Why hasn't my invoice reminder gone out? Ten things to check

You turned on automatic reminders, an invoice is two weeks late, and nothing has gone out. Or the customer says they never got anything. It is a common problem, and it is almost never a bug. Usually one of the ordinary rules below is quietly stopping the email.

Work down the list. The first few cause most of the trouble.

The invoice itself

• **It is still a draft.** Reminder tools only act on invoices that have been approved or sent. In Xero that means the Awaiting Payment tab, not Draft. Check where the invoice actually sits.
• **It is already marked paid.** If someone recorded a payment, even a part payment, the tool may treat the invoice as settled or send a different message. Look at the amount due, not just the status.
• **It is not late yet.** Many schedules start a few days after the due date, and some send a reminder before it. A reminder set for day 7 will not fire on day 5.
• **The balance is too small.** Some tools skip invoices below an amount you set. If you set that years ago and forgot, small invoices never get chased.

The customer

• **There is no email address.** This is the most common cause. The contact exists, the invoice exists, and there is nowhere to send it. Look for the contact with a blank email field.
• **They unsubscribed or the address bounced.** After either, a decent tool stops emailing them. You may never have been told.
• **You paused them.** If you told someone you would call them, you may also have switched their reminders off and forgotten.
• **They replied.** Some tools stop reminding an invoice once the customer answers, until you have read the reply. That is a good rule, but it surprises people.

The tool's own rules

• **One reminder per customer, not per invoice.** A customer with three overdue invoices may get one email, then nothing for a week. If a tool does this, the other two invoices are waiting out the gap, not forgotten.
• **Sending hours.** If the tool only sends on weekdays between set hours, an invoice that falls due on Saturday waits until Monday.

And then check the spam folder

If the email did go out, the customer may not have seen it. Ask them to look in spam and promotions, and send a test to your own address. A reminder from an address your customer has never seen is easy to miss.

Where Xero and QuickBooks fit

Xero has its own invoice reminders, and the invoices page shows whether they are on or off. QuickBooks Online has reminder settings too, under Account and settings, then Sales. We have not walked through every screen in both, and they change, so check the steps in your own account. What both do well is the basics. What neither does well is tell you why a particular invoice has not been reminded.

That last part is the real problem. Ten possible reasons, and the tool shows you none of them.

Disclosure

This article is from Mugavi, which makes accounts receivable software. In Mugavi, every invoice has a panel that answers "Why hasn't a reminder gone out?" in plain words, using the same rules the sender uses, and the invoice list has a Next reminder column that says what happens next and when. We wrote this list because the question comes up often, and every check above works without our product.

Related reading: what to do when a customer says they never got the invoice or disputes it.