Configure Payment Reminders

InvoiceScript sends payment reminders for invoices that are approaching their due date or past due. You configure global reminder stages, override them per customer, and set a cap to prevent excessive follow-ups.

How Reminder Stages Work

Each reminder stage defines a trigger offset from the invoice due date:

Pre-due reminders fire on the exact day. Overdue reminders fire once per stage when the threshold is crossed. No stage fires twice for the same invoice.

If your server was offline and missed several overdue stages, the first run after recovery sends all applicable stages in a single run. The per-invoice cap prevents excessive sends.

When Reminders Are Sent

InvoiceScript runs reminders:send daily at 07:00 (installation timezone). For each active stage, it finds matching invoices:

1. Invoice status is sent or partially paid.
2. The due date offset matches the stage trigger.
3. No previous reminder exists for that stage on that invoice.
4. The invoice has not reached the reminder cap.
5. The customer has not disabled or excluded the stage.

Recipient Resolution

Reminder emails follow the same contact resolution as regular sends, with one difference: they use the receives reminders flag on customer contacts.

1. Reminder contacts: active contacts with "receives reminders" enabled.
2. Primary billing fallback: if no reminder contacts exist, the primary billing contact receives the email.
3. Customer email fallback: if no contacts exist at all, the customer-level email address is used.

Per-Customer Override

Each customer record has a Reminder schedule section on the create and edit forms with three options:

• Use global schedule (default): follow the company-wide stages from Settings.
• Custom stages only: select specific trigger offsets from the active stages. Only the checked stages will fire for this customer.
• No automatic reminders: disable all automatic reminders for this customer.

Manual reminders remain available regardless of the override setting.

Reminder Cap

By default, InvoiceScript stops automatic reminders after 5 per invoice. When the cap is reached:

• The invoice is flagged with "cap reached" in the reminder log.
• Automatic reminders stop for that invoice.
• Manual reminders remain available.

You can change the cap in Settings > Reminders > Maximum reminders per invoice.

Send a Manual Reminder

On any unpaid finalized invoice, click Send reminder in the action bar. This sends immediately using the appropriate template (payment reminder for pre-due, overdue notice for past-due invoices) and logs the send.

Manual reminders increment the invoice's reminder count. If manual sends bring the count to the cap, future automatic reminders stop. The manual send itself always goes through regardless of the current count.

Reminder Log

Every invoice shows a Reminder log section on its detail page. Each entry records:

• Sent date and time
• Stage (e.g., "7 days overdue")
• Recipients (email addresses)
• Type (auto or manual)

If the cap has been reached, a "Cap reached" badge appears in the log header.

Worked Example: Northwind Studio

Northwind Studio sends invoice INV-2026-0042 to Van der Berg Design on May 1, due May 31.

If the invoice remains unpaid and Northwind sends a manual reminder on Jun 20, the count becomes 5 and auto-reminders pause. The manual send itself still goes through.

This command runs automatically via php artisan schedule:run (daily at 07:00). You do not need to schedule it separately — see CLI Commands for cron setup.

To run it manually for testing or after downtime:

php artisan reminders:send