BadCop › Templates › Courtesy payment reminder email (3 days before the due date)

Courtesy reminder: the email to send before an invoice is due

When to send it

Three business days before the due date. It is not a chase; it is a heads-up that also confirms the invoice arrived and did not land in spam.

The email

Subject: Invoice {invoice_id} is due on {due_date}Hi {client_name}, A quick heads-up that invoice {invoice_id} for {currency} {amount} is due on {due_date}. Pay online: {pay_link} If it is already on its way, thank you, and please ignore this note. Kind regards, {sender_name}

Placeholders in braces are filled in per invoice. Replace them by hand, or run badcop preview INV-1 --step courtesy to render this template for a real invoice.

Why it works

Most late payments are not malice, they are an invoice nobody opened. A pre-due reminder catches those at zero social cost, because there is nothing to apologise for yet.

Tips

Send it from an accounts@ address, not your personal one, so the later, firmer emails come from the same sender.
Include the payment link even here. Friction is the second biggest reason for late payment after forgetting.
Do not mention late fees yet. There is nothing late.

Automate it

This is the courtesy step in BadCop's default ladder, sent at T-3 days from the due date. Put your invoices in a CSV, run one command a day, and every open invoice gets the right email at the right time, once.

pip install badcop
badcop init && badcop run --dry-run