Most businesses do not lose money to customers who refuse to pay. They lose it to customers nobody remembered to ask. An invoice goes past its due date, the person who was going to call is busy, the promise made on the phone last week is written on a sticky note, and by the time anyone notices, the balance is ninety days old and the conversation is harder than it needed to be.
Payment Reminders turns collections into a desk inside TamilAccounting: every customer who owes you money past the due date gets a case, every contact is logged, every promise is tracked against its date, and the next reminder is always scheduled. This guide follows the customer side, from the rules to the nightly run.
One case per customer, not one per invoice
When a customer has an overdue balance, a single reminder case opens for them. It does not matter whether they owe on one invoice or twelve — you are chasing a person, not a document, so the case carries the whole overdue position: how much is past due, across how many documents, and how old the oldest one is.
Those figures are never typed in or stored on the case. Every time you open the list or a case, they are worked out fresh from the invoices themselves, using the same balance the invoice lists show. When the customer pays and the receipt is allocated, the overdue figure drops on its own — and when nothing is left past due, the case closes itself as paid.
Where to find it
- Sales › Reminders — the collections desk for customers.
- Purchasing › Reminders — the same desk for what you owe suppliers.
- Sales › Settings › Payment Reminders — the rules.
- Two dashboard panels: Payment Follow-ups (customer cases that need you today) and Supplier Payables (every supplier you owe, biggest overdue first).
Setting the rules
Everything the engine does is decided once, under Sales › Settings › Payment Reminders:
| Setting | What it decides |
|---|---|
| Payment reminders on | Switches the whole engine on or off. |
| Watch supplier payables too | Also opens cases for suppliers you owe. |
| Open a case after | How many days past the due date before a case opens. 0 means the day after it falls due. |
| Repeat every | The interval between reminders while there is no response — seven days unless you change it. |
| Escalate after | How many unanswered reminders before the case is escalated. 0 means never. |
| Ignore balances under | So a few rupees of rounding never opens a case. |
| Default owner of new cases | Who follows up. Left empty, it is the salesman on the customer's branch. |
| Escalate to | Who hears about an escalated case. Left empty, it stays with the owner. |
| Email / WhatsApp the customer on every cycle | Whether reminders go out automatically. Both are off until you turn them on. |
Automatic sending is deliberately off for a new company. Until you switch it on, the engine tracks cases and nudges your own team, but never contacts a customer by itself.
The collections desk
Sales › Reminders opens on the numbers a credit controller cares about: how many cases are open, how many are due for follow-up today, how many customers have promised to pay, how many have been escalated, and the total overdue waiting to be collected. Below that, one row per customer: the overdue amount, the outstanding balance, how many documents, the oldest due date, which reminder cycle they are on, when you last contacted them, when the next reminder falls, who owns the case, and its status.
Filter it to the cases that are due now, the active ones, the closed and paid ones, or everything. Scan overdue now opens a case for every customer who has an overdue balance and no open case yet, without waiting for the nightly run.
Following up
Every row has a Follow-up button. It opens the whole conversation in one window: the customer's contact name, phone and email with one-click call and email shortcuts, every overdue document with how many days late it is, and the complete history of every contact so far.
Underneath, you record what just happened: how you contacted them — phone call, email, WhatsApp, SMS, a visit or an internal note — and what the outcome was, with their own words in the notes. Each outcome moves the case to the right place:
| What happened | The case becomes | Next reminder |
|---|---|---|
| Reached — will pay | Open | The date you enter, or today plus the cycle |
| Asked us to call back | Open | The date you enter, or today plus the cycle |
| Promised to pay on a date | Promised | The promised date |
| Disputed the amount | Disputed | Paused until someone decides |
| No answer / no response | No response | The date you enter, or today plus the cycle |
| Note only | Unchanged | Unchanged |
| Says already paid | Closed as paid | — check the receipt is recorded and allocated |
| Close the case | Closed | — and it will not reopen for one cycle |
Leave Next reminder on empty and the standard cycle is used. Enter a date and the case waits until then. Reassign the case to someone else and they are notified that it is now theirs.
Promises, and what happens when they are broken
A promise to pay is recorded with a date and an amount. From that moment the reminders stop — there is no point chasing a customer who has told you when the money is coming. The case simply waits for the promised date.
The customer gets the whole of the promised day. If the money still has not arrived by the next morning, the promise is marked broken, the case goes back to open, and it is due for follow-up that day. Nobody has to remember that a promise was made; the system remembers for you.
The daily cycle
Once a day, for each company, the engine does five things in order:
- Opens new cases for any customer whose overdue balance is past the grace days and above the minimum amount.
- Closes paid cases for anyone with nothing left past due.
- Catches broken promises — a promised date that has passed unpaid — and sends those cases back to open, due today.
- Leaves disputed and escalated cases alone — a person decides those — and skips any case whose next reminder is still in the future.
- Works every case that is due: sends the email or WhatsApp reminder if you have switched that on, moves the next reminder date on by the cycle, notifies the owner, and escalates the case once it has gone unanswered for the number of cycles you set.
Run cycle now in the settings does the same thing on demand.
A worked example
A company collects with these rules: open a case the day after the due date, repeat every 7 days, escalate after 3 unanswered reminders, email the customer automatically.
| Date | What happens | Status | Reminder no. | Next reminder |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 Sep | Invoice for ₹85,000 falls due | — | — | — |
| 02 Sep | Nightly run opens a case and emails reminder 1 | Open | 1 | 09 Sep |
| 09 Sep | No reply. Reminder 2 goes out | No response | 2 | 16 Sep |
| 12 Sep | The collector calls. The customer promises ₹85,000 by 20 Sep | Promised | 2 | 20 Sep |
| 13–20 Sep | Nothing is sent — the case is waiting for the promise, including on the promised day itself | Promised | 2 | 20 Sep |
| 21 Sep | The promised day has passed with no payment. The promise is marked broken, reminder 3 goes out, and because it is the third, the case escalates to the finance manager | Escalated | 3 | — |
| 24 Sep | The receipt is recorded and allocated. Nothing is past due, so the next run closes the case itself | Paid | 3 | — |
Every line in that table is also a line in the case history: the automatic sends marked as automatic, the phone call with the customer's words, the promise, the broken promise, the escalation and the close.
Reminding by email and WhatsApp
An emailed reminder uses the company's own mail settings and a template you can edit, with the customer's name, the overdue total, how many invoices, the oldest due date, days overdue, which reminder this is, and a table of the overdue invoices filled in automatically.
WhatsApp works two ways. With the WhatsApp app connected and an approved template, reminders can go out automatically on every cycle, or be sent from the case with Send WhatsApp now. Without it, the follow-up window still offers Open WhatsApp, with the message already written, and Copy message, so anyone can send it from their own phone.
The reminder always goes to the customer's invoice contact first, then their general contact, and a branch's own contacts come before the customer's.
And what you owe
The same engine watches your supplier payables too — every supplier you owe, biggest overdue first, with internal reminders until each bill is paid. That side has a guide of its own.
Frequently asked questions
Will it start emailing my customers as soon as I switch it on?
No. Automatic email and WhatsApp are both off until you turn them on in the settings. Until then the engine only opens cases and notifies your own team.
What if a customer disputes the invoice?
Log the contact as disputed. The case stops sending reminders until someone changes it, so a customer arguing about a figure is not being chased for it at the same time.
Do I have to close cases when customers pay?
No. Once the receipt is allocated and nothing is past due, the case closes itself as paid on the next run.
Can a closed case come back?
If the customer falls overdue again, a new case opens. A case you closed by hand will not reopen for one cycle, so closing it actually means something. Logging a real contact on a closed case reopens it.
Who gets notified?
The case owner, whenever a follow-up falls due. The escalation user, when a case escalates. And a new owner, the moment a case is reassigned to them.