Reminders & dunning
Dunning is the polite industry word for chasing an unpaid invoice. weBiller does it on a ladder: a series of reminder stages, each with its own timing, wording, and optional late fee, sent automatically by email.
Automatic reminders are off until you turn them on. Nothing is ever emailed to a client until you set up a ladder and switch it on, in Settings → Reminders & dunning.
Turning it on
Settings → Reminders & dunning, then Send automatic reminders. Alongside it:
- Also send at weekends — off keeps reminders to working days.
- Send time (UTC) — the hour the day’s reminders go out.
- Don’t chase below — a minimum balance. Small leftovers aren’t worth an email.
- Pause after a payment (days) — when a client pays something, hold off this many days before the next stage. A part-payment pauses the ladder rather than restarting it.
Building the ladder
Each stage is one reminder. Add as many as you want and drag them into order.
Add a stage
Choose Add stage.
Name it and set the timing
Give it a stage name (Friendly nudge, Final notice) and days after due date. Use a negative number to send a courtesy note before the invoice is due — -3 goes out three days early.
Write the message
Set the email subject and message. Your header, the amount summary, and the payment button are added automatically — write only the words.
Insert placeholders from the palette and weBiller fills them in per invoice: {{invoice.number}}, {{invoice.amountDue}}, {{invoice.daysOverdue}}, {{client.name}}, {{link.portal}}, {{business.paymentInstructions}}, and more.
Add a late fee (optional)
See Late fees below.
Test it
Send test to me mails the stage to your own address with example values, so you read it the way your client will.
A ladder that works for most people: -3 a courtesy note, +1 a friendly nudge, +14 a firmer reminder, +30 a final notice with a fee.
Who gets chased
A reminder only goes out when all of these are true:
- The invoice is sent, overdue, or part-paid — never a draft, a paid invoice, or a cancelled one.
- The client has an email address.
- That client has Send automatic reminders on (turn it off on the client to exclude one debtor from the whole ladder).
- The invoice isn’t paused.
- The balance is above your Don’t chase below minimum.
Each stage fires once per invoice. If the ladder was off for a while, weBiller sends the stage that applies today rather than marching up the ladder one email a day — the stages it passed over are recorded as Skipped in the history.
Late fees
Any stage can add a fee when it sends:
- Fixed — a flat amount.
- Percent — a percentage of the balance outstanding at that moment, so a client who has paid most of the invoice isn’t charged as though they’d paid nothing.
A late fee is added to what the client owes, not to the invoice. The invoice document, its PDF, and its UBL export are unchanged — they have to keep reproducing what you actually sent. The fee shows on the invoice as Late fee, folded into Amount due.
Fees never accrue on an invoice that’s settled or in credit, and you can waive one at any time.
On the invoice
Every invoice has a Reminders panel showing where it sits on the ladder:
- Next: Final notice on 12 August — or No further reminders scheduled.
- Late fees accrued so far.
- A history of every reminder: which stage, when, the amount due at the time, the fee applied, and whether it was Sent, Queued, Failed, or Skipped.
Use Pause to stop chasing this one invoice — for a set date or indefinitely — and Resume to put it back on the ladder. Pausing one invoice doesn’t affect any other.
Client rang to say the payment is coming Friday? Pause that invoice until Monday rather than switching the whole ladder off.
Payment plans
When a client can’t pay in one go, Set up plan on the invoice splits the balance into installments — weekly, fortnightly, or monthly — and pauses reminders until the last installment falls due.
The panel tracks progress (2 of 4 installments settled). Cancelling the plan discards the remaining installments and resumes reminders immediately.
Statements
Chasing a client with several open invoices? Their Statement (on the client page) lists everything outstanding with aging buckets — not yet due, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, and 90+ days overdue — so one conversation covers the whole account.