60 days overdue invoice email — last email before escalation

Two months in, the question has changed from when you will be paid to whether you will be. This email asks it directly.

60 days overdue
Firm tone
They have gone quiet

The email

Subject

Invoice [Invoice number] — 60 days overdue, response needed by [Date]

Body

Hi [Customer name],

Invoice [Invoice number] for [Amount] has now been outstanding for sixty days past its due date of [Due date]. I have written [Number] times and have had no payment and no schedule.

I am treating the absence of a reply as a decision unless you tell me otherwise by [Date]. After that date I will [Consequence], and the amount claimed will include [Additional amounts].

If you want to avoid that, either of these is enough: pay the invoice, or send me a written schedule with dates and amounts. I will hold everything if I have a schedule I can rely on.

Regards,
[Your name]
[Your business]

Fill in before you send

[Customer name]
[Invoice number]
[Amount]
[Due date]
[Number]
[Date]
[Consequence]
[Additional amounts]
[Your name]
[Your business]

When to send this

At around two months, when the account has gone silent and you have decided how far you will take it.
When you have the paperwork to back a formal step: the signed agreement or accepted quote, the invoice, proof of delivery, and the reminder history.
Before the amount gets old enough that a collections agency or solicitor will discount it.

When not to send this

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

Without having assembled the evidence you would need if it went further.: Instead: Gather the contract, the delivery record and the full reminder trail first. A sixty-day ultimatum from someone who then cannot produce a signed scope collapses the moment it is tested, and the customer often works that out before you do.
When the last reply you had was a dispute you never resolved.: Instead: Deal with the dispute. Escalating over an open, unanswered objection is the single best way to convert a debt you would probably win into an argument you might lose — and most formal routes will ask you about it first.
To a customer in a formal insolvency process.: Instead: Stop and take advice. Once a process is under way, chasing may be pointless and in some jurisdictions improper; your claim goes to the appointed office-holder instead. Spending money on escalation here recovers nothing.

Not certain this is the reply you got?

This template assumes they have gone quiet. 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

'I am treating the absence of a reply as a decision' is the sentence that moves people. It removes the comfort of passive delay: silence stops being a way of putting something off and becomes an answer with consequences attached.

Keep the offer to hold off on the table right to the end. Almost every commercial debt settles rather than resolves formally, and an email that leaves no route back to a settlement makes the expensive outcome more likely, not less.

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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