What do you say when a customer says they have already paid but you have no record of it?

Ask for the date, the amount and the reference or destination account, and offer to accept a remittance advice instead of all three. Do not ask them to pay again and do not imply they are lying — in most cases the money exists and has been applied to the wrong invoice, sent to superseded bank details, or paid by a related company under a different name. Framing it as you searching rather than them proving keeps a customer you would otherwise lose over an accounting error.

What if they cannot produce any evidence of payment?

Then treat the invoice as unpaid and say so plainly, once: you have searched, you cannot find it, and without a date and reference there is nothing further you can check. Put the invoice back into the normal sequence from where it left off rather than starting over. Most of the time the claim quietly stops being repeated, which tells you what you need to know.

Customer says they already paid — what to send back

Usually true and applied to the wrong invoice. Occasionally a stall. Either way the next email is about locating a payment, not requesting one.

One week overdue
Friendly tone
They say they already paid

The email

Subject

Re: invoice [Invoice number] — let me track that payment down

Body

Hi [Customer name],

Thanks for coming back to me — and apologies if this has already been settled.

I have checked our account and cannot see it against invoice [Invoice number] yet. Three things would let me find it quickly:

1. The date it was sent
2. The amount
3. The reference or account it went to

If you have a remittance advice, forwarding that covers all three. Once I can see it I will match it up and close the invoice off, and you will not hear from me about it again.

Thanks,
[Your name]
[Your business]

Fill in before you send

[Customer name]
[Invoice number]
[Your name]
[Your business]

When to send this

Immediately after a customer tells you it has been paid, and after you have checked your own accounts properly.
When a payment may have gone against a different invoice, to old bank details, or from a parent company under another name.
When you would rather find a mis-applied payment than win an argument about whether one exists.

When not to send this

The wrong reminder at the wrong moment costs more than no reminder at all.

Before you have searched your bank for the amount on any date, not just the due date, and checked every account your invoices have ever shown.: Instead: Search first. Payments arrive early, late, in part, under a parent company's name, or into an account you stopped using two templates ago. Asking a customer to prove a payment that is sitting in your own bank is the fastest way to lose a good one.
Alongside a reminder for the same invoice, or with your normal chase sequence still running in the background.: Instead: Stop all reminders on this invoice until it is resolved. Someone who has told you they paid and gets another automated chase concludes you are not listening — and if they are right about the payment, they will be entirely justified.
When they have already sent you a remittance you have not looked at properly.: Instead: Take the remittance to your bank or your processor and reconcile it line by line. Asking again for information you have been given is the point at which a cooperative customer stops replying to you.

Not certain this is the reply you got?

This template assumes they say they already paid. Replies rarely say so in those words, and picking the wrong one is how a dispute gets chased or a kept promise gets nagged. Paste what they actually sent and the decoder will tell you which situation it is — and therefore which email belongs here.

Decode the reply you were sent

Notes on this one

The apology in the first line is cheap and it is worth a great deal. If they have paid, you have pre-empted the annoyance. If they have not, it costs you nothing, because the rest of the email still asks for exactly the evidence a real payment would produce.

Asking for date, amount and reference is not a test. Those are the three fields you need to search on, and a customer who genuinely paid can supply all three in seconds. A customer who cannot usually discovers, while looking, that it never actually went out.

Questions this comes with

What do you say when a customer says they have already paid but you have no record of it?: Ask for the date, the amount and the reference or destination account, and offer to accept a remittance advice instead of all three. Do not ask them to pay again and do not imply they are lying — in most cases the money exists and has been applied to the wrong invoice, sent to superseded bank details, or paid by a related company under a different name. Framing it as you searching rather than them proving keeps a customer you would otherwise lose over an accounting error.
What if they cannot produce any evidence of payment?: Then treat the invoice as unpaid and say so plainly, once: you have searched, you cannot find it, and without a date and reference there is nothing further you can check. Put the invoice back into the normal sequence from where it left off rather than starting over. Most of the time the claim quietly stops being repeated, which tells you what you need to know.

All 19 reminder templates

Collectly does this across every invoice, on its own

You just picked the email to send on one invoice. Collectly does the same thing continuously for every unpaid invoice you have — reads the replies, works out why each one is unpaid, estimates when it will land, and drafts the follow-up for you to approve.

With 15 rules it cannot talk its way around

A paid or written-off invoice is never chased again. Follow-ups are switched off permanently, not deferred.
A disputed invoice stops automated chasing entirely and goes to a person to resolve.
A promise to pay on a date pauses reminders until that date has passed. Collectly checks back the day after, not on the day.
At least three days between reminders on the same invoice, so re-running the analysis cannot turn into nagging. A resent or corrected invoice the customer has just asked for is not a reminder, and still waits for your approval.

Try it on your invoices See how it works

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