When does Coastline remind my customers about an invoice?

Coastline sends five reminders about an unpaid invoice and then stops. They go out three days before the due date, on the due date, and at 3, 10 and 21 days past due, each one firmer than the last. After the fifth, the invoice becomes a task for the person who owns collecting it, and your customer is never contacted about it again automatically.

The schedule

The sequence is fixed. There is no cadence to choose, and nothing repeats after the final notice.

Business days, your time

Reminders go out at 9am in your workspace's timezone, on business days only. A notice that would land on a Saturday or Sunday moves forward to the Monday, so the order never scrambles. Public holidays are not tracked, so a notice can land on one.

Because of that weekend shift, a notice can read as more days past due than its step name suggests. It always states the true number of days.

Where it ends

On the day of the final notice, Coastline creates a high-priority task due that day, and emails the same person once. The task says the invoice is 21 days past due, that reminders have ended, and how much is still outstanding.

It goes to the project's A/R owner. If the project has no A/R owner, it goes to the sales rep instead. If the project has neither, no task and no email are created, and the invoice's timeline records that nobody on the project owns collecting it.

The two switches

Both are in Settings, then Workspace, then Invoices, in the Customer reminders card. Both start off.

• Send recurring reminders to customers. This is the whole feature. With it off, no reminders go out and no handoff task is created.
• Also send a text message. This adds a text alongside each email. It stays locked until your workspace's texting is fully set up, and turning it off leaves the emails running. See How do I set up text messaging for my workspace?.

Emails go from your workspace's name, replies come back to your workspace inbox, and every one carries an unsubscribe link. A customer who has unsubscribed from your emails, or who has replied STOP to your texts, is skipped.

What stops the sequence

• The invoice is paid, voided, or archived.
• The balance reaches zero.
• A part payment does not stop it. Whatever is still owed keeps being chased.

Things worth knowing before you switch it on

• A draft invoice is never chased. Neither is an invoice with no due date. See When is a new invoice due?.
• Switching it on does not send a backlog. An invoice that is already 10 days late joins at the notice that fits, and gets one message that day. An invoice more than about a month past due is left alone entirely.
• One person is contacted: the contact on the invoice, at their primary email and primary phone. Nobody else on the project is emailed or texted.
• The first notice arrives before anything is late. That is deliberate; it is the one that most often gets an invoice paid on time.