Invoice reminder before the due date — friendly template

The cheapest email in the whole sequence. Nothing is late, nothing is owed yet, and you are only checking that the invoice is somewhere it can be paid from.

Before the due date
Friendly tone

The email

Subject

Invoice [Invoice number] — due [Due date]

Body

Hi [Customer name],

Quick note ahead of time: invoice [Invoice number] for [Amount] is due on [Due date].

Nothing needed if it is already scheduled. If it is not with the right person yet, let me know who to send it to and I will forward it over.

Thanks,
[Your name]
[Your business]

Fill in before you send

[Customer name]
[Invoice number]
[Amount]
[Due date]
[Your name]
[Your business]

When to send this

Three to five days before the due date, once, on invoices large enough that a missed payment run costs you real cash.
On a first invoice with a new customer, where you have no idea yet how their accounts payable works.
When the invoice went to a person rather than to an accounts inbox and you are not sure it was passed on.

When not to send this

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

On every invoice you issue, to a customer who has always paid on time.: Instead: Reserve it for new customers and large amounts. A regular payer who gets a pre-due reminder every month reads it as being distrusted, and it buys you nothing — they were going to pay anyway.
On the due date itself, or the morning of it.: Instead: By then it is either in that day's payment run or it is not, and a reminder that arrives too late to change anything just reads as impatience. Send the day-one reminder tomorrow instead.
When the customer has already told you the invoice is scheduled for a specific date.: Instead: Write the date they gave you down and send nothing until it has passed. Re-asking is how a cooperative customer learns that answering you does not stop the emails.

Notes on this one

Most invoices that go late do not go late because someone decided not to pay. They go late because the invoice sat in a personal inbox while the person who pays things never saw it, or because it needed a purchase order number nobody had asked for. This email finds both problems while they are still free to fix.

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

Want the full template pack in one email?

All of them in one message you can keep. Both offers are opt-in, and you confirm by email before anything is sent.

More free tools on the tools index.