payment-collectionIssue Nº 2

Payment reminders in Zoho Books: what it does on its own and what Reminder adds

What Zoho Books payment reminders do on their own, where they fit well, and what Reminder adds on top for overdue invoices.

Andrew Ibbotson

Zoho Books has built-in payment reminders: automated emails scheduled before or after an invoice's due date, manual reminders you send from an invoice, editable templates with placeholders, and controls to stop reminders for an invoice or a customer. Reminder works alongside Zoho Books. It reads your open invoices, drafts one email per customer that covers all their overdue invoices with the PDFs attached, and lets you check it before it is sent.

What do Zoho Books payment reminders do on their own?

Based on Zoho's help pages, the built-in reminders cover the following.

  • Automated reminders based on due date. You can set reminders to go before or after an invoice's due date, at intervals you choose. Zoho's help page describes three reminders by default, and a Zoho knowledge base article says you can set up to 30 automatic reminders.
  • Expected payment date reminders. A separate reminder type notifies your own users about payments expected on a date you set.
  • Who receives them. Reminders can go to you, to the customer, or to both.
  • Manual reminders. You can configure a manual reminder template and send it from an overdue or sent invoice. Zoho also documents sending reminders in bulk for selected overdue invoices.
  • Templates and placeholders. Reminder content can be edited, and placeholders add invoice fields. One placeholder adds the customer's balance, which Zoho says works in both manual and automated reminders.
  • Stopping reminders. You can stop reminders for a single invoice, for example once it is paid, or stop all reminders for a specific customer.
  • Sender address. Reminders are sent from addresses you add under Sender Email Preferences.
  • Customer statements. You can email a customer statement and tick an option to attach a list of their unpaid invoices.
  • Plans. Zoho's plan comparison page lists "Automate Payment Reminders" as included on every plan, including the free plan (checked on the Australian comparison page; plans and prices vary by region).

For many businesses with a small number of open invoices per customer and few disputes, this is a reasonable setup and costs nothing extra.

Where do the built-in reminders leave work for you?

The built-in reminders are organised around the individual invoice: they are scheduled from an invoice's due date and stopped invoice by invoice. That leaves some work to do by hand when a customer has several invoices open.

  • Several invoices, several messages. The automated reminders are triggered per invoice due date. A customer with four overdue invoices has four reminder schedules to watch, one per invoice.
  • Reading replies. When a customer replies "we paid this last week" or "this invoice is wrong", someone has to see the reply and stop the reminders manually. Until they do, scheduled reminders continue.
  • Review before sending. Automated reminders are sent on schedule without a review step. Manual reminders give you control, but you send them one invoice at a time or in a bulk action.
  • Disputes and promises. Zoho's expected payment date feature helps you hold reminders until a date, but you enter that date yourself after reading the customer's message.

What does Reminder add?

Reminder connects to Zoho Books (it also works with QuickBooks and Xero, or with uploaded PDFs) and syncs every four hours. On top of what Zoho does, it adds:

  • One email per customer for all overdue invoices. Reminder drafts a single email per customer that lists every overdue invoice and attaches each invoice PDF.
  • You approve each send. Every reminder is a draft until you check it and press send. Nothing goes to a customer without your review.
  • Disputes and promises to pay. Reminder tracks disputed invoices and promised payment dates, so the next reminder takes them into account.
  • Your own domain. Emails go from your business's own email domain, so replies come back to you. (Zoho Books also lets you choose sender addresses, so this is about keeping the same sender, not a gap in Zoho.)
  • Pay-now links. You can include a Stripe pay-now link in the email.

Reminder starts with a 7-day free trial, then Growth or Scale plans.

Should I use Zoho's reminders or Reminder?

Use Zoho's built-in reminders if most customers have one or two open invoices at a time and you are comfortable with reminders going out on a schedule. Consider Reminder if your customers often have several overdue invoices at once, if replies about payments and queries take time to handle, or if you want to see each email before it is sent. If you move to Reminder, turn off Zoho's automated customer reminders so customers do not receive both.

FAQ

Does Zoho Books have automatic payment reminders? Yes. You can schedule reminders before or after an invoice's due date. Zoho's help page describes three by default, and its knowledge base says up to 30 can be set.

Can Zoho Books stop reminders for one customer? Yes. Zoho documents a "Stop All Reminders" action on the customer record, and a "Stop Reminders" action on individual invoices.

Can a Zoho reminder show the customer's total balance? Yes. Zoho provides a Customer Balance placeholder for reminder templates.

Does Reminder replace Zoho Books? No. Zoho Books stays your accounting system. Reminder reads your invoices from it and handles the reminder emails.

Will customers receive reminders from both? They could, if both are switched on. Turn off Zoho's automated customer reminders when you start using Reminder.

Sources

Andrew Ibbotson

Founder, Reminder

Runs Reminder. Previously built billing systems for agencies across the UK and UAE. Writes about the gap between sending an invoice and getting paid.

Disagree? Spot an error? Have data?

We write to sharpen our thinking, not to be right. If you have evidence that challenges something here, or data that would strengthen the argument, we want to hear it.

hello@usereminder.com
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