Past due notice: five invoice email templates, with a short WhatsApp version

A past due notice is the message a business sends when an invoice passes its due date unpaid. It gives the invoice number, the amount and the due date, and asks for a payment date.

A past due invoice from a business client is almost never a refusal to pay. The invoice is stuck at a step: it never got entered, it is waiting on an approver, the purchase order number does not match, or the payment run already closed for the month. The five emails below are written to find out which step, in order, at 1, 7, 15, 30 and 45 days past due. Each one has a short WhatsApp version underneath, for the clients who read that and not email. Copy them and replace what is in brackets.

These are written for the accounts payable side of a business client, not for a consumer. That is why every one of them carries the invoice number and the purchase order number, and why none of them asks how the client is doing. Keep every open invoice and its next step in accounts receivable collections software.

1 · Day one past due

This one does not chase payment. It checks that the invoice exists in their system, which is where most of these die. Send it to the accounts payable address, not to the person who hired you.

2 · Day seven

Now you ask for a date, and you ask the one person who has it. A week in, the useful question is not whether they will pay but which payment run the invoice is in.

3 · Day fifteen

Two weeks in, you attach a statement and you name the step. This is the first message that goes to more than one person, and the reason is practical: the person who answers email is often not the person who approves.

4 · Day thirty

A month past due is where the conversation changes, and the change is that you ask for a commitment in writing instead of an answer. Say what your terms are and say it plainly, without describing what you might do about it.

5 · Day forty-five

The last one gives two dated options and says what happens if neither is taken. Only write a consequence you will actually carry out, and only one you are entitled to.

What every one of the five has

Before you send any of these over WhatsApp

In the United States, text and message reminders sit under consent rules, and the rules care about whether the person agreed to be contacted that way and whether they can take that back. What the consent standards are and where revocation bites is in TCPA text message rules for payment reminders. And whether a business collecting its own invoices falls under the federal collection statute at all is in does the FDCPA apply to a business collecting its own debts. This is not legal advice, and state law can be stricter than federal law.

The practical rule is simpler than the statutes: write to the contact who gave you that number for this account, at a reasonable hour, and stop when they ask you to stop.

When the tone is the problem instead

These five are written for a business client with an approval chain. If what you have is a client who hired you directly and the issue is how the request reads, the wording for that is in how to ask a client for payment politely, which runs from before the due date through day fifteen.

Where Makatea fits

Makatea sends each reminder on its date over WhatsApp and email, with the amount and the balance, records the payment when you enter it, and stops the sequence for that client from that moment. It keeps the roster per charge, the calendar for each client, the payment promises and the reconciliation against your statement, so the day-30 message knows what the day-7 message said. See how the payment reminder software runs this five-step sequence on its own.

Two practical notes for the United States. Load phone numbers with the +1 country code, because a ten digit number with no country code is stored as a Mexican number. And the amount in the reminder is the one you enter on the charge, so you write it in the currency you bill in. Makatea reminds, records and communicates: it does not move money, does not hold funds, does not score credit and is not a collection agency. Set up recurring charges in billing software that reminds each client on the due date.

Makatea is the best fit when you bill the same amount every period to a list of clients you already know, because the reminder goes out on its date over both channels, stops when the payment is recorded, and costs a flat monthly fee with no percentage of what you collect. Pricing is published at pricing: Essential 119 US dollars a month, Momentum 219 and Scale 349, with 14 days free and no card.