Xero's reminders are better than most people realise. They still stop somewhere.
Five reminders, before or after the due date, in your own wording. Here's what Xero's reminders cover — including the settings most people never switch on — and what to do about the invoices that outlast them.
Connects to Xero in a couple of minutes. No credit card.
Canadian-built, for Canadian businesses 🇨🇦
Built for how Canadian businesses actually get paid on net-30s that stretch to 75.
What Xero's reminders actually cover
More than most people use. Reminders live under Settings, in Invoice Settings, and once they're on Xero sets up three by default — 7, 14 and 21 days after the due date. Most businesses turn them on, never open the screen again, and never find the rest of it.
Up to five reminders
Xero switches on three by default, at 7, 14 and 21 days past the due date. You can edit those, delete them, or add more, up to five in total.
Reminders before the due date
You can add a reminder that goes out a set number of days before an invoice falls due — a genuinely useful setting, and the one most people never turn on.
Your own wording
Each reminder has its own editable template, with placeholders that fill in the customer name, invoice number and amount.
A minimum amount
You can tell Xero not to send reminders for balances under a threshold you set, so small residual amounts don't generate chasing emails.
On or off, at three levels
Reminders can be turned off for the whole organisation, for one particular customer, or for a single invoice — useful when an account is in dispute or on hold.
A link to the invoice
You can include a button to the online invoice, along with the amount due and the due date, in the header of every reminder.
If you haven't set up the before-due reminder or the minimum amount, do that first. Both are free, both take a minute, and between them they recover a real share of what's outstanding while cutting the noise on small balances.
The trouble starts with the invoices that survive all five.
Where they stop
Reminders are built to nudge, and they nudge well. They aren't built to negotiate, escalate, or handle a customer who has decided to pay you late.
There's nothing after the last one
When the fifth reminder has gone and the invoice is still open, the process ends. No escalation, no formal notice, no next step. The invoice just keeps ageing.
Ten invoices means ten emails
Reminders are sent per invoice, not per customer. A client with a stack of open invoices gets a separate email about each, which is exactly how a business-to-business customer learns to stop reading them.
A reply doesn't change anything
If a customer writes back to dispute the work or promise a date, the schedule carries on regardless. Nothing pauses, and nobody follows up on the promise unless a person remembers to.
The part nobody plans for
Five reminders have gone out. The customer hasn't replied, or replied once with a promise that came and went. A sixth identical email is pointless and everyone knows it. Picking up the phone is uncomfortable. A collections agency takes a large share of the invoice and usually ends the relationship.
So the invoice sits in the ageing report and slowly turns into a write-off nobody decided to make. It's the single most common gap we hear about, and it isn't a reminder problem — it's that nothing was ever defined for what comes after them.
We've written up the full path, including how to tell the four reasons for silence apart and what each one needs: what to do when an invoice goes unpaid and nobody replies.
What that looks like in Harvest
Picking up exactly where Xero's reminders leave off, on the invoices already in your Xero.
A sequence that escalates
Choose the steps, the days between them, and how the tone moves from friendly to firm, all the way to a formal notice.
Sent from your own email
Follow-ups go out through your Gmail or Outlook, in your name. To your customer it's you staying on top of it, not a third-party system.
Replies read and sorted
Promise to pay, dispute, question, already paid. Each reply is tagged and a response is drafted, and the sequence stops for that invoice straight away.
Promises that get followed up
When someone commits to a date, that commitment is carried into the later emails instead of being forgotten the moment the date passes.
One statement instead of ten emails
A customer with several open invoices gets a single clear ask covering the balance, with each invoice listed.
A formal demand letter
When emails have run their course, escalate to a professional demand letter in your workspace, ready to send or mail.
Xero stays your source of truth
Nothing moves. Invoices are still created in Xero, your books are still your books, and your accountant carries on exactly as before. Harvest connects to Xero, reads what's open and overdue, and handles the following up.
It's the layer Xero was never trying to be. Accounting software records what you're owed. Something still has to go and collect it.
Common questions
- Do I have to turn Xero's reminders off?
- No. Plenty of people leave them on for the first nudge and use Harvest for everything after that. They don't conflict, though most people eventually switch the built-in ones off once the sequence is doing the work.
- Does this replace Xero?
- No, and it isn't meant to. Invoices are created in Xero and it stays your source of truth. Harvest connects to it, reads what's open and overdue, and handles the chasing.
- Why did Xero stop reminding a particular customer?
- Reminders can be switched off at organisation, customer or invoice level, so the most common answer is that somebody turned them off on that record. It's worth checking the contact and the invoice itself before assuming something has broken.
- What happens when a customer replies?
- In Harvest the sequence stops for that invoice immediately. The reply is categorised, a response is drafted for you, and if the customer goes quiet again the follow-ups pick up where they left off.
- Will my customers know this is automated?
- Emails send from your own address and read like a person wrote them. There's no third-party branding on anything that reaches your customer.
- How long does it take to set up?
- Connect Xero and your open invoices come across. Most people are set up the same day.
Give your reminders somewhere to go next.
Connect Xero and Harvest starts following up today. No card required.
Start now for free