Invoice payment reminders

Learn how to automatically send payment reminders to customers before the invoice due dates and early discount dates.

Monite can automatically send payment reminder emails to an entity's customers before the invoice due dates and early discount dates. Entities can customize the contents of payment reminders and the days on which these reminders should be sent. Reminders can be configured on a per-invoice basis, as well as shared between multiple invoices.

How it works

A payment reminder is sent if the following conditions are met:

  • the counterpart has not paid the invoice in full yet,
  • the invoice has payment_reminder_id specified (see below),
  • the invoice is due in N days, or an early payment term is due in N days (where N is customizable),
  • entity setting reminder.enabled is true,
  • counterpart setting reminders_enabled is true.

Payment reminders are sent to the email address of the counterpart's default contact, which gets saved in the counterpart_contact.email field of the invoice. The "From" address in reminders is "Monite" <[email protected]>; this address is currently not customizable.

Configure payment reminders

To use payment reminders, you need to create a reminder configuration and include it when creating an invoice.

1. Create a payment reminder configuration

To create a new payment reminder, call POST /payment_reminders. The days_before value represents the number of days before each payment due date to send the reminder notifications to the counterpart:

curl -X POST 'https://api.sandbox.monite.com/v1/payment_reminders' \
     -H 'X-Monite-Version: 2023-03-14' \
     -H 'X-Monite-Entity-Id: ENTITY_ID' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
       "name": "Send payment reminders 5 days before each due date",
       "term_1_reminder": {
         "days_before": 5,
         "subject": "Subject of the reminder email",
         "body": "... HTML content of the reminder email ..."
       },
       "term_2_reminder": {
         "days_before": 5,
         "subject": "Subject of the reminder email",
         "body": "... HTML content of the reminder email ..."
       }, 
       "term_final_reminder": {
         "days_before": 5,
         "subject": "Subject of the reminder email",
         "body": "... HTML content of the reminder ..."
       }
     }'

The email subject and body can include variables such as {invoice_number} which will be substituted with the corresponding values. The email body can be a multi-line text string, with lines separated by \n.

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Note

To use the /payment_reminders* endpoints with an entity user token, this entity user must have a role that includes the payment_reminder permission.

The response contains the ID assigned to this configuration. You will need to specify this ID later when creating invoices.

{  
  "id": "3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6",  
  "name": "Send payment reminders 5 days before each due date",  
  ...
}

2. Specify the payment reminder configuration for an invoice

When creating a new invoice or updating an existing draft invoice, you can use the payment_reminder_id field to specify the desired payment reminder configuration for this invoice:

curl -X POST 'https://api.sandbox.monite.com/v1/receivables' \
     -H 'X-Monite-Version: 2023-03-14' \
     -H 'X-Monite-Entity-Id: ENTITY_ID' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
        "type": "invoice",
        "payment_reminder_id": "3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6",
        ...
     }'

Enable or disable payment reminders

For specific counterparts

By default, payment reminders are enabled for all counterparts of an entity.

If you want to disable reminders for a specific counterpart, such as a customer who always pays on time, call PATCH /counterparts/{counterpart_id} and set the reminders_enabled field to false:

curl -X PATCH 'https://api.sandbox.monite.com/v1/counterparts/6291de...3699' \
     -H 'X-Monite-Version: 2023-03-14' \
     -H 'X-Monite-Entity-Id: ENTITY_ID' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{"reminders_enabled": false}'

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This disables not only payment reminders, but also overdue reminders for this counterpart.

For all counterparts

To disable reminders for all counterparts of a specific entity, call PATCH /entities/{entity_id}/settings and change the reminder.enabled field to false.

curl -X PATCH 'https://api.sandbox.monite.com/v1/entities/692b50...09da8/settings' \
     -H 'X-Monite-Version: 2023-03-14' \
      -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_PARTNER_TOKEN' \
      -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
      -d '{
           "reminder": {
             "enabled": false
           }
       }'

To enable reminders again, change the reminder.enabled field back to true.