How do you send sterner invoice reminders to your most overdue customers in Xero?

Can Xero send firmer reminders to the customers who are most overdue?

No. Xero's invoice reminders use one schedule and one set of templates for the whole organisation, so the wording on reminder five is the same for a customer 60 days late on £12,000 as for one 60 days late on £150. There is no rule that reads a customer's balance, their days overdue or their payment history and picks a firmer message.

Tone in Xero moves with the invoice's age only, because you wrote a firmer template for a later reminder. Xero's one balance setting, a floor that silences small invoices, is covered in how to tier Xero invoice reminders by overdue balance.

What does Xero let you change on an invoice reminder?

Xero lets you change three things on each reminder: the days before or after the due date it sends, the subject line and the message body. You can hold up to five, and the same five apply to every customer with reminders switched on.

The Xero invoice reminders settings also give you one organisation-wide floor, the "Don't send reminders for amounts owing on an invoice under" checkbox, and two off switches: one per contact, on the contact record, and one per invoice, from the Awaiting Payment tab. Reminders go from Xero's own sending address, replies go to the one Xero user address set for your organisation, and the same sender is used for all five.

Two requests on Xero's product ideas board show where the gaps sit. Invoice reminder templates to apply to specific customers was posted on 2 April 2025, holds 34 votes at "Gaining support", and on 14 September 2026 Xero's community manager replied that a new getting-paid agent under JAX may bring messaging control later. CC/BCC on invoice reminders, posted in November 2015, holds 109 votes, and Xero's July 2024 reply said the new CC/BCC feature "won't apply to Invoice Reminder emails".

How do you make Xero's later reminders sterner for everyone?

The fix inside Xero is to write the five reminders as an escalating sequence, polite at the start and firm at the end, and accept that every customer moves through it at the same pace.

1. In the Sales menu, select Invoices, then click Invoice Reminders.
2. Turn reminders on. Xero creates three by default. Click Add reminder twice to reach the maximum of five.
3. Set the days. A common ladder is 3 days before due, 1 day after, 7 days after, 14 days after and 28 days after.
4. Edit the subject and body of each one. Keep reminders one to three friendly. Make four and five firm: state the amount, the days overdue, the consequence in your terms, and a deadline.
5. Select the Don't send reminders for amounts owing on an invoice under checkbox and enter a small floor, so the firm wording never fires on a £4 rounding difference.
6. Click Save. Then switch reminders off on the contact record of any customer who should stay out of the sequence, such as an account on an agreed payment arrangement.

The wording on the firm reminders should stay short, factual and courteous. Two lines that do the job:

What can Xero not do for your most overdue customers?

Xero cannot change the sender, copy a manager, shorten the gaps, switch channel or add interest for one customer while the rest stay on the standard sequence.

How does Paidnice send sterner reminders to the most overdue customers?

Paidnice reads each Xero customer's total overdue balance and days overdue, places the customer in a group, and gives each group its own reminder wording, timing and sender. A customer sits in one group at a time, and moving the customer moves the policy.

1. Connect Xero. Invoices, payments, credit notes and balances sync across.
2. Create a group for the serious tier, defined by the balance and age you decide, with tags for exceptions such as a customer on an agreed payment arrangement.
3. Give that group its own reminders, with firmer templates, shorter intervals, an SMS step where you want one, and the "days or later" timing so a missed send still goes out.
4. Assign a sender profile per policy. Each profile has its own From Name, From Email, Reply-To and BCC on your verified domain, so reminder one can come from accounts@, reminder three from a named credit controller and the final notice from a director. The documented ladder is accounts@ on the due date, the credit controller at 7 to 14 days, then a director at 21 days and later.
5. Add the escalation. At a set number of days overdue, or when the customer's total balance passes a figure you set, Paidnice raises a phone call, a stop-credit or a template legal letter task and emails the instruction to the person who owns it.
6. Attach an interest or late fee policy where your terms allow it. In the UK the rate can follow the Bank of England base rate plus your margin, up to 8% a year for statutory interest.

The BCC field on the sender profile is where the copied manager goes, invisible to the customer. Escalation workflows and SMS reminders are included on the Essentials plan; sending from your own domain is on the Pro plan and above. Sign-up is free with no card.

Common questions

Can Xero send different reminders to different customers?
Not from the reminder settings. Xero has one schedule and one set of templates for the organisation. The only per-customer control is switching reminders off on the contact record. The routes around that are in different Xero invoice reminders for different customers.

Can I change who a Xero invoice reminder is sent from?
No. Reminders use Xero's sending address, replies go to the one Xero user address set for your organisation, and the same sender applies to all five. The request to point reminders at a different address has been open on Xero's ideas board since 2022.

How many invoice reminders can Xero send?
Five per organisation. Xero creates three when you turn the feature on, and you can add two more, each with its own days setting, subject and message.

How stern should a final reminder be?
Factual, not angry. Name the invoice, the amount, the days overdue, the consequence your terms already allow, and a date.

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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