Three Days Before the Bill Is Due
A supplier bill rarely gets paid late because nobody could pay it. It gets paid late because nobody looked at its due date until it had passed. One digest, three days ahead, to the people who can approve the payment.
Late payment to a supplier is almost never a cash decision. The money was there; the bill was approved; it was sitting in the list with a due date on it. What was missing was a moment, a few days before the date, when someone who could pay it was told it was coming. Without that moment, the first signal is the supplier’s accounts person on the phone.
In one paragraph
Every morning AWRA looks for approved supplier bills with a balance that are due within three days, or already overdue. If any are new to the list, the people who can approve supplier bills get one digest: supplier, bill number, due date, days to go or days late, and the balance. A bill is mentioned once when it comes due and then weekly while it stays overdue. The digest opens Supplier Bills, where you pay the bill or add it to a payment run.
Which bills are in it
Only bills that can actually be paid: approved or partially paid, with a balance still owing. A draft is not in it, because nobody should pay a bill that has not been checked. A bill rejected or fully paid is not in it either. The window is the bill’s own due date, which comes from the payment terms when it was captured, so a supplier on 30 days and one on 7 are each mentioned three days before their own date.
Why one digest, and not one email per bill
A finance team paying fifty suppliers a month does not want fifty emails. They want the list, in due-date order, once. So all the bills in the window for a workspace go in one message, sorted by due date, with the first twenty-five shown and a note saying how many more there are.
A Thursday morning digest
Illustrative. The digest only goes out on a morning when at least one bill is new to it.
Once when due, weekly when late
Each bill is recorded as mentioned when it enters the window. The next morning, if nothing new has come due, there is no digest at all. That is deliberate: a digest that arrives every morning with the same three bills is a digest people stop opening, and then the morning a new one arrives is missed.
An overdue bill is different. It is still a problem, and the supplier is still waiting. So an overdue bill comes back once a week, until it is paid. A bill that has been overdue for a month will appear in four weekly digests, which is about the rate at which someone should be asked about it again.
It does not pay anything
The digest is a list and a link. Paying is still done by a person in Supplier Bills or through a payment run, with the same approvals and separation of duties as before. A reminder that moved money would be a different feature, and a dangerous one.
Who gets it
Everyone with permission to approve supplier bills, which in most workspaces is the finance lead and whoever deputises for them, plus administrators. It goes by email, to the bell in AWRA, and as a phone notification that opens the supplier bills list in the AWRA mobile app. The row is Accounting › Supplier Bills Due Soon or Overdue in notification preferences; switch off any channel you do not want.
Paying in batches? A payment run takes every approved bill due by a date you choose into one numbered run, with its own approval. The digest is the natural prompt to start one. Reminded Before the Date covers the rules all eleven reminders share.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- A morning digest of approved and part-paid bills due within three days or overdue, to everyone who can approve supplier bills.
- Supplier, bill number, due date, days to go or days late, and balance, in due-date order, first twenty-five rows with a count of the rest.
- Once per bill when it comes due, weekly while overdue, and no digest on a morning when nothing is new.
- Email, the in-app bell and a phone notification that opens Supplier Bills in the AWRA mobile app.
- A switch per channel under Accounting in notification preferences.
More we can add to your workspace
- A lead time you set, such as seven days for suppliers on short terms, instead of the fixed three.
- Early-payment discount dates in the digest, so a bill worth paying early is flagged before the discount lapses.
- A draft payment run proposed from the digest, ready for the approver to check and submit.
- Reminders routed by supplier owner, so each buyer hears about the bills of the suppliers they manage.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We do not pay a bill because its date arrived. Payment stays a decision made by a person with the permission to make it.
Discount dates and a proposed payment run fit together, and we would quote them as one change to the digest.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsFour questions for your payables process
Who knows, on Wednesday, which bills fall due on Saturday?
A good answer sounds like
A named person with a list.
What it actually means
If the answer is the supplier, your terms are being kept by your suppliers.
Can a draft bill reach the payment list?
A good answer sounds like
No, only approved ones.
What it actually means
A reminder to pay an unchecked bill is a reminder to pay the wrong amount.
How often does an overdue bill come back?
A good answer sounds like
A fixed interval, such as weekly.
What it actually means
Daily repetition is ignored; never repeating means it is forgotten.
Does the reminder pay anything?
A good answer sounds like
No.
What it actually means
Automatic payment on a date skips the one check that catches a wrong bill.
Supplier bills and payables
Capture, match, approve and pay supplier bills, with the digest that keeps due dates in view.
Read the feature pageFrequently asked questions
Does AWRA OpsHub remind us before a supplier bill is due?
Yes. Everyone who can approve supplier bills gets a morning digest when an approved bill with a balance is three days from its due date, listing the supplier, bill number, due date and balance.
How often are overdue supplier bills mentioned?
Once a week, for as long as the bill stays unpaid. A bill coming due is mentioned once, and the digest is not sent on a morning when nothing new has come due.
Are draft bills included in the reminder?
No. Only approved or partially paid bills with a balance still owing are included, because those are the bills that can be paid.
Does the reminder pay the bill automatically?
No. It is a list with a link to Supplier Bills. Paying is still done by a person, directly or through a payment run with its own approval.
