Automatic payment reminders the invoice chases the payment on its own
An invoice passes its due date and the sequence starts by itself: email at 3 days, email and SMS at 7, an interest note with the statutory compensation at 14, escalation to a lawyer at 30. Data comes from your invoicing system, your ERP or a spreadsheet, and before every send the workflow checks whether the money has landed. Nobody has to remember who still owes you and which reminder they are on.
- 4 stagesthe sequence fires at 3, 7, 14 and 30 days past the due date, and every message carries the invoice number, the amount and a payment link
- EUR 40the fixed sum a creditor is entitled to as compensation for recovery costs on every late commercial invoice, by operation of law and with no separate demand, under EU Directive 2011/7
- 2 to 3 weeksfrom the workshop to a full sequence with SMS, Slack alerts and escalation; an email-only sequence goes live in 5 working days
The problem
Why does chasing invoices by hand keep failing?
Your bookkeeper opens the overdue report once a week, sometimes once a fortnight. A few emails go out, then a wait, then calls to whoever did not reply. At 50 invoices a month, each needing 2 or 3 contacts, that is 100 to 150 messages and phone calls. Nobody enjoys the job, because next month the same customer will be negotiating the next order. So chasing is the first thing to slide when something more urgent lands.
The law hands you concrete tools. Directive 2011/7/EU on combating late payment in commercial transactions gives a creditor interest for late payment plus a fixed sum of EUR 40 as compensation for recovery costs, due on every late commercial invoice by operation of law and without a separate demand. Where the contract fixes no payment period, the default is 30 days. Between businesses the term must not exceed 60 days unless the parties expressly agree otherwise and the longer term is not grossly unfair to the creditor. Each member state has its own implementing act, so the exact interest rate and any higher compensation follow local law. The catch is that these tools only work when you apply them to every invoice, not to the few that happen to hurt.
The outcome is always the same. Interest and compensation are lost, because nobody calculated them. The customer learns that your company can be paid late, because a reminder arrives now and then, or never at all. And money you have already earned sits with the other side while you cover the gap with an overdraft or with factoring.
- The EUR 40 compensation per invoice and the interest are lost, because nobody calculates them
- 100 to 150 messages and phone calls a month at 50 invoices, sent by hand and at irregular intervals
- The customer learns that your company can be paid late, because the reminder arrives now and then
- The invoice reaches the lawyer with no contact history, and somebody has to rebuild it from a mailbox
Why now
What changed, so that this can go live in weeks?
Every invoicing system in common use now has an API or a scheduled export you can read a due date and a payment status from once a day: Fakturownia, iFirma, inFakt, Xero, QuickBooks Online, Subiekt GT and nexo, Comarch ERP Optima, enova365, Symfonia. Where there is no interface at all, a spreadsheet with a due date column and a status column is enough. You do not have to replace your accounting system to make an invoice chase itself.
The second piece is the automation layer, n8n or Make, which walks the invoice list once a day and fires the right stage for every overdue item. The channels are off the shelf: Gmail or Brevo for email, Twilio for SMS, a Slack webhook for the internal alert, Stripe or a bank transfer link for the payment itself. Nobody writes a collections system from scratch.
The third piece is the AI agent. A sequence will send the reminder, but it will not answer the owner asking how much money is sitting with customers for longer than 30 days and who is holding the most of it. BOND, our company AI agent, answers that in a plain sentence, from your invoice data, in 5 to 10 seconds.
What changes
What does the person chasing receivables actually get?
The reminder goes out on the day it is due to go out
The workflow checks the invoice list every night and fires the right stage for every overdue item: email at 3 days, email and SMS at 7, an interest note at 14, escalation at 30. Annual leave and month-end close have no effect on it.
4 stages at fixed intervals, on every invoice without exception
Zero reminders after the money lands
Before every send the workflow asks the invoicing system for the current status. An invoice marked as paid drops out of the sequence, even when the payment and the scheduled message overlap by a few hours.
Status checked before each stage, not once a day at the start of the run
Tone matched to the stage and to the customer
Day 3 is a polite nudge with no mention of interest. Day 7 is a formal message with the amount and the invoice number in the subject line. A long-standing customer can get a different variant from a one-off order, and we write the templates together in the workshop.
Separate templates for every stage and every customer segment
Interest and compensation calculated for you
At the 14 day stage the workflow works out the late payment interest and the EUR 40 recovery compensation and drops both into the note. Whether you show that to the customer straight away or keep it as an argument for the call is your decision.
Amounts derived from the invoice value and the number of days overdue
One message instead of three
A customer with several overdue invoices gets a single consolidated reminder with the full list, the amounts and one payment link. Not three similar emails, one of which they will certainly miss.
One consolidated reminder per customer, with a name, invoice numbers and amounts
Escalation with the paperwork already done
After 30 days the invoice goes to a lawyer or a collections firm together with the contact history, the calculated interest and the compensation. Earlier, at 14 days, the finance manager gets a Slack alert so the decision does not wait for the next report review.
Slack alert at 14 days, a complete file at 30
And in your company
What if ours looks different?
Four sentences we hear most often about chasing invoices, and what we answer.
If you are after a narrower piece, there are separate pages: automatic invoicing from CRM when the invoice itself is still created by hand, and automatic financial report when the question is how much is outstanding in total.
We issue 15 invoices a month, our bookkeeper handles it in an hour.
Then a sequence may well not be what you need, and we say that on the consultation. The question is whether that hour actually exists every week, and whether the compensation gets calculated on every invoice. If it does, we come back to the subject when the invoice count grows or when that person leaves.
I do not want to scare long-standing customers with interest.
You do not have to. The 3 day stage does not mention interest at all, and in the workshop we settle whether the 14 day stage shows the calculation or keeps it in reserve for a phone call. Long-standing customers can have their own, softer set of templates.
Our accounting system has no modern API.
Subiekt GT and nexo we reach through the Insert API with a connector matched to your version. Comarch ERP Optima through its REST API or an XML export. Symfonia, enova365 and Sage through a file export. Where none of that works, the source of truth is a spreadsheet with a due date column and a status column.
I am afraid the system will chase somebody who has already paid.
That is why we check the invoice status immediately before every send, not once a day when the run starts. A payment posted in the morning stops a message scheduled for noon. In the pilot we replay your own invoices from recent months and test exactly that case.
- Invoicing and ERP
- Fakturownia, iFirma, inFakt, Xero, QuickBooks Online, Subiekt GT and nexo, Comarch ERP Optima, enova365, Symfonia, Sage
- CRM
- HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, LiveSpace
- Customer-facing channels
- Gmail, Microsoft 365, Brevo, GetResponse, Twilio, WhatsApp Business API
- Internal alerts
- Slack, Microsoft Teams, email
- Online payments
- Stripe, Przelewy24, a plain bank transfer with the details in the message body
- Automation layer
- n8n, Make, Google Sheets, custom integrations over the API
The four stages of the sequence and what happens at each
The standard sequence we start the workshop from. The intervals, the channels and the tone of every stage get matched to your industry and to how the relationship with the customer looks today.
| Stage | What the customer gets | What happens at your end |
|---|---|---|
| Day +3 | A polite email: invoice number, amount, payment link. No mention of interest | Nothing. The workflow waits for the payment or for the next stage |
| Day +7 | A formal email with the invoice number in the subject line and a note on late payment interest. An SMS if the day +3 email went unanswered | Nothing. The workflow checks the invoice status before sending |
| Day +14 | An email with an interest note and the EUR 40 recovery compensation | A Slack alert to the finance manager: this invoice has been silent for 14 days |
| Day +30 | Depending on the variant: notice that the case is being handed over, or that further orders are on hold | Escalation to a lawyer or a collections firm with the contact history, the interest and the compensation. Options: a report to a credit reference agency, a hold on deliveries |
| Payment posted | Nothing. No reminder after the money lands | The invoice drops out of the sequence |
| Several invoices at once | One consolidated reminder with the list, the amounts and a single payment link | Consolidated or per invoice, your choice in the workshop |
| Customer with no phone number | Email at every stage, no SMS | The customer goes onto a list for data completion, spotted already in the pilot |
The 3, 7, 14 and 30 day intervals are a starting point. For companies with long payment terms or with long-standing customers we move them in the workshop. Our recommendation for most B2B companies: email only for the first two stages, SMS later as reinforcement once the email has gone unanswered.
How we do it
Five steps from an overdue report to a sequence running in production
Each step ends with something you can judge before you decide on the next one.
Workshop
We map today's path from an overdue invoice to the payment: who watches it, how often they open the report, what they write, when they pick up the phone and at what amount they give up. We check which system a due date and a payment status can be read from, and whether the contact details on your customer records are complete.
Sequence design
We settle the stages, the intervals, the channels and the tone of every message. We write the templates with you, separately for long-standing customers and one-off orders. We decide whether the interest and the compensation go into the note automatically or after your approval, and what happens after 30 days. The scope of messages to consumers is agreed with whoever owns GDPR at your company.
Pilot on your own invoices
The workflow in n8n or Make runs against your invoices from recent months in preview mode: it shows what it would send and when, without sending anything. We check the consolidated reminders, the invoices paid on the day of a scheduled send, and the customers with no phone number.
Go live and training
We switch to production with error monitoring and an alert for when the invoicing system does not answer. The person who owns receivables learns to change a template, pull a customer out of the sequence during negotiations, or move the escalation threshold, without asking us.
Measurement after 30 and 90 days
We look at what can be counted: how many invoices were paid after the first stage, how many reached the interest note, how many went to escalation and how many compensations were calculated. We retune the intervals and the tone to how your customers actually react, not to what we predicted.
Before and after
How the week changes for the person who owns receivables
Before
- Monday starts with the overdue report and a dozen or so emails typed by hand
- She wonders whether it is appropriate to chase an unpaid invoice from a customer she discussed a new order with on Friday
- Compensation gets calculated only on the invoices that happened to catch her eye
- Handing a case to a lawyer means rebuilding the contact history out of a mailbox
After
- The reminders went out overnight, and she only sees the list of the ones somebody replied to
- The tone and the timing are settled in advance, so there is no decision to make customer by customer
- The note with interest and compensation is produced on its own at 14 days, on every invoice
- The lawyer receives the full file: message history, calculated amounts and dates, in one package
The first reminders go out on the day of the switch. We judge the intervals and the tone after 30 days, and the effect on how long you wait to be paid after 90.
For the person signing this off
What the owner or the finance director gets out of it
The question of how much money is sitting with customers gets an answer from a system rather than from the bookkeeper's memory. You know how many invoices have crossed 30 days, whose they are and since when, because the sequence logs every stage. You do not have to ask anyone to chase customers, and you do not have to check whether they did.
The second thing is the money that is lost today. The EUR 40 recovery compensation per invoice and the late payment interest are yours by operation of law, but only a sequence calculates them on every invoice rather than on the few most painful ones. That is a figure you can put on the table in the conversation about whether the rollout paid for itself.
- Every overdue invoice follows the same process, whoever happens to be on leave
- Interest and compensation calculated on every invoice, not selectively
- A pilot in preview mode, so no message goes out before you approve the templates
- You change templates and thresholds yourself, with no ticket to us
What it costs
The workshop has a published price, the rollout is quoted after it
The process workshop costs EUR 3,500 net per week. On payment reminders one week is usually enough, because the process is narrow: from the due date to the payment or to escalation. We quote the rollout after the workshop, once it is clear which system we read invoices from, how many channels are in play and how many template variants have to be written.
You pay the cost of running the workflow directly to the vendor: n8n or Make for the scenario, Twilio for every SMS sent, Brevo or GetResponse if you want open tracking. Gmail and a Slack webhook cost nothing. Where the AI agent is part of the scope, model queries cost the vendor EUR 0.005 to 0.07 each. No commission from us on any of it.
Process workshop
EUR 3,500 net
per week, on payment reminders usually one week
A self-contained piece of work. It ends with a written sequence, the templates and a plan you can execute without us, including in your own Make or n8n.
- Map of today's path from an overdue invoice to the payment
- Stages, intervals, channels and the tone of every message, written down
- Templates for all 4 stages, separately for long-standing and one-off customers
- Data source and tooling recommendation: n8n, Make or the API
- Metrics to measure after 30 days
- Most popular
Workshop and sequence rollout
Quoted after the workshop
scope follows from the invoicing system and the number of channels
The option most companies choose. A working sequence within 2 to 3 weeks of the workshop, tested on your own invoices.
- Everything in the workshop
- A workflow in n8n or Make wired into the invoicing system, email, SMS and Slack
- Interest and compensation calculation, consolidated reminders, a stop on payment
- Pilot in preview mode and a switch to production with monitoring
- Training for the person who owns receivables on changing templates and thresholds
Sequence and an AI agent for finance
Quoted after the workshop
for companies that ask about receivables more than once a week
Everything in the rollout plus BOND, which answers questions about receivables in a plain sentence, from your invoice data.
- Everything in the sequence rollout
- AI agent wired into the invoicing system: how much is outstanding, whose, since when, how much compensation was calculated
- Alerts on customers who cross an amount threshold or 30 days
- Access for the owner, the bookkeeper and the sales team, in English and in Polish
If the workshop shows that your invoicing system already ships reminders that are good enough for you, we say so and show you how to switch them on. The workshop ends with a document holding the sequence and the templates, and that document stands without us, including when you build the rollout yourselves.
Frequently asked questions
How do automatic payment reminders work?
Once a day, usually overnight, the workflow reads the invoice list from your invoicing system and fires the right stage for every overdue item: email at 3 days, email and SMS at 7, an interest note at 14, escalation at 30. Before every send it checks the invoice status, so a paid invoice drops out of the sequence. Every message carries the contact's name, the invoice number, the amount and a payment link.
Can you be sure the system will not chase a customer who has already paid?
We check the invoice status immediately before every send, not once a day when the sequence starts. When Fakturownia, Xero, Subiekt or whichever system you have connected marks the invoice as paid, the next stage does not fire. That holds even when the payment and the scheduled message overlap by a few hours, which is the case people worry about most and the one we replay in the pilot.
Which invoicing systems can you pull the data from?
Fakturownia, iFirma, inFakt, Xero and QuickBooks Online over their REST APIs, with ready connectors in Make and n8n, which is the fastest route at 1 to 2 days. Subiekt GT and nexo over the Insert API with a connector matched to your version. Comarch ERP Optima and XL over the REST API or an XML export, where the integration alone takes 2 to 3 weeks. Symfonia, enova365 and Sage over a file export. Where invoices are created from deals in HubSpot or Pipedrive, the sequence can run off the CRM. A spreadsheet with a due date column and a status column works too.
What happens when one customer has several overdue invoices at once?
They get a single consolidated reminder listing every outstanding amount with one payment link, instead of three similar emails, one of which they will miss. Sending per invoice can be configured as well, but in most companies we pick the consolidated variant, because it puts less strain on the relationship and is easier for the customer to reconcile.
Does the system calculate interest and the statutory compensation itself?
Yes. From the invoice value and the number of days overdue it works out the late payment interest and the recovery compensation, EUR 40 as the fixed sum set by Directive 2011/7/EU, and where your national implementing act sets a higher amount we configure that instead. The figures land in the note at the 14 day stage. Whether they appear automatically or after your approval is settled in the workshop. This is process configuration and not legal advice, so on large or disputed amounts it is worth checking with your accountant or lawyer.
Can the tone of the messages be matched to our customers?
We write the templates together in the workshop. The 3 day stage is polite and says nothing about interest, the 7 day stage is formal, the 14 day stage is a note. A long-standing customer can get a separate, softer variant from a one-off order. You can also pull a specific customer out of the sequence during negotiations with a single flag, which we agree on in the workshop.
How long does it take to implement automatic payment reminders?
A two stage email-only sequence against one invoicing system goes live in 3 to 5 working days. The full version with SMS, Slack alerts and escalation takes 2 to 3 weeks from the workshop, depending on the number of integrations and template variants. Comarch ERP Optima adds the integration time on top of that.
Is sending SMS reminders compliant with the GDPR?
The phone number and the email address come from the data the customer gave you when the contract was signed, and a payment reminder as a rule falls under performing that contract rather than under marketing communication. Even so, the scope and the tone of the messages, especially towards consumers, are agreed in the workshop with whoever owns <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj" rel="noopener">Regulation 2016/679</a> at your company. Only the fields needed to send the reminder reach the workflow.
Let us count how many invoices at your company are waiting for a reminder today
The free consultation takes 30 minutes. You tell us how many invoices you issue a month, in which system, and who chases receivables today. We show you where a due date and a payment status can be read from, what the sequence would look like for your customers, and what needs tidying up first. You do not have to give access to any system at this stage.
We run at most two rollouts at a time, so that someone is actually sitting on each of them.
Book a free consultationPS. If somebody at your company put off chasing an invoice this month because something more urgent came up, that is exactly this problem. The sequence does it for them every night, on every invoice, and stops the moment the money lands.