Accounts receivable automation
Invoice follow-up automation that keeps payment reminders from becoming manual work.
Invoice follow-up automation watches invoice status, sends reminders at the right time, pauses the moment payment arrives, and gives staff an exception list instead of asking them to chase every account by hand.
What gets built
Monitor your accounting or field service platform for newly issued or overdue invoices that cross the configured due-date threshold.
Start a reminder sequence based on the invoice due date, with configurable intervals for first notice, second notice, and final warning.
Before each message goes out, confirm the invoice is still unpaid so no reminder is sent to a customer who already paid.
Send the approved reminder copy via email or SMS with a direct payment link or contact instruction included.
Route high-value or long-overdue invoices to staff, and send the owner a weekly summary of outstanding receivables.
Tools this can connect
QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe, Jobber, ServiceTitan, HubSpot, email, SMS, Google Sheets, and Slack. The exact architecture depends on where invoices are created and how the team handles collections.
Watch the walkthrough
Stop Chasing Invoices: Build the Follow-Up Automation. 52 seconds.
Build notes
What actually goes into this build, including the parts that quietly break when they get skipped.
- Due-date driven. The sequence is timed off the invoice due date, not the send date, so customers on custom terms are handled by the same workflow instead of a second one.
- Re-check payment before every send. Status is confirmed immediately before each message. A reminder sent to someone who paid yesterday costs more goodwill than the invoice is worth.
- Three messages, then a human. Day 3 reminder, day 7 nudge, day 14 final notice, then stop and escalate to the owner. There is no fourth message.
- Dispute detection. Dispute, wrong amount, did not authorize, and payment plan pull the invoice out of the sequence and route it to a person the same day. A collections sequence arguing with an unhappy customer is how accounts get lost.
- Payment link in every message. Prefilled with the invoice. Removing friction collects more than rewriting the reminder copy does.
- Relationship guardrails. House accounts, retainer clients, and anyone the owner flags are excluded by list, not by someone remembering.
- Weekly summary. What is outstanding, what is aging past terms, and which accounts have gone quiet. That report is what turns the automation into a collections process.
Video transcript
You did the work. Sent the invoice. Now you're waiting. Following up on money you already earned feels awkward, so sometimes you don't. Service businesses lose fifteen percent of revenue to invoices that were never collected.
Here's the automation. Invoice created, the system checks if it's already paid. Paid? It stops immediately. Day three: a friendly reminder goes out. Payment comes in, sequence stops. Day seven: second follow-up. Dispute keyword detected, routed to a human, not automated any further. Day fourteen: final notice sent. Still unpaid, escalated to the owner.
The automation doesn't just send reminders. It stops the moment payment comes in. And flags the ones that need a real conversation.
I mapped the full workflow at aplosai.com/invoice-follow-up-automation.