An automated payment reminder is the option for Farmplan Business Cloud to automatically chase up your unpaid sales invoices with a follow up email. This will help with your cash flow and cut down on the time you spend on admin.

Go to Document Settings> Invoice Options Tab.

Turn on payment reminders by clicking the checkbox 'Do you wish to send automated reminders' and then clicking 'Set Reminders' to set up the automation as follows:

From here you can add reminders. Each reminder you add is set with certain rules. So for example, if you wanted to send a courtesy email 5 days before the due date and then a reminder 5 days after the due date you would add 2 individual reminders as follows:

5 days before due date:

5 days after due date:

When adding reminders, you will notice insert options at the bottom (used in the examples above). You can use these inserts to help automate the email while still personalising it for your customers. The inserts take information from the customer's record in Farmplan Business Cloud and the invoice.

For example, if your customer is called John and you enter 'Hi {{name}}', your customer will see 'Hi John'.

These new reminders will now be included in the series of reminders your customers receive. You can see this here:

As you can see from the action icons, it is possible to send yourself a preview of the reminder – (in case you were wondering what it looks like), edit it or delete it from the series.

Each invoice you create going forward will have a checkbox to turn on reminders for that invoice. This means you have the option to remind all, none, or just certain customers. As you can see, the below invoice now contains this option:

You can see reminders sent for an invoice on its log. For example, if you are wondering how many times an invoice has been chased you can view the invoice by heading to Customers>Customer Invoices and see the log which will show any reminders sent. The log will also show when the customer opens the email so you know they have seen the invoice.

In order for the reminders to work, the original invoice must have been sent via email through Farmplan Business Cloud.

Reminders are normally sent at 10am (UK time) on the date that they are due.

NOTE - It is also very important that, if you decide to use this feature, you keep your banking up to date. An invoice will not be marked as paid unless you have assigned the customer receipt against it. The last thing you want is to be sending reminders for an invoice that has been paid!