Automatic payment reminders
Cord reminds your customer of what’s coming due and what’s overdue, once per stage. You choose when, or turn them off.
What they are
Automatic reminders are emails Cord sends to your customer when a document is about to fall due or is already overdue. They work on every plan and come turned on: they run once a day for every open invoice and every approved quote that meets the conditions on this page.
You choose the invoice schedule in Settings › Invoicing › Reminders. If you never change it, Cord uses the usual ladder.
They’re different from two other collection tools:
- AI collections (Pro, Scale, and Developer) writes personalized emails for overdue accounts and can propose an installment plan to your customer, which only they can accept.
- The WhatsApp reminder in receivables is one you prepare and send yourself, whenever you want.
Requirements
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Plan | All plans. |
| Permission | None for them to go out: Cord sends them on its own. To change the schedule or turn them off, the Settings permission; to pause a customer, the Collections permission. |
| Customer | Must have an email on file. No email, no reminder. |
| Invoice | Issued (not a draft), open, with a due date and an outstanding balance. |
| Quote | Approved or invoiced, with a balance, not a recurring retainer, and whose balance isn’t already carried by an open invoice (in that case the invoice is reminded). |
| Account | Doesn’t apply to test accounts or the demo account. |
Invoices: the reminder ladder
Every open invoice goes through a ladder of stages, counted in days from its due date. The default ladder has six:
| Stage | When | What your customer receives |
|---|---|---|
| 7 days before | One week before the due date | Invoice [number] is coming due |
| 1 day before | The day before the due date | Invoice [number] is coming due |
| 3 days after | Three days overdue | Past due: invoice [number] |
| 7 days after | One week overdue | Past due: invoice [number] |
| 14 days after | Two weeks overdue | Past due: invoice [number] |
| 30 days after | One month overdue | Past due: invoice [number] |
After the last stage of your schedule, Cord stops sending automatic reminders for that invoice.
Days are counted on your business’s calendar day, using the time zone in Settings › General: a stage doesn’t go out a day early or a day late because your customer or the server is in another time zone.
Choose the schedule
This feature is new and may not be enabled on your account yet. If you do not see it, write to us.
- Open Settings › Invoicing › Reminders.
- In Invoice schedule, select the moments when you want your customer to get a reminder: before the due date, on the due date, or after.
- Check the Your client receives line: it spells out the full schedule as it will go out.
- Click Save changes.
You can choose from:
| Moment | Options |
|---|---|
| Before the due date | 14, 7, 3, or 1 day before |
| On the due date | Due today |
| After the due date | 1, 3, 7, 14, 30, 60, or 90 days after |
Up to 8 reminders per invoice, and at least one. Restore the default schedule brings back the usual ladder.
What happens to invoices already in progress
The change applies from the next daily run, including invoices that already received reminders:
- A stage that already went out is never repeated, even if it stays in your schedule.
- A stage that falls before one already sent is skipped. If the 7-days-before notice already went out and you add 14 days before, that invoice doesn’t get a late notice; new invoices do.
- A new later stage does go out when the invoice reaches it. For example, if you add 60 days after, an invoice that already went through the 30-day stage gets the 60-day one when it’s 60 days overdue.
Turn reminders off
The Send automatic reminders switch stops the emails to your customers: invoice reminders and quote notices. Everything that doesn’t go to the customer keeps working: your Overdue payment alert for quotes (if it’s on in Notifications) and the An invoice becomes overdue event. AI collections has its own switch.
If you turn them back on, each invoice gets only the most recent stage it already reached, not the ones skipped while reminders were off.
Pause a customer
If a customer asked you not to write to them, pause their reminders from their record:
- Open Clients and go to the customer.
- In Automatic reminders, click Pause reminders and confirm.
The pause is the same Never email list used by AI collections: a paused customer gets no automatic reminders and no emails from the agent. The other way around, a customer, quote, or invoice you add to Never email from the agent doesn’t get reminders either. Paused customers appear in Settings › Invoicing › Reminders › Paused clients, with a Resume button.
Your customer can also ask for it themselves: every automatic reminder and every AI collections email carries the link Don’t contact me through this channel again at the bottom. If they click it, they’re excluded from your business’s email collections right away, with no automatic reminders and no emails from the agent, and Cord lets you know. In Paused clients and on their record they appear as Customer request, without the Resume button: an opt-out your customer asked for can’t be resumed from Cord. The opt-out only applies to your business: if your customer also buys from another business that uses Cord, that business can still email them.
What your customer receives
- Subject: the matching notice followed by your business name: Invoice [number] is coming due before the due date, Invoice [number] is due today on the due date, and Past due: invoice [number] after.
- Language: the invoice’s, which the invoice took when issued: the one your client had in their record or, if they had none, your account’s. Changing the record later doesn’t change that invoice’s reminders. See Document language.
- Body: the invoice number, the due date, and the outstanding balance with its currency. The balance already deducts partial payments and credit notes, so you never remind your customer about money they’ve already paid.
- Pay invoice button: opens the invoice link, where they can pay the full balance or pay part of it. See Create, issue, and collect invoices.
- Your signature, sender, and reply-to: from Starter, the reminder carries the signature, display name, and reply-to address from Settings › Notifications › Email. The introduction from that screen doesn’t: it’s written for the email you send the document with, and the reminder keeps its due-date message.
- Branding: the email uses your logo and color. If you connected your business Gmail, it goes out from your Gmail account; otherwise it goes out from Cord with your business name.
- Opt-out: at the bottom, the link Don’t contact me through this channel again. Email apps that support it also offer one-click unsubscribe.
Each reminder sent appears on the invoice timeline (for example, a due-date notice 7 days before, a due-date notice on the due date, or a collection reminder 3 days overdue) and in the audit log.
If your customer opted out, the stage that was due isn’t sent and appears once on the invoice timeline as Reminder not sent at the client’s request, with the stage in the detail. A quote notice skipped for that reason is recorded in the audit log.
One stage, one email
Cord records the stage before sending the email, and each stage can be recorded only once per invoice. In practice:
- No duplicates. Even if the daily process runs twice on the same day, your customer receives a single email per stage.
- A failed send is retried. The stage is released and tried again the next day.
- No bursts. If an invoice enters the ladder late (for example, you issued it already 20 days overdue), Cord sends only the most recent stage that applies, not every earlier one at once.
- The same money isn’t reminded twice. If the invoice comes from a quote that received its own reminder that same day, the invoice waits until the next day.
The “An invoice becomes overdue” event
The day after an invoice with a balance falls due, Cord emits the An invoice becomes overdue event (invoice.overdue) once. It reaches your webhooks and can trigger a workflow, for example to alert your team in Slack or create a follow-up task. It goes out even if you turned reminders off or paused the customer: it’s for you, not for them.
Quotes: due-date notice
Approved quotes with an outstanding balance get a simpler notice: two emails, one three days before the due date and another on the day it’s due. These two moments are fixed; they follow the reminders switch and the per-customer pause. The due date is the approval day plus the payment term’s days:
| Term | Due |
|---|---|
| Due on receipt | On the approval date |
| Net 7, 15, 30, 45, 60, or 90 | That many calendar days after approval |
The email, with your logo and color, shows the quote number, the quote’s balance with its currency (the total minus what was already collected as a deposit or installments), and the due date, with a View and pay [quote number] button that opens the quote link. The subject is Payment reminder — [quote number]; it goes out in the quote’s language (the one it took when sent) and, from Starter, with your signature. See Credit terms.
With Due on receipt terms, the due date matches the approval, so only the due-day notice goes out, and it may arrive the same day your customer approves.
When no reminder is sent
- You turned automatic reminders off, or the customer is paused.
- Your customer asked not to receive email collections through the link Don’t contact me through this channel again.
- The customer has no email on file.
- The invoice is already paid, voided, marked uncollectible, or still a draft.
- The invoice has no due date or its balance is zero.
- The invoice has gone through every stage of your schedule, or is more than 120 days overdue.
- The stage that would apply falls before one that already went out (see What happens to invoices already in progress, above).
- The quote is fully paid, isn’t approved, or is a recurring retainer: retainers charge themselves every month and are never treated as overdue receivables.
- The account is a test account or the demo account.
Limits
- One invoice reminder per stage, up to 8 stages, chosen from the menu on this page.
- Automatic reminders don’t count toward the AI collections cap of 2 collection messages every 7 days, and that cap doesn’t stop them.
- The reminder text can’t be edited; from Starter it carries your signature. If you need a different message or channel, create a workflow with the An invoice becomes overdue trigger and a wait.
- Quote notices have two fixed moments and no ladder after the due date. To chase overdue quotes, use receivables or AI collections.
- Reminders don’t attach the PDF; the customer downloads it from the invoice link.
Common problems
My customer says they didn’t get the reminder. Check that their record has an email, that they aren’t paused, and that reminders are on. Then look for the event on the invoice timeline. If it isn’t there, the send failed and is retried the next day.
They got a reminder for an invoice they already paid by transfer. The reminder goes out while the invoice has a balance. Record the payment on the invoice as soon as you verify it.
I added a stage and an invoice didn’t get it. If that invoice had already received a later stage, the new one falls behind and isn’t sent, so no late notice goes out. New invoices do get it.
I don’t want a customer to get reminders. Pause their reminders from their record in Clients (see Pause a customer).