Automate invoice payment reminders for wholesale customers on net terms
Updated · By Ecomsellertool editorial team
To automate payment reminders for wholesale customers, sync every open invoice's due date and balance from QuickBooks Online, Xero or Shopify B2B each day, and let rules send a fixed schedule: before the due date, on it, then at set overdue days. Later steps alert the account rep and send new orders for review. An AI model sorts buyer replies, and a person decides holds, disputes and payment plans.
- QuickBooks Online sends up to three automatic reminders, up to 90 days before or after the due date, only for unpaid invoices you have emailed (checked October 13, 2026).
- Xero turns on three default overdue reminders, allows up to five, and can skip invoices under a minimum amount (checked October 13, 2026).
- Shopify lets you create up to five payment reminders for orders with payment terms, on the due date or up to 30 days after it (checked October 13, 2026).
- Shopify can require a company location to submit all orders as drafts for review, which works as a soft order hold (checked October 13, 2026).
- In this recipe rules send the reminders, an AI model only sorts the buyer's replies, and holds, disputes and payment plans stay with a person.
The step map: who runs each step
Trigger: A daily run over every open B2B invoice, plus each payment, credit note or buyer reply as it arrives.
| Step | What happens | Who runs it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Each morning the workflow pulls every open invoice or order with payment terms from QuickBooks Online, Xero or Shopify: buyer, due date, balance, status and whether it was sent. | Rule |
| 2 | For each invoice it works out the days before or after the due date, finds the matching step in your schedule, and skips anything paused by a dispute, a promised payment date or a payment plan. | Rule |
| 3 | The reminder goes to the buyer's accounts payable contact with the invoice link and the open balance, through the accounting system's own email or your receivables mailbox, and is logged against the account. | Rule |
| 4 | An AI model reads each reply to a reminder and sorts it: payment sent with remittance details, a promise to pay by a date, a dispute and its reason, an out-of-office, or something else. | AI model |
| 5 | At the escalation steps, rules alert the account rep, flag the account, and on Shopify switch the company location to submit orders as drafts for review. | Rule |
| 6 | A person handles disputes, agrees payment plans and promised dates, and approves any hold that requires prepayment. | Person |
| 7 | When the balance reaches zero, reminders stop at once; a hold is lifted only when the account has no other overdue invoice and the person who set it agrees. | Rule |
5 rule steps · 1 AI model step · 1 person step. A rule follows fixed logic you approve; an AI model handles messy input and its output is checked by rules; a person makes the calls listed below.
What stays with a person
- Placing an account on hold, requiring prepayment, and lifting either
- Disputes: short shipments, damaged goods, pricing differences and missing credit notes
- Payment plans, promised payment dates and partial payments
- Late fees, collection agencies and write-offs, decided with your accountant or lawyer
- Your largest accounts, where the rep calls before any automated escalation
Which tools can run it
- The reminders built into QuickBooks Online, Xero or Shopify, for a simple schedule with no escalation
- Zapier, Make or n8n with an AI model step, for a few dozen accounts in one system
- Custom code on your accounts, when Shopify orders and accounting invoices must agree and holds follow rules
Systems it connects
- QuickBooks Online
- Xero
- Shopify B2B (companies, payment terms and draft orders)
- Receivables mailbox (Gmail or Outlook)
- Slack or email for account reps
- Account list with owners, terms and contacts
Build size: Medium
The reminders are simple; the work is agreeing the schedule, the reply handling and the hold rules, and keeping Shopify and the accounting file in step.
Selling wholesale on net terms means you ship first and get paid later, if someone remembers to ask. In most brands that someone is the owner or a sales rep, working from an aged receivables report once a week, writing each reminder by hand and deciding on the spot whether a late buyer can still order. This recipe turns that into a schedule: fixed reminders on fixed days, escalation to the right person, and order holds that follow rules you wrote down. It is one page of our automation library.
What should the reminder and escalation schedule look like?
This table is the core of the build, and you can use it today even if every reminder is still sent by hand. Each row is one step: when it fires, the data it reads, the message, who gets it, what happens to the account, and when a person takes over. The days are an illustrative schedule for net 30 terms, not a rule; set your own with your finance lead.
| When (net 30 example) | Trigger and the data it reads | Message and channel | Goes to | Account action | A person takes over when |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Invoice issued | Invoice created and marked as sent; buyer's AP email on file | The invoice by email, with a pay link and the due date | Buyer's AP contact | None | The email bounces or no AP contact is on file |
| 7 days before due | Balance above zero; due date in 7 days | A friendly heads-up listing every open invoice for the account | AP contact | None | The buyer replies with a question or a dispute |
| On the due date | Balance above zero; due today | "Due today" email with the invoice link and balance | AP contact | None | The buyer promises a date or disputes the invoice |
| 3 days overdue | Balance above zero; 3 days past due | First overdue notice with the invoice PDF attached | AP contact, account rep copied | Account flagged "overdue" in the account list | A partial payment arrives: a person decides what to chase |
| 10 days overdue | Balance above zero; no promise or dispute logged | Second notice; the rep gets a task to call | AP contact and the buyer's main contact | New orders go to review (Shopify: submit as drafts) | Always: the rep calls and logs the outcome |
| 21 days overdue | Balance above zero; the rep's call is logged | Final notice naming the date terms will be paused | AP contact, main contact and the owner | Hold proposed: new orders need prepayment | The finance lead approves or rejects the hold |
| 30 days overdue and later | Balance above zero | Automated messages stop | Finance lead | Hold stays until resolved | Payment plan, collections or write-off: a person only |
| Payment received | Balance reaches zero, or a credit note clears it | Reminders stop; an optional thank-you | AP contact and rep | Flag cleared; hold lifted if no other invoice is overdue | The person who set a hold confirms it is lifted |
Three rules make the schedule safe. First, a reply pauses everything: if the buyer says the goods arrived short, a fourth reminder will damage the account more than the late payment does. Second, the balance is read fresh on the morning of each send, so a buyer who paid yesterday never gets chased. Third, the hold is proposed by the rules but approved by a person, because a hold on your largest buyer is a commercial decision, not a date calculation.
What do QuickBooks Online, Xero and Shopify B2B already do on their own?
Each one now sends reminders, so turn those on before you pay for anything custom. What none of them does on its own is escalate to a rep, pause for a dispute you heard about by phone, or hold new orders in Shopify because an invoice is late in QuickBooks.
| QuickBooks Online | Xero | Shopify B2B | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built-in reminders | Automatic invoice reminders: up to three, scheduled up to 90 days before or after the due date (checked October 13, 2026) | Three default overdue reminders when you turn invoice reminders on, up to five in total, "due in" or "overdue by" a number of days, 0 for the due date (checked October 13, 2026) | Up to five payment reminders for orders with payment terms, on the due date or up to 30 days after it (checked October 13, 2026) |
| What qualifies | Only invoices you have emailed and that are still unpaid | Invoices marked as sent, for contacts with an email address; optional minimum amount | Orders with payment terms; not subscriptions, preorders or try before you buy |
| Who receives it | The customer's email on the invoice | The contact's primary person and anyone marked "Include in emails", per how invoice reminders work (checked October 13, 2026) | The customer; the Flow Send payment reminder action goes to the company's main contact (checked October 13, 2026) |
| Pause for one buyer | Manual reminders per invoice; the article names no per-customer setting | Stop reminders for a customer or a single invoice | Not described on the reminders page |
| Payment terms and overdue handling | QuickBooks Online Advanced can build invoice reminders with workflows instead | Reminders run for all sent invoices once turned on | Payment terms net 7 to net 90, due on fulfillment or a fixed date; after expiry the order shows Overdue and payment is not captured automatically (checked October 13, 2026) |
| Holding new orders | Not described in the reminder article | Not described in the reminder articles | A company location can be set to submit all orders as drafts for review (checked October 13, 2026); deposits on net terms are Plus only |
One Shopify detail to check in your own admin. The B2B features by plan page lists net terms, payment reminders and checkout to draft on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus (checked October 13, 2026), while the Flow action page still says payment terms require Shopify Plus. The Flow Payment schedule is due trigger starts a workflow when a due date is reached (checked October 13, 2026). If your buyers all invoice from one system and you only need reminders, these built-in features are the better choice.
What does custom automation add?
Escalation, judgment routing and one view across systems. Many wholesale brands take orders in Shopify B2B and keep receivables in QuickBooks Online or Xero, so the order and the invoice live in different places. A custom workflow reads both through their APIs and applies one schedule.
In QuickBooks Online, the invoice carries a DueDate, a Balance that falls as payments arrive, and an EmailStatus, according to Intuit's SDK data schema (checked October 13, 2026). In Xero, the Accounting API specification gives each invoice a DueDate, an AmountDue for the amount still to be paid, a Status such as AUTHORISED or PAID, a SentToContact flag and an endpoint that emails the invoice to the contact (checked October 13, 2026).
In Shopify, an order's PaymentTerms object has an overdue flag, and each PaymentSchedule has a due date, a balance due and a completed date (checked October 13, 2026). The paymentReminderSend mutation sends Shopify's own reminder email for a payment schedule and needs the write_orders scope (checked October 13, 2026). That lets the workflow send through Shopify's template while the schedule, the pauses and the escalations live in one place.
Which tool should run it?
If one system holds all your invoices and you want reminders only, use the built-in features above. For a few dozen accounts in one system with a rep alert or two, Zapier, Make or n8n can run the schedule, and an AI step can sort replies; our Zapier vs Make vs n8n comparison covers how they differ. Once Shopify orders and accounting invoices must agree, holds follow written rules and every reply must be logged against the account, custom code on your accounts is cleaner. It can run on Ecomsellertool Growth OS beside your order flows.
What should stay with a person?
Every decision that changes the relationship. The rules send reminders and propose a hold; a person approves it. A person handles disputes, which in wholesale are often real: a short shipment, a damaged carton, a price that differs from the buyer's list. A person agrees payment plans and enters promised dates so the schedule waits. Late fees, collections and write-offs stay with your finance lead and your accountant. For your largest accounts, many brands have the rep call before any automated step past the due date.
What can go wrong, and how do you catch it?
| What goes wrong | How it shows up | The check that catches it |
|---|---|---|
| A paid invoice gets a reminder | An annoyed buyer | The balance is re-read the morning of each send; zero stops the step |
| A buyer disputes by phone | Reminders keep coming | The rep logs the dispute and the sequence pauses until a person clears it |
| Partial payment | A reminder for the full amount | Reminders always show the open balance, and partial payments go to a person |
| Wrong contact | Silence from the buyer | Bounces and no-reply accounts route to the rep at the first step |
| Hold set in one system only | The buyer orders on Shopify while QuickBooks shows overdue | One account list drives the Shopify draft setting from the accounting balance |
| Credit note not applied | An invoice looks overdue but is not | Open credit notes are checked before any overdue step fires |
Not sure this is the right workflow to start with? Our guide to what to automate first in ecommerce scores tasks on hours, the cost of a mistake and how rule-shaped they are. Receivables is the money-in side of a wholesale operation; orders arrive through our B2B order entry recipe, supplier bills go out through our supplier invoices recipe, and marketplace money lands through the payouts recipe.
Who builds receivables workflows for wholesale brands?
Ecomsellertool builds reminder and escalation workflows on your own accounts. We have built software on Amazon's seller APIs since 2017 and shipped 50+ tools for 100+ teams. We start with your terms, your accounts and who owns each one, then write the schedule, the reply handling and the hold rules before any code. Send a project brief below, or read how our workflow automation service works.
The building blocks are work we have shipped:
- Rules with criteria, a lookback window and limits. For TRAKTOR we built a rules engine for advertising campaigns: each rule has criteria that must be met, a lookback window, a frequency from hourly to weekly, and an action with minimum and maximum limits. That is rule-based automation we built, the same shape as a reminder schedule with bounded escalation.
- Order data kept fresh. For Beezboard we used Amazon SQS to deliver real-time updates on order activities such as fee changes and sales, the same need as reading a balance fresh before each reminder.
Get this workflow built
Send us your version of this workflow
Describe the workflow you want automated. We reply with a written plan: scope, timeline and a fixed price.
Frequently asked questions
How do I automate invoice reminders in QuickBooks Online?
Turn on automatic invoice reminders in the Sales settings. QuickBooks Online lets you schedule up to three reminders, up to 90 days before or after the due date, and sends them only for unpaid invoices you have already emailed. QuickBooks Online Advanced can also build invoice reminders with workflows. Escalation to a rep or an order hold needs a workflow tool or custom code.
Can Xero send overdue invoice reminders automatically?
Yes. Xero has three default reminders for overdue invoices that you switch on in the Invoices screen, and you can have up to five, including reminders before the due date. Invoices must be marked as sent and the contact needs an email address. You can stop reminders for a customer or a single invoice, for example one that is partly paid.
Does Shopify B2B send payment reminders for net 30 orders?
It can. Shopify lets you set up to five payment reminders for orders with payment terms, from the due date to 30 days after it, and Shopify Flow can send a reminder to the company's main contact when a payment schedule is due. Shopify cannot send one before the order is created or fulfilled, and it does not capture payment automatically when terms expire.
When should a wholesale account be put on hold?
That is a credit decision for your finance lead, not a rule we would set for you. A common pattern is to send new orders for review once an invoice is a set number of days overdue, and to require prepayment only after a person has spoken to the buyer. Write the days down so the rules apply them the same way to every account.
Can AI write and send collection emails on its own?
In this recipe it does not. Reminder emails come from fixed templates you approve, sent by rules on fixed days. The AI model only reads the buyer's replies and sorts them, so a dispute or a promised payment date pauses the sequence and reaches a person instead of getting another reminder.
Is this page legal or accounting advice?
No. It explains how reminder and escalation workflows run. Late fees, interest, credit limits, collection agencies and write-offs depend on your contracts and local law, so decide them with your accountant or lawyer.
