workflow: collections & payment reminders

You did the work. Now you're doing a second job to get paid for it

The invoice went out weeks ago. Since then: the aging report opened when cash felt tight, the 'just following up' email drafted and redrafted so it doesn't sound rude, the follow-up to the follow-up that never got sent. Meanwhile the money sits in receivables and the conversation gets harder every week nobody has it. We install a system that watches your aging every day, runs polite, persistent reminder sequences on every overdue invoice, and hands a human the phone at exactly the moment a human is worth more than an email.

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the manual version

Where the time actually goes

Follow one overdue invoice through a manual collections process. Someone pulls the aging report — usually because cash is tight, not because it's Tuesday. They scan the list and decide who to chase, which in practice means whoever owes the most or whoever they're least afraid of annoying. Then they dig through the email thread to check what was last said, draft a reminder from scratch, agonize over the tone, send it, and move on. The follow-up to that reminder depends entirely on whether they remember.

The visible cost is the hours: report-pulling, thread-archaeology, tone-crafting, one invoice at a time. The invisible cost is bigger. Chasing money is the task everyone quietly defers, so invoices drift from 30 days to 60 to 90 while nobody makes contact. The older an invoice gets, the fuzzier everyone's memory of the work gets, and the harder the conversation becomes. Some of those invoices never get collected — not because anyone disputed them, but because the chase petered out.

None of this is judgment work. It's calendar-watching, thread-reading, and template-writing. The one genuinely human part, the phone call to a good customer who's gone quiet, is the part that keeps getting crowded out by all the rest.

Aging review: pulled sporadically, scanned by feel, no consistent trigger for who gets contacted when
Thread archaeology: rereading old emails to figure out what was promised and what was already said
Tone-crafting: every reminder written from scratch, trying to sound firm without sounding like a collection agency
The deferral tax: chasing is nobody's favorite job, so it slips — and every week of slippage makes the money harder to collect

agentclaw · workflow run

$ claw run invoice-intake

→ 47 documents queued

→ extracted · matched · posted

✓ done in 3m 12s · 0 exceptions escalated

the automated version

Aging watched, sequences sent, human called in on cue

Three stages, running every day, inside the accounting system and inbox you already use. Your customers never see a portal or a robot voice. They see well-timed, well-written emails from your company.

01
Watch the ledger, not the calendar
An agent reads your accounts receivable in QuickBooks, Xero, or your ERP every day. It knows each invoice's amount, due date, terms, and payment history, and it reconciles incoming payments first — so nobody gets a reminder for an invoice they paid yesterday morning. Each overdue account gets classified by age, size, and track record: the reliable customer who's a week late gets treated differently from the account that's broken two payment promises.
02
Polite, persistent sequences
Every overdue invoice enters a reminder sequence you approved: a friendly heads-up before the due date, a day-after note with the invoice attached and a payment link, then an escalating cadence that stays courteous and gets firmer. Every message names the specific invoice and amount — no vague 'outstanding balance' form letters. The agent reads replies. A payment lands, the sequence stops instantly. A customer promises to pay Friday, the promise gets logged and the sequence pauses until Friday has come and gone. A reply raises a dispute or a question, the sequence stops and a human gets the thread.
03
The human moment
You set the escalation rules: an invoice crosses 60 days, an amount crosses a threshold, a promise gets broken, three messages go unanswered, or a reply contains anything that smells like a dispute. When a rule trips, the right person gets a briefing, not a task: the invoice, the full reminder history, what the customer said, their payment record, and what to ask for. They make one call with complete context. The agent logs the outcome and, based on what happened, picks the sequence back up or shuts it down.

Signs it's time to automate this

You don't need all six. Two or three usually means real money is sitting in your aging report.

The aging report gets pulled when cash feels tight, not on a schedule
Reminder emails are written from scratch each time, by whoever remembers to send them
Invoices regularly cross 60 days before anyone makes first contact
A customer has been chased for an invoice they'd already paid
Collections belongs to someone who hates doing it, so it always loses to other work
You've written off an invoice that was never disputed — the follow-up just stopped

Straight answers

Won't automated reminders damage customer relationships?+

The thing that damages relationships is inconsistency: months of silence followed by a tense phone call at day 90. A calm, well-written reminder that arrives predictably is easier on the relationship than an awkward one that arrives angry. Every template is written in your voice and approved by you before anything sends, and any reply that isn't a payment goes straight to a human. The system is persistent so your people can stay pleasant.

What happens when a customer replies or disputes an invoice?+

The agent reads every reply before doing anything else. A promise to pay gets logged with its date, and reminders pause until that date passes without payment. A question, complaint, or anything resembling a dispute stops the sequence immediately and routes the full thread to your team. The agent never argues with a customer and never sends another reminder into an open dispute. Its job in those moments is to get out of the way with a good handoff.

Can I do this myself?+

A basic version, yes. QuickBooks and Xero both have built-in reminder emails, and turning those on is better than chasing from memory. Our free skills library can take you further on the surrounding pieces, like drafting reply templates and writing the SOP for escalations. Where DIY breaks down is everything between the emails: reconciling payments before sending so you never dun someone who paid, reading replies, tracking promises, and knowing when an account needs a phone call instead of a fourth email. Built-in reminders send messages. They don't run collections.

What does it cost?+

Engagements start at $5,000/month, which covers building the workflow and running it: tuning sequences, watching escalations, and adjusting rules as your customer mix changes. Do your own math first. Count the hours per week your team spends pulling aging, drafting reminders, and chasing threads, at loaded cost. Then look at your 60-plus column: if you're borrowing to cover payroll while that money sits uncollected, add the interest you're paying on cash you've already earned. If the total is well under the fee, you don't need us yet — start with the free resources and come back when the aging report gets heavier.

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