Invoices and documents · 5 min read

Payment reminders for unpaid invoices

How to send a client a reminder by hand from Taxorio, and how to let the app remind them automatically on a schedule you set up yourself.

What a reminder is for

An overdue invoice doesn't disappear on its own, and writing a reminder by hand in your email client means digging up the document number, the due date and the amount. Taxorio turns that into one button: it puts together the text, fills in the invoice numbers and adds the payment details — you just check it and send. And if you'd rather not track due dates at all, it can send reminders on its own, on a schedule — that's the second half of this article.

Where to send a reminder from

From the invoice detail

Open the invoice and click Send reminder in the header.

The button only appears where a reminder makes sense — for an unpaid standard, final or proforma invoice. You won't find it on a cancelled document, a credit note, or a tax document for a received advance: those aren't a receivable you could remind someone about. While the invoice is still within its payment term, the button isn't in the toolbar — the action stays available in the More actions menu, so you can send a reminder even before it's due.

From the client's detail — one reminder for several invoices

When a client owes on more than one invoice, sending three separate emails doesn't make sense. At the top of the client's detail there's a status bar; if the client has anything overdue, it carries a Send reminder button. The dialog then offers all their unpaid invoices sorted from the oldest due date, with the ones you want to remind them about left checked — and one summary email goes out. A single reminder fits at most 20 invoices; if there are more, the first twenty are pre-checked.

What you set in the dialog

To — pre-filled from the client's email on file. If the client has none saved, Taxorio flags it and you fill the address in by hand (worth adding it to the client's card right away too).
Subject — the default is "Payment reminder — your company"; if nothing is overdue yet, "Upcoming due date reminder — your company". You can overwrite it.
Reminder text — Taxorio writes it for you: a polite opening with the number of invoices and the total amount owed, a line saying "if you've already paid, please disregard this email," and a signature with your company name from your settings. The list of individual invoices isn't in this field — Taxorio adds that to the email as a table below the text, so the client doesn't see it twice. The text is a normal field, feel free to rewrite it.
Include a link to the invoice — adds a link to the web invoice for each invoice, where the client sees the document and the QR payment without signing in. On by default.
Send a copy to me — a copy lands in your account's email.

The email lists, for each invoice, the number, the amount, the issue date and due date, and how many days overdue it is where relevant; below the list come the account number and variable symbols — the very same ones the document froze at issue time. The client doesn't have to look anything up.

Let the app remind for you

If you'd rather not watch due dates by hand, turn on automatic reminders under Settings → Reminders. Taxorio then watches unpaid invoices for you and writes to the client on the schedule you set up once. Automatic sending is part of the PRO plan; manual reminders and the history stay unlimited for everyone.

What the schedule looks like

The schedule (we call it a cascade) is a sequence of at most five steps. Each step is set as an offset from the due date: a negative number means before the due date, a positive one after it. The default setup is:

3 days before the due date — a polite reminder that often prevents a delay entirely,
3 days after the due date — the first reminder,
14 days after the due date — the second, somewhat firmer one.

For each step you can write your own subject and text. Leave them blank and our default text is used instead. The Don't remind below field leaves small receivables alone.

💡 Reminders only go out on working days between 8:00 and 18:00. A reminder landing at three in the morning on a Sunday is more likely to harm the relationship with a client than help it.

When you don't want to remind someone

The cascade is one for the whole account; exceptions are made a level down:

An entire client — their detail has an Automatic reminders card with a toggle. Handy for a client you've agreed a different pace with.
A single invoice — below the timeline in the invoice detail you either turn it off, or put it on hold until a date. Holding it fits exactly the "the client promised to pay on the fifteenth" situation.

A one-off reminder on a date

Sometimes you don't need the whole schedule, just one reminder on a specific day. Below the invoice's timeline you'll find Remind on a date: pick a day and Taxorio sends one reminder on it (within working hours). It works even with the cascade turned off — it's an explicit instruction, not one of its steps, so it doesn't shift the cascade either way (the PRO plan is still needed, same as for the cascade). In the timeline you'll see it coming up as A reminder of yours is scheduled, and you can cancel it any time with one click (Cancel the chosen date). The only thing that overrides it is a hold: "don't send anything until 20 Sep" applies to it too.

For the cascade, the main switch in settings sits above everything else: while it's off, no step goes out, no matter what you set on the client or the invoice. Below that, the document wins over the client — a choice on a specific invoice can remind even a customer you've otherwise excluded. A one-off reminder on a date falls outside this order entirely: it goes out even with the cascade off and for an excluded client. If you're wondering why nothing is being sent, work through it in this order; the invoice detail will spell out the reason for you.

An invoice's reminder history

Every reminder — sent by hand or automatically — stays in the timeline in the right-hand column of the invoice detail. You'll see the date, whether it was automatic or manual, and whether the client opened it, or that it didn't get delivered.

The timeline also shows what's still to come: "2nd reminder goes out on 12 Sep." So before reaching for the Send reminder button, check whether Taxorio is about to do it for you tomorrow anyway.

When you turn on automation for an invoice that's been overdue for a long time, the client doesn't get a whole batch of reminders at once — only the last step that fits it goes out.

What a reminder doesn't do

It doesn't change the invoice's status. A sent reminder isn't the same as sending the invoice: the "Sent / Viewed" indicator on the invoice still means the same thing — when you sent the document itself.
It isn't a penalty. Taxorio doesn't calculate late-payment interest or a contractual penalty — if you want to apply either, add it to the text yourself.
It doesn't remind about credit notes or tax documents for a received advance. Those aren't a receivable that could be collected.

💡 Before you send a reminder, glance at the icon next to the invoice. If it shows "Viewed," the client demonstrably opened the document and you're dealing with a payment issue, not a delivery one. If it shows "Not delivered," a reminder to the same address won't help — fix the email first. More detail in the article Sending an invoice by email.

Where to find who to remind

Overview → Inbox — a line for "… invoices overdue," with the total amount owed.
The Unpaid invoices card on the Overview — it highlights in red how much of that is overdue.
Client detail — the status bar states straight out how much the client owes and how long the oldest invoice has been overdue.

⚠️ Careful: as a VAT payer you've remitted the tax on an issued invoice even if the client never paid you. For genuinely uncollectible receivables there's a procedure for correcting the tax base (§ 46 of the VAT Act) — it's worth discussing with your accountant before the receivable gets too old.