Chasing overdue invoices — Help

Every business that invoices in arrears ends up with the same question on a Monday morning: who owes us, how much, and how long have they been sitting on it. There are two ways to deal with it in 1pm. The best one is to let automations do the chasing for you, so a client gets a polite reminder the day their invoice falls overdue without anybody having to remember to send it. The other is the Invoices report, which lists everything still owing so you can see the whole picture and pick up the phone on the ones an email has not shifted.

This article starts with the automations, then covers the report: the difference between its two views, how the aged receivables buckets work, what the "as at" date really changes, why a draft or void invoice is listed but not counted, and how to get the whole thing into a spreadsheet or onto paper.

The best way: let automations chase for you

Running a report and emailing each client by hand works, but it only happens when somebody remembers to do it, and a chase that goes out a fortnight late is a fortnight of money you did not have. An automation sends the reminder on the right day, every time, to every client, and stops the moment they pay.

Two automation triggers are built for this, both under Invoices and payments when you create a new automation on the Automations page:

Invoice due soon emails the client a set number of days before an invoice falls due, if it is still owing. A friendly heads-up three days out heads off most late payments before they happen.
Invoice overdue emails the client a set number of days after an invoice fell due, if it is still owing. This is the chase.

Pair either trigger with the Send bill-to email action. The email goes to the invoice's bill-to contact, so it works on any invoice, including one you raised from scratch with no event behind it. It sends straight away when the day comes, with no 24-hour review hold, because a reminder that an invoice is due tomorrow is no use a day late.

Setting up an overdue chase

Open Automations and click New automation.
Give it a name you will recognise, for example "Invoice overdue, 7 days".
Pick Invoice overdue as the trigger and type the number of days after the due date. Use 0 to send on the due date itself.
Click Add action, choose Send bill-to email, and write the subject and body.
Switch Active (running) on and click Create automation.

The email always carries a View invoice button that opens the client's copy of the invoice, where they can pay online if you take card payments. You do not need to add the link yourself.

These merge fields fill from the invoice when the email goes out, so one automation reads correctly for every client:

[first name] and [name], the bill-to contact.
[invoice number] and [event name].
[total], [amount paid] and [balance due], in your account's currency.
[due date], printed as a date, for example 14 March 2027.
[days overdue], which reads naturally: "5 days ago", "yesterday", "today".

A short chase might read: "Hi [first name], a quick reminder that invoice [invoice number] for [balance due] fell due [days overdue]. You can view and pay it using the button below."

Building a ladder of reminders

Each automation sends once per invoice. To chase more than once, create more than one automation: for example a gentle reminder at 3 days overdue, a firmer one at 14, and a final one at 30. Stack an Invoice due soon in front of them and most clients never reach the first chase at all.

If you would rather keep it in one automation, add a Wait action between two emails. A waiting email checks the invoice again before it sends, so it is dropped if the client has paid in the meantime.

To get a heads-up yourself as well, add a Send account email action to the same automation. It emails your own login address, so you know which clients have been chased today and can follow up the long-overdue ones by phone.

What gets chased, and what does not

Only sent invoices with money still owing. A draft is never chased, and neither is an invoice that has been paid in full, voided, or put back to draft.
A part-paid invoice is chased for its remaining balance, which is what [balance due] prints.
An invoice with no due date is never chased, because there is no date for the reminder to count from. Set a due date on every invoice you want chased.
The reminder is sent on one day only: the day that is exactly your chosen number of days after the due date, in your account's time zone. An invoice that was already further overdue than that when you switched the automation on will not be chased by it. Use the report below to catch those, or add an automation with a longer day count.
If the invoice's bill-to contact has no email address, nothing is sent. Check the bill-to on the invoice.
Clients are only emailed if you set an automation up. Nothing is sent to a client by default.
Deposit and balance due dates on a signed confirmation are watched separately, with a notification to you rather than an email to the client. See Deposits and balances.

Every reminder that goes out appears under Recent activity on the Automations page, so you can see who was chased and when. Automations covers triggers, actions and the email editor in full, and Checking an automation will actually fire shows how to preview what a rule will do before you switch it on.

When to use the report instead

Automations handle the routine chasing. The Invoices report is for everything else: seeing the total you are owed at a glance, deciding which clients need a phone call rather than another email, and reconciling a month end. It lives under Reports, in the Finance section, and it has two views: Outstanding, which is the chase list, and All, which is the register of everything you have billed.

The two views

The View dropdown at the top of the criteria form switches between them. Everything else on the form changes to match, so you only ever see the criteria that apply.

Outstanding (chase list) is the one you want when you are about to pick up the phone. It lists every invoice that was still owing on a date you choose, oldest due first, with each one bucketed by how far past its due date it was. Nothing that has been settled appears. Nothing that had not been issued yet appears either.

All invoices is the register. It lists every invoice with an issue date inside a range you choose, in whatever status, with billed, paid and outstanding totals underneath. This is the view for "show me everything I billed this financial year", or for finding an invoice when you cannot remember the number.

Both views link every invoice number straight through to the invoice itself, so you can chase from the report without hunting for the document.

The aged receivables buckets

The Outstanding view groups what you are owed by how late it is. The cards across the top total each bucket, and every row says which bucket it falls in.

Current. Issued, still owing, and not yet past its due date. This is money you are waiting for rather than money you are chasing.
1-30 days. Past due, but only just. Most of these are a forgotten email rather than a problem.
31-60 days. A month past due. Worth a call rather than another emailed copy.
61-90 days. Two months past due.
Over 90 days. A quarter past due. This is the bucket that decides whether you keep chasing or hand it on.
No due date. An invoice that was issued without a due date at all.

That last card only appears when you actually have one. It exists because an invoice with no due date has nothing to be late against, so no number of days can be counted for it, and putting it under Current would tell you money issued a year ago was safely in hand. It sorts to the bottom of the list, under the invoices that genuinely are overdue, and the fix for any row in it is usually to open the invoice and set a due date.

Days are counted from the day after the due date, so an invoice due today reads as Current, and one due yesterday is one day overdue.

What the "as at" date changes

The Outstanding view has a single date field, As at, which defaults to today. This is not just a label on the report. It changes which invoices are on the list and how much each one is shown as owing.

Set it to 31 March and you get the answer as it stood on 31 March:

An invoice you issued on 2 April is not there, because it did not exist yet.
An invoice that was settled on 10 April is there, showing its full total outstanding, because on 31 March the money had not arrived.
A part payment made on 10 April is not counted, so the invoice shows the balance that was genuinely owing at the end of March.

That is what makes the view usable for reconciling a month end rather than only for chasing today. It also means the report is reproducible: run it again next year for the same date and you get the same answer.

There is one thing it cannot reconstruct, and the page says so under the date field. 1pm does not record the date an invoice was voided, only that it is void now. So an invoice that was genuinely outstanding in March and has been voided since will not appear on a March report. Everything else is honoured as at the date you pick.

If you type a date in the future, the report still runs and tells you what it has done: the overdue days are counted forward to that date, so an invoice due next week comes back already marked late. That is the right answer to the question you asked, and usually not the question you meant.

Which invoices count as owing

The Outstanding view lists an invoice when all of these are true:

it is an invoice, not a quote, folio, confirmation or credit note;
it has been issued, so drafts are never on it;
it has an issue date on or before your as-at date;
and money is still owed against it as at that date.

A draft is not a receivable. It has not been sent to anybody, so nobody owes you anything for it, and it stays off the chase list however old it is.

An invoice you marked as paid without recording a receipt is treated as settled from the moment you marked it. Run the report back to a date before that and it correctly shows as outstanding again, with nothing paid. This is worth knowing if you use Mark as paid as a shortcut: it is honoured, but the only date attached to it is when you clicked it, not when the money actually arrived. Recording a real receipt with its own date is what makes a back-dated report accurate. See Getting paid for recording payments.

Why a draft or void invoice is listed but not counted

On the All view you can tick any combination of Draft, Sent, Paid and Void. Leave them all unticked and you get every status, which is the default.

Whatever you tick, the money rule does not move. A draft was never billed, and a void was cancelled, so neither one is money you billed. They are listed in full so you can see them, each marked "not counted" in its status column, and their totals stay out of the Total billed, Paid and Outstanding figures underneath. The total line says how many rows were counted and how many were not, so the column always adds up against the rows above it.

This is the same rule the Revenue report follows, deliberately, so the two reports can be read against each other without reconciling a difference that is really a definitional one.

Occasionally a client's card payment lands in the seconds after you void an invoice. 1pm banks that money rather than losing it, so a void invoice can genuinely be carrying a real receipt. When that has happened, a line under the table tells you the amount and points you at the Payments received report, rather than letting the figure quietly disappear.

Reading the money columns

Both views print the same three money columns on the right of each row.

Total is the whole invoice: lines, service charge, tax and gratuity together. It is the figure on the document you sent.

Paid is what has been received against it. On the Outstanding view this is what had been received as at your chosen date, not what has been received since.

Outstanding is the balance: total less paid, never below zero. A part-paid invoice contributes only what is still owed, so a $10,000 invoice with $3,000 banked appears in its bucket at $3,000 paid and $7,000 outstanding, not at its full value.

All three are shown in your account's currency, which is set once for the account rather than per invoice.

Getting it out of 1pm

Download CSV exports exactly what is on screen, with the same criteria applied. The Outstanding export adds the days overdue and the bucket as their own columns, so you can sort or pivot on them in a spreadsheet. The All export carries the full breakdown, one column each for lines net, service charge, tax and gratuity, so that every row adds up to its total, plus a "Counted in totals" column that reproduces the draft and void rule with a filter.

Print gives you an A4 landscape sheet with a header carrying the criteria you ran, when it was generated, and the totals. On the Outstanding view the aged summary prints with it, so the person holding the paper can see the split and not just the headline figure.

If you have a very large register, both views list up to 5,000 invoices at a time. When that happens the report says so, the total line reads "TOTAL (listed)" instead of "TOTAL", and the same note goes into the CSV and the printed header, so a partial figure is never handed to you as a whole one. Narrow the date range, or bring the as-at date forward, to see the rest.

Which report answers which question

The finance reports overlap by design, because "money" is several different questions.

Who owes me, and how late? Invoices, on the Outstanding view. This article.
What have I billed? Invoices on the All view, or the Revenue report. Both count on the invoice's issue date.
What actually landed in the bank? Payments received. That one counts receipts on the date the money arrived, which is a different date from the one that billed it.
What is contracted but not yet invoiced? Deposits and balances, which reads signed confirmations against their booking dates rather than invoices by issue date.
What do I owe the taxman? Tax summary.

A March invoice paid in April is in March on this report and in April on Payments received, and both are right. See Why Revenue by item and Revenue show different totals for the same idea worked through in full, since the reasoning applies across the whole finance section.

Automations covers every trigger and action, including the invoice reminders above.
Reports lists every report in 1pm and what each one answers.
Quotes and invoices covers raising and sending the invoices this report counts.
Getting paid: payments and online card payments covers recording receipts, which is what moves an invoice off this list.
Deposit and balance invoices covers splitting one booking across two invoices, and how each half appears here.
Voiding a quote or invoice covers cancelling an invoice and what happens to its money.