Most late payments are not people refusing to pay. They are people who forgot. Automatic reminders collect that money for you, and they do it without you having to be the one who nags.
Everything here lives on the Invoice defaults and automation screen, which configures how invoices are sent and how payment reminders are handled.
1 Set your default net days
Default Net Days is how long customers get to pay by default. It accepts 0 to 180; go outside that and you get Net Days must be between 0 and 180. The default is 30.
This setting is owner-only. Other roles can see the screen but cannot save it.
For residential lawn care, 30 days is generous. Shorter terms get you paid sooner and are entirely normal for small recurring services. Whatever you pick, the reminder schedule below is relative to the due date this produces.
2 Reminders before the due date
Days Before Due Date takes a comma-separated list. The field’s own hint tells you the trick: use -1 for the day before.
The shipped default is a single reminder the day before. A gentle pre-due nudge is the highest-value reminder you can send, because it reaches people while paying is still easy and nobody feels chased.
3 Reminders after the due date
Days After Due Date is the same format. The shipped default is 3, 10, 20: three days after, ten days after, twenty days after.
That escalation is well judged and worth keeping. Day 3 catches genuine forgetfulness. Day 10 is a real reminder. Day 20 is the one that says this is now a problem. Adding more than three or four just trains people to ignore your emails.
4 Late fees
Late fees can be switched on, and they have four settings:
- Type, either flat (a fixed amount) or percent (a proportion of the invoice)
- Amount
- Maximum, an optional cap so a percentage fee cannot grow indefinitely
- Grace days, which default to 3
The grace period matters more than the fee. Charging a fee on the day an invoice becomes overdue punishes people whose payment crossed in the post, and creates an argument that costs more than the fee is worth. A few days of grace means the fee only ever hits people who are genuinely ignoring you.
Check what your local rules allow before enabling percentage fees, and put your terms in writing where the customer can see them.
5 Customers on autopay
There is a setting to skip reminders for customers on autopay, and it defaults to on.
Leave it on. Sending an overdue notice to somebody whose card is set to charge automatically is the fastest way to look disorganised to your best-behaved customers.
6 How invoices go out
The same screen controls invoice delivery, which is worth setting once:
- Delivery Mode: immediately, after a delay, or batched
- Delay (minutes), up to 24 hours, if you want a buffer to catch mistakes before the customer sees them
- Daily Send Time, if batching: all invoices created that day go out at that time
- Delivery Channels
- Include Payment Link, which adds a Pay Now button to invoices, on by default
- Notify Me on Send, so you know when invoices went out
- Apply Company Branding, using your logo and colours, on by default
- Auto-Send Invoices, which sends automatically when an invoice is created
Auto-Send Invoices requires the Pro tier or higher. The screen labels it as such.
A short delay plus a payment link is the combination worth copying. The delay gives you a window to fix a wrong amount before the customer ever sees it, and the payment link removes the friction that makes people put your invoice in a pile.