One Reminder Clock for Every Overdue Invoice
Overdue invoice reminders are gated by one clock per organisation rather than one per invoice. That single design decision is what stops a credit control tool becoming a reason your customers filter your address — and it has a consequence worth understanding.
Our take
Automatic chasing is the highest-leverage thing a small finance team can switch on and the fastest way to lose a payer's attention if it is switched on wrong. Ungated, this feature emails every customer holding a past-due invoice every single day for as long as it stays open — which trains the recipient to route your address to a folder within a fortnight, and reads as harassment when you invoice households rather than companies. So it is gated the way every outbound reminder here is gated: an on switch and a cadence, both per organisation. The consequence to understand is that the clock counts sends, not invoices: once a batch has gone out, the next batch waits for the cadence, however many new invoices fell overdue in the meantime.
The difference between credit control and spam is not the wording. It is the interval.
What is sent
At nine each morning the system looks for invoices that still carry a balance, are not paid, fulfilled or cancelled, and whose due date has passed. For each one it sends the customer a reminder — one email per overdue invoice, to the address on the customer record.
Two exclusions are worth knowing. A customer with no email address is skipped, quietly: nothing fails, nothing is queued, and no report says so. And this is a separate thing from the digest your own staff receive twenty minutes later, which reports the same overdue invoices to the people chasing them. Those two run independently, and switching one off does not touch the other.
One leaves the building; the other does not
The distinction runs through every notification in the product. A message to your own staff can be frequent and slightly noisy without consequence — the worst case is somebody archives it. A message to a customer is a communication from your business, it accumulates against your sending reputation, and it is remembered. Reminders that leave the building are gated more tightly, and this is one of them.
The clock, exactly
Every automatic reminder type holds one record per organisation with a cadence and the moment it last went out. When the job runs, it asks whether this organisation is due.
| Cadence | Due when |
|---|---|
| Never sent before | Always. The first run after switching it on goes immediately. |
| Daily | The last send was before today began. |
| Weekly | The last send was a week ago or more. |
| Monthly | The last send was a month ago or more, without overflowing a short month. |
| Custom | The last send was your chosen number of days ago or more — seven if unset. |
And one detail that is easy to miss and genuinely thoughtful: the clock is only stamped when something actually went out. A run that found no overdue invoices does not start the timer. Without that, an organisation with a clean ledger on Monday would have its clock set anyway, and the first genuinely overdue invoice on Tuesday would wait a full cadence for its first reminder.
An empty pass does not start the clock. Only a send does.
The consequence: the clock counts sends, not invoices
This is the part to plan around. The cadence belongs to the organisation and the notification type, not to the invoice or the customer. So on a weekly cadence, the batch goes out on Monday; an invoice that falls overdue on Tuesday waits until the following Monday for its first reminder, because the organisation-level clock has already been stamped for that week.
You invoice steadily and want prompt chasing
Daily cadence
Every overdue invoice is chased the morning after it falls due, and each one is chased once a day. That is aggressive by design and appropriate for business-to-business terms where a reminder is administrative rather than personal.
You invoice households or small accounts
Weekly, or a custom interval
Weekly is the setting most organisations end up on. It reads as diligent rather than automated, and it leaves room for a human call between batches.
You want to chase manually
Switch the customer reminder off and keep the staff digest
The two are independent. Your team still gets the overdue list every morning; nothing leaves the building without somebody deciding to send it.
You need a batch out now
Ask for a forced run
The command accepts an override that ignores the cadence for one run. It exists for the case where a cadence was set long and something needs to go today, and it is deliberately not a button on a screen.
The customer with no email address
Worth naming plainly because it is the most common reason a reminder somebody expected did not arrive. If the customer record has no email, the invoice is skipped. The run reports how many were sent and how many organisations were skipped by setting or not yet due — it does not report how many invoices had nowhere to go.
The practical check is to run your customer list filtered on a missing email address before you rely on automatic chasing. In most ledgers it is a handful of accounts created quickly at a counter, and they are usually the ones most likely to go overdue.
From one clock to a chasing policy
The gate and the cadence are the hard parts and they exist. What credit control teams ask for next is escalation — a different message at thirty days than at three — and visibility of what was actually sent.
An escalation ladder
A different reminder at seven, thirty and sixty days past due, with the tone and the recipient changing as the debt ages.
A per-customer cadence
A chasing rhythm that belongs to the account, so a key customer on ninety-day terms is treated differently from a counter sale.
A record of what was sent
Which reminder went to which customer against which invoice and when, visible on the invoice rather than only in a mail log.
We publish scope, not dates.
Scope credit controlFive questions to ask about automatic chasing
How often can a customer be emailed?
A good answer sounds like
A cadence, per organisation or per customer.
What ours actually is
A cadence per organisation and notification type — daily, weekly, monthly or a custom number of days — with an on switch beside it.
What starts the clock?
A good answer sounds like
A send, not a run.
What ours actually is
Only a run that actually sent something. An empty pass leaves the clock untouched so the first real reminder is not delayed.
Is this the same as the list my staff receive?
A good answer sounds like
No, and separately controlled.
What ours actually is
No. The staff digest is a separate job twenty minutes later with its own setting; switching one off does not touch the other.
What happens to a customer with no email?
A good answer sounds like
An honest answer.
What ours actually is
The invoice is skipped and the run does not report it. Check your customer list for missing addresses before relying on this.
Can I force a batch out today?
A good answer sounds like
Yes, deliberately.
What ours actually is
Yes — the command takes an override that ignores the cadence for one run. It is deliberately not a screen button.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- A daily sweep at nine in the morning finding invoices that carry a balance, are not paid, fulfilled or cancelled, and are past their due date.
- One reminder per overdue invoice, sent to the address on the customer record.
- An on switch and a cadence per organisation and notification type, with daily, weekly, monthly and custom-interval options.
- A first run that always goes, so switching the reminder on produces a send rather than a wait.
- A cadence clock stamped only when something actually went out, so an organisation with no overdue invoices does not have its next reminder delayed by an empty pass.
- A separate, independently controlled digest to your own staff twenty minutes later, so internal visibility and external chasing are not one switch.
- An override that ignores the cadence for a single run, for the occasions when a batch has to go today.
- The whole sweep running once across servers and never overlapping itself.
More we can add to your workspace
- An escalation ladder, with a different message and a different recipient at seven, thirty and sixty days past due.
- A cadence per customer or per account, so a key account on long terms is chased differently from a counter sale.
- A record on the invoice of which reminders were sent and when, visible to whoever picks up the phone next.
- A report of invoices that had nowhere to go because the customer record carries no email address.
- A statement-style reminder covering every overdue invoice for one customer in a single message, rather than one email per invoice.
- A pause per customer, for an account in dispute or under a payment arrangement, so chasing stops without switching it off for everybody.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We will keep automatic messages to customers behind a switch and a cadence, and we will not ship a mode that emails a payer every day indefinitely. That behaviour teaches recipients to filter your address, damages your sending reputation, and reads as harassment to anyone invoicing individuals rather than businesses.
- What you may say to a debtor, how often, and through which channel is governed by consumer credit and debt collection rules where you operate, and your advisers own that. We will send whatever cadence and wording you set within what they permit.
- We will not chase on your behalf beyond email. Escalation to a call, a legal letter or an agency is a decision with commercial and legal weight, and it belongs to a person in your business rather than to a scheduled job.
A record on the invoice of what was sent and when is the smallest useful piece here, and it is the one credit controllers ask for first — because the question before every phone call is whether the customer has already been written to.
Set the cadence before you switch it on
The default question is not whether to chase automatically but how often, and the answer is different for a wholesale ledger and a consumer one. Ten minutes on that decision saves a great deal of unsubscribing later.
Talk through credit controlFrequently asked questions
Will my customers get an email every day?
Only if the cadence is set to daily. The reminder is gated by an on switch and a cadence held per organisation, and the available settings are daily, weekly, monthly or a custom number of days. Weekly is where most organisations settle, because it reads as diligent rather than automated and leaves room for a human call in between.
An invoice fell overdue yesterday and nothing was sent. Why?
Most likely the organisation-level clock. The cadence belongs to the organisation and the notification type rather than to the invoice, so if a batch went out earlier in the current window, the next batch waits for the window to close. On a weekly cadence, an invoice falling overdue on Tuesday waits until the next Monday.
Does an empty run reset the timer?
No, and this is deliberate. The clock is stamped only when something actually went out. Without that, a quiet week would set the timer anyway and the first genuinely overdue invoice would wait a full cadence for its first reminder — which is precisely the situation the reminder exists to prevent.
Is this the same as the overdue list my finance team receives?
No. That is a separate job running twenty minutes later, with its own setting and its own cadence, reporting the same invoices to your own staff. They are independent on purpose: internal visibility should not depend on whether you have chosen to chase customers automatically.
What if a customer is in dispute?
Today the options are to switch the reminder off for everybody or to leave it running. A pause per customer — for an account in dispute or under a payment arrangement — is on the list above and is the item most often asked for by teams already using this. In the meantime, an invoice on hold or cancelled falls out of the sweep, but neither of those is the right record for a genuine dispute.
How many emails does a customer with five overdue invoices get?
Five, one per invoice. A statement-style reminder covering everything a customer owes in one message is a different design and is named above; for a ledger with many small invoices per account it is the better shape, and for one with a few large ones the per-invoice reminder is clearer.
