Payment reminders

Flowtly helps you follow up on overdue sales invoices by preparing draft payment reminders for your review. A finance user always approves before anything is sent to a client.

What it does

A daily background job scans for overdue unpaid sales invoices and stages draft reminders into a review queue. An invoice you edit after sending it is still followed up. Nothing is sent automatically — a finance user must open the queue, review each draft (and optionally edit the message or add CC recipients), and then manually approve it to send. Dismissed or sent reminders, as well as any that failed to deliver, move to a History tab.

How to enable payment reminders

Payment reminders are off by default and must be enabled per organisation, by an administrator:

1. Open Settings → Finance & Business → Payment reminders.
2. Turn on Send payment reminders for unpaid invoices.

Once enabled, the daily job will begin staging draft reminders for any invoices that are already overdue, as well as new ones that become overdue in the future. The switch only starts the staging: every draft still waits in the queue for a person to approve it.

The controls on this screen

Settings → Finance & Business → Payment reminders has two cards. An administrator or an invoices manager can open it; only an administrator can save a change. Each control saves as soon as you use it, with a Success message.

Payment reminders

Send payment reminders for unpaid invoices: the on/off switch described above. It is off by default.

Reminder schedule (days after due date): shown while the switch is on. Each interval is a chip, such as 3 days; the default schedule is 3, 7 and 14 days. Type a number into the days field and click Add (or press Enter) to add an interval, and use the cross on a chip to remove it. The list stays sorted, repeats are ignored and the last interval cannot be removed. Each reminder goes out this many days after the invoice due date, and each interval is one escalation level: the first is friendly, the last a final notice. Flowtly uses at most the first six intervals.

Reminder wording

Reminder wording holds your own text for reminder emails, per client language. It is shown whether or not the switch above is on, because the same wording prefills a reminder you compose by hand. A client receives the wording written for their document language; a language you leave empty keeps Flowtly's standard reminder.

Add a language: a list of the languages a client can be set to. Choose one and click Add to open an editor for it.

Reminder text (shown with the language, for example Reminder text (English)): a rich-text editor for that language. The placeholder buttons above the text insert invoice details: {{ invoiceNumber }}, {{ amountDue }}, {{ currency }}, {{ dueDate }}, {{ daysOverdue }} and {{ clientName }}. Insert them with the buttons rather than typing them: a placeholder that is misspelled is sent exactly as written. Conditions such as {% if %} are not supported and are sent as plain text. The amount is the amount still outstanding.

Clear: empties the editor for that language. Click Save afterwards to go back to Flowtly's standard reminder for it; the language then disappears from the list.

Save: stores the wording for that language only.

What triggers a draft reminder

A draft reminder is staged when a sales invoice's due date has passed and the invoice has not been fully paid. The background job detects these automatically — no manual action is needed to populate the queue after the feature is enabled.

A part payment does not stop the follow-up. If a client has paid some of an invoice, a draft is still staged for what is left, and the reminder states the outstanding remainder rather than the original total. Only an invoice that is settled in full drops out of the queue — as do any drafts already waiting for it, which are removed automatically once the payment is recorded.

Credit notes reduce the amount due. When an invoice has been corrected by credit notes, the reminder states the invoice total less every credit note issued after the latest correction that restates the whole invoice, not only the most recent credit note. An invoice of 1,000 with credit notes of 200 and 300 is reminded at 500. A correction that restates the whole invoice replaces the figure from the moment it is issued, and credit notes issued before it are not subtracted again. Deleted corrections count for nothing.

Note: A payment recorded without an amount is treated as settling the invoice in full, so no reminder is prepared for it. If you expect a follow-up on such an invoice and do not see one, check that the recorded payment carries an amount.

Where to review and send reminders

Go to Finance & Business → Payment reminders in the main menu. The queue shows all staged drafts waiting for your approval. Select a reminder to edit the message or CC, then approve it to send. Processed reminders appear in the History tab.

Note: The queue will be empty if no invoices are overdue, or if the payment reminders toggle has not been enabled yet.

Invoices that are overdue but not being chased

An overdue invoice only reaches the reminder queue if Flowtly can see that it went out. A few never do, and before they were simply absent from this screen — nobody was chasing them and nothing said so. The Not chased tab lists them. Nothing on that tab sends anything to your client.

Two different things put an invoice there, and they need opposite responses:

• Accepted by KSeF, never emailed. The invoice was filed successfully and nobody sent it to the client, so the client has never seen it. The row offers Send the invoice, which opens the normal send screen.
• Sent, but its status was never recorded. The client did get it; what is missing is Flowtly's own record of the send, which is why it dropped out of the queue. Do not send it again — that would deliver a second copy. The row deliberately offers no send action, and the invoice needs its status corrected instead.

The Send action appears only if you are allowed to send invoices. If you work the reminder queue as a debt-collection manager, you will still see the invoice and why it is not being chased, with no link.

Who is told a reminder was sent

Once a reminder is approved and goes out, Flowtly emails everyone in your organisation who can work the reminder queue — administrators, invoice managers and debt-collection managers. The message names the invoice, the client, the amount still outstanding, the reminder level, and the address the reminder was actually sent to, so you can see what your client received without opening the queue.

This is separate from the in-app bell and phone notification, which tell you a reminder is waiting for approval. The email tells you one has already gone out.

Note: If you do not want these, turn off Invoices notifications in your own notification preferences. The setting is per person, so switching it off does not stop your colleagues being told.

Settling by set-off

If the client is also your supplier, you can settle an overdue invoice against their cost documents instead of waiting for a payment. Open the reminder for that invoice and click Declare set-off at the bottom of its panel, or tick the reminder and use Declare set-off in the action bar. See Set-off declarations.

Example use cases

• Chasing overdue invoices: Switch the feature on so Flowtly stages a draft for every overdue sales invoice, then review and approve the drafts in one sitting.
• Part-paid invoices: When a client has paid only part of an invoice, approve the staged reminder that states the outstanding remainder.
• Settling against a supplier invoice: When a client is also your supplier, declare a set-off from the reminder instead of waiting for a payment.
• Invoices nobody is chasing: Open the Not chased tab to find invoices that KSeF accepted but that were never emailed, and send them.