invoices are issued and past due (the due date fills from the customer's payment terms); customers carry their billing e-mail if the weekly reminder mail should reach them.

1. See what is overdue — Billing clerk

1. Open Reports and pick Overdue Invoices — every unpaid invoice past its due date (voided ones excluded). The dashboard's Overdue Invoices counter shows the same number at a glance.
2. Open Items by Customer is the wider view: every invoice still carrying a balance, grouped per customer — your working list for a collections call.

2. The system already nudged them — automatic

1. Every Monday at 08:00 the system e-mails each customer with an overdue open invoice a polite payment reminder (one mail per overdue invoice, to the invoice's customer e-mail — snapshotted from the customer when the invoice was made). Drafts, cancelled and voided invoices never trigger mail.
2. Sending requires the instance's outgoing-mail (SMTP) configuration; without it the schedule runs and logs, but nothing is delivered.

3. Record the chase — Billing clerk

1. On the overdue invoice click Record Reminder — a reminder row dated today is logged at level First reminder. The reminder history renders as a detail section on the invoice.
2. Escalate deliberately: edit the row (or add one manually) and set the Level — First reminder (3 days past due), Second reminder (14), Final notice (30). The ladder is data — adjust the levels and thresholds in Settings → Reminder Levels to your practice.
3. The Payment Reminders report is the dunning register: date, invoice and level of every chase, for the awkward "we reminded you three times" conversation.

What happened behind the scenes

• The weekly mail is a scheduled notification over the overdue filter (past due + open balance + in circulation); it never changes the invoice.
• Reminder rows are plain history — recording one does not touch the invoice's status or balance.
• When payment arrives, the normal settlement takes over (PARTIAL / PAID) and the invoice drops off the overdue list by itself.

Variations and refusals

• Still unpaid after the final notice? The lawful next steps live outside dunning: a credit note if the receivable is wrong, or void while nothing is paid.
• Per-level automatic e-mails (a different letter at each escalation) are planned — they need the platform's outbound e-mail glue; the ladder and the history you keep today carry over unchanged.

See also

• Sales Invoices module · Record a customer payment · Issue a sales invoice