Can Xero send different invoice reminders to different customers?

Contents

No. Xero holds one reminder schedule at organisation level and fires it against every invoice marked as sent. Five reminders is the ceiling, and every customer shares all five.

The two native ways to treat one customer differently are to exclude them entirely, or to set one minimum amount that applies across the whole ledger. Xero ships three default reminders when you first turn the feature on.

Key takeaways
  • Xero allows up to five invoice reminders, and ships with three set up by default. They are an organisation-level setting, not a per-customer one.
  • Reminders go to the primary person on the contact plus anyone with "Include in emails" selected, not to the person you actually sent the invoice to.
  • The per-customer controls are an on switch and an off switch. There is no second sequence and no concept of a customer segment.
  • Xero's own setup article points readers to the Xero App Store for "more advanced invoice reminder options". That is the supported answer, not a workaround.
  • If you bill a single product to similar customers on the same terms, Xero's free reminders are genuinely enough. Do not add a tool you do not need.

What Xero's invoice reminders actually do

Xero's reminders are one schedule, owned by the organisation, applied to every invoice with a status of sent. Xero's own documentation is explicit: "You can have up to five reminders in your organisation", and three are configured for you when you first turn the feature on.

Turning them on takes four steps.

  1. In the Sales menu, select Invoices.
  2. Click Invoice Reminders: Off.
  3. Select the Email customers when an invoice is checkbox.
  4. Click Save. Xero sends the reminders you have set up for all invoices marked as sent.

Each reminder is timed against the invoice, not the customer. You choose due in or overdue by, then a number of days. Setting the number to zero sends the reminder on the due date itself. That is the whole model.

The three native controls Xero gives you

Xero does give you three settings that change reminder behaviour. None of them creates a second sequence, and two of them apply to the whole organisation at once.

An amount floor. Under the reminder settings there is a checkbox labelled Don't send reminders for amounts owing on an invoice under, followed by an amount field. It is the only balance-aware control Xero has, and Xero notes that the setting applies to all reminders, not to a chosen group.

An off switch per contact or invoice. You can stop reminders going to a particular customer, or for a specific invoice, for example one that is part paid or already under discussion. This is the only genuinely per-customer control in the product.

A reply-to address. Replies go to the login email of whoever first turned reminders on, and that address can be edited. The sending address stays with Xero.

Worth checking before you blame the schedule

Reminders only go out on invoices marked as sent, and only to contacts that have an email address on the record. A quiet reminder schedule is very often a batch of approved-but-never-sent invoices rather than a broken setting.

What one schedule cannot do

The gap is not about timing. It is that the schedule cannot read anything about the customer before it sends.

Xero can vary
  • How many days before or after the due date each reminder goes
  • The wording of each of the five reminders
  • Whether a link to the invoice PDF is included
  • Whether a customer gets reminders at all
  • One minimum invoice amount, organisation-wide
Xero cannot vary by
  • Contact group, tag or customer type
  • Country, region or time zone
  • The customer's total overdue balance
  • Branding theme, invoice type or line item
  • Which person the invoice was actually sent to

The recipient rule is the one that surprises people most. Xero states that "reminders are sent to the primary person in the contact in Xero and any additional people who have the Include in emails option selected in the contact record". If you emailed the invoice to a project manager, the reminder still goes to whoever sits on the contact record.

How long the request has been open with Xero

This is not a niche request, and it is not new. Four separate threads on Xero's product ideas board cover the same ground, and every one of them predates 2024. These figures were checked on 20 August 2026.

Idea on Xero's product ideas boardVotesStatusPosted
Ability to change invoice reminder to a different email address83Submitted12 May 2022
Set up invoice reminders for a contact group42Under review30 Aug 2022
Increase the number of reminders that can be set up41Under review10 May 2022
Set invoice reminders by invoice branding template29Submitted20 Sep 2023

Xero has answered two of them. On 17 April 2025 community manager Kelly Munro told the contact-group thread that the product team had "started research for the future of Invoice reminders" and shared a sign-up form. On 10 June 2025, on the branding template thread, she was more direct: current work on invoice branding "doesn't stretch to adding invoice reminders at the branding theme level for the time being".

Xero's setup article ends by suggesting you "search the Xero App Store for apps that allow more advanced invoice reminder options". Connecting an app is the supported route, not a hack around a missing feature.

Four ways to split your reminders

Segmenting reminders is only useful if the segment changes what you would do. In practice four splits earn their keep, and each one reads a field your Xero data already holds.

An overdue invoice routed by contact group, country, overdue balance or parent record into four different reminder sequences
Every one of these routes reads a field that already exists on the Xero record. Nothing has to be re-keyed.

By contact group. Retainer clients on direct debit should probably get nothing. New accounts in their first year should get a firmer sequence that starts on the due date. See reminders by contact group for what a Xero group does and does not control.

By location. A reminder timed for a London morning lands at six in the evening in Sydney, and a territory owner in one country should not be sending in another's name. See reminders by customer location or region.

By overdue balance. A customer £12,400 down deserves a different response to one sitting at £85, and Xero's amount floor only handles the small end. See reminders by overdue balance.

By who actually pays. When one finance manager sits behind four Xero customer records, four reminders arrive in one inbox on the same morning. See one contact across several Xero customer records.

How Paidnice runs a separate reminder sequence for each group

Paidnice connects to Xero, reads the contact and invoice data already there, and runs a separate policy for each group of customers. Xero stays the ledger. Nothing is re-keyed and no contact is duplicated.

  1. Connect Xero. Contacts, groups, invoices, addresses and balances sync across. Setup takes about fifteen minutes.
  2. Create a group per segment. Import an existing Xero contact group, or build one on country, tag, balance or parent record.
  3. Give each group its own reminder policy. Its own days, wording, sender, channel, copied recipients and send time.
  4. Set the exceptions. Exclude a customer, exclude a single disputed invoice by reference, or route a group to statements only.

Send time sits on the policy rather than on the organisation, so each group can go out at the hour that suits it. Statements follow the same rule.

Reminders send from your own domain on Pro plans, which matters more than most teams expect: a reminder from your finance address gets read, and one from a software vendor's address gets filtered. SMS is available where email has stopped working, and every send can be copied into your CRM.

💡 Paidnice insight

The most common first policy we see is not a clever one. It is a single exclusion group for customers on direct debit or a payment plan, so the automated sequence stops embarrassing the accounts team. Segmentation usually starts by removing people from a sequence, not adding them.

Across customer accounts, the pattern that follows is consistent: customers cut their average wait for payment in half within thirty days. Paidnice starts at £49 a month for 150 invoices, with no per-seat fees.

When Xero's reminders are enough on their own

If you sell one thing, on one set of terms, to customers who all look alike, one schedule is the correct amount of machinery. Turn the five reminders on, write them properly, set the amount floor, and spend your time elsewhere.

The point where it stops working is usually recognisable. You have customers who must never be emailed automatically, an account manager who wants copying on the big ones, and a spreadsheet tracking who is exempt. That spreadsheet is doing segmentation by hand, which is the work a connected app takes over.

Common questions

Can Xero send different invoice reminders to different customers?
No. There is a single schedule, it belongs to the organisation, and it fires against every invoice with a status of sent. Excluding a contact is the only per-customer control Xero offers.

How do I change invoice reminders in Xero?
Go to the Sales menu, select Invoices, click Invoice Reminders, then edit any of the existing reminders or click Add reminder. You can hold five in total, and each one is timed as due in or overdue by a number of days.

How do I stop Xero from sending reminders to one customer?
Open the contact record and turn reminders off for that contact, or turn them off on an individual invoice. Xero supports this for cases such as a part-paid invoice or one you have already discussed.

Can I set an invoice amount limit for Xero reminders?
Yes, one. The checkbox is "Don't send reminders for amounts owing on an invoice under", and the amount you enter applies to every reminder in the organisation. There is no upper threshold and no per-group version.

Why are my Xero invoice reminders not sending?
The three usual causes are invoices that are approved but never marked as sent, contacts with no email address on the record, and reminders switched off at contact level. Reminder status and history are visible on each invoice in the Awaiting Payment tab.

Does adding an app mean leaving Xero?
No. A connected app reads your Xero data and sends on top of it. Your contacts, invoices and payments stay in Xero, and the ledger remains the source of truth.

Denym Bird

Written by

Denym Bird

Co-founder & CEO of Paidnice

Denym is a software entrepreneur and writes about accounts receivables management for small business.

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ACAcme Joinery 12 days overdue Checking policy Late fee applied Awaiting payment $4,120 $4,202
BRBrightwork Due today Reminder sent Still unpaid Final notice $1,880
CVCoverdale Due in 3 days Reminder sent Checking policy Exempt from fees Needs review Sent to your team $6,480

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