Xero invoice reminders across several client organisations

If you chase invoices for several clients on Xero, each client is its own Xero organisation, and invoice reminders are set up inside each one. That is fine for one client. With ten, the same handful of settings has to be right ten times, and a wrong one means a reminder goes to a customer your client wanted left alone, or replies land in an inbox nobody reads.

This post sets out what Xero's own invoice reminders do, as Xero Central describes them, the settings worth checking in every client organisation, and where the setup stops when you look after many. Facts checked on 2026-10-11 against Xero's own help pages, listed at the end. Xero changes its screens, so check the steps in your own login.

What Xero's invoice reminders do

From Xero Central, as read on 11 October 2026:

• **They are set per organisation.** You turn them on in the Sales menu, under Sales settings, then Invoice settings, then Invoice Reminders, by ticking "Email customers when an invoice is". You need the administrator or standard user role.
• **Three reminders to start, up to five in all.** Xero sets up three default reminders when you first turn them on, shown in the settings as 7, 14 and 21 days. You can edit or delete them and add more, up to five per organisation.
• **Before, on or after the due date.** Each reminder is sent a number of days before the due date ("due in") or after it ("overdue by"). Set the days to 0 to send on the due date itself.
• **Each reminder has its own email template**, with placeholders you insert from a menu.
• **Some settings apply to every reminder:** a button to the online invoice with a summary, a link to the invoice PDF, not sending reminders for amounts owing under a figure you choose, and the address replies go to.
• **Who receives them:** the primary person on the contact, plus anyone on that contact with "Include in emails" selected.
• **Only invoices marked as sent.** An invoice that was approved but never marked as sent gets no reminder, and a customer with no email address gets none either.
• **When they go out:** every day between 4am and 8am in the organisation's time zone. If you turn reminders on after 8am, that day's reminders go out the next morning. If you turn them off during that window and back on later, the missed reminders do not catch up.

Where replies go

This one matters most for a bookkeeper. Xero sends customer replies to the login email of the person who first turned reminders on. If you switched them on for a client using your own login, replies from that client's customers come to you. You can change it under "Send replies to", but the choices are the email addresses of that organisation's Xero users. Decide with each client who reads replies, and set it before the first reminder goes out.

Stopping reminders for one customer or one invoice

Xero lets you turn reminders off for the whole organisation, for one customer, or for specific invoices. Its own examples are a partly paid invoice, or one you have already spoken to the customer about.

• **One customer:** in the Contacts menu, select Customers, open the customer, click the menu icon and select "Turn off invoice reminders". Reminders must be on for the organisation first.
• **Several invoices:** in the Sales menu, select Invoices, go to the Awaiting Payment tab, tick the invoices, then click More and "Turn reminders off". Reminders must be on for that customer first.
• **One invoice:** open it, click the menu icon and select "Turn invoice reminders off".

Use these for each client's hold list: customers the client never wants chased by you, anyone in a dispute, and anyone on a payment arrangement.

Checking what went out

On the Awaiting Payment tab, the Reminders column shows each invoice's status: a number sent, "All sent", "Email missing", "Invoice not sent" or "Turned off". Xero notes that the column only updates when it next tries to send a reminder, so it is not live. For one invoice, open it and click Show History under History & Notes to see when each reminder was scheduled or sent.

Xero lists these reasons a scheduled reminder did not go out: reminders were turned on the same day it was due, or after the invoice passed its reminder date, the invoice was recorded as paid by mistake, or the due date was changed and the reminder date has passed. We go through more causes in why hasn't my invoice reminder gone out.

A checklist for each client organisation

Run through this once per client before you turn reminders on, and keep the answers on that client's page in your own notes:

1. **Reply address.** Who reads replies, and is "Send replies to" set to them? 2. **Contacts.** Does every customer have a current email, and is "Include in emails" ticked for the accounts payable person where there is one? 3. **Minimum amount.** Set the "Don't send reminders for amounts owing under" figure, so a small balance does not trigger a reminder. 4. **Wording.** Edit each reminder's template into the client's voice, and get the client to approve it. 5. **Hold list.** Turn reminders off for every customer on it, and for disputed or partly paid invoices you are handling by hand. 6. **Sent status.** Check the client's invoices are actually marked as sent, or nothing will go. 7. **Timing.** If you turn reminders on mid morning, the first ones go the next day.

Where it stops when you look after many

This is what the Xero Central pages we read describe, not a judgement of what Xero might add:

• **One schedule per organisation.** Up to five reminders apply to every customer who has reminders on. A customer is either on or off. The pages do not describe giving one group of customers a gentler or firmer schedule than the rest.
• **Holds are set one customer at a time.** The pages describe turning a customer off from their contact record. They describe selecting several invoices at once, but not several customers.
• **Status lives inside each organisation.** To see what went out across twelve clients, you open twelve organisations and look at twelve Awaiting Payment tabs.

Xero has also announced its own payment follow up agent, described as coming soon. We will not guess how it works until it ships.

Where Mugavi fits

We build Mugavi, so weigh this section accordingly. It connects to Xero (and QuickBooks, where support is in beta) and runs reminders across client books, each with its own rules:

• groups of customers with their own schedules, so one set of customers can get a different schedule from the rest
• holds on single customers, and a minimum balance below which an invoice is not chased
• one reminder per customer rather than one per invoice
• a reply pauses that invoice until you have read it
• a plain words explanation of why a reminder has not gone out
• a client books view showing, per book, what is outstanding and overdue, the oldest overdue invoice and what needs you; it shows counts only, and you open each book to act

Mugavi sends its own reminders. If Xero's reminders are also on in the same organisation, a customer could get both, so decide for each client which one runs and turn the other off. The page for practices is Mugavi for bookkeepers, and our weekly credit control routine for client books works with Xero's reminders alone.

Sources

Facts checked on 2026-10-11, on these Xero Central pages:

• How invoice reminders work
• Set up and add invoice reminders
• Turn invoice reminders on or off
• Edit or delete an invoice reminder
• Check an invoice reminder's status and history