How to Set Up Automatic Invoice Reminders in QuickBooks Online
If you're invoicing clients through QuickBooks Online, chasing late payments manually is one of the most time-consuming things you can do. The good news is that QBO has a built-in automatic reminder feature. The not-so-good news is that it has some significant limitations that most people only discover after they've set it up.
This guide walks you through exactly how to set up automatic invoice reminders in QuickBooks Online, what you can and can't control, and what to do when the built-in tool isn't enough.
How to set up invoice reminders in QuickBooks Online
QBO's reminder feature is buried in the account settings rather than on the invoice itself. Here's where to find it and how to configure it.
Click the gear icon in the top right corner of QuickBooks Online, then select "Account and Settings."
In the left sidebar of Account and Settings, click "Sales." This is where invoice-related settings live.
Scroll down until you see "Reminders." Click to expand it if it's collapsed.
Toggle on "Automatic invoice reminders." You'll see options to configure up to three reminders.
For each reminder you can set: whether it sends before or after the due date, how many days before or after, and the email subject and body. You can set up to three reminders total.
Click "Save" at the bottom. These reminders will now apply to all future invoices automatically.
What QBO's reminders actually do
Once set up, QuickBooks will automatically send your configured reminder emails to customers when an invoice hits the trigger date. It handles the sending for you — you don't need to do anything per invoice. For basic use cases, it works reasonably well.
The reminders pull the customer's email address from their contact record in QBO, use the subject and body you wrote, and include a link for the customer to view and pay the invoice online if you have that feature enabled.
The limitations you'll run into
Most people discover these limitations after they've been using the feature for a while. They're worth knowing upfront.
You get three reminder slots. More importantly, there's no way to make them escalate in urgency. A reminder sent the day after the due date and one sent 45 days later look identical unless you manually write different copy — and even then, the system doesn't help you manage the escalation logic.
The same reminder schedule applies to every customer. You can't pause reminders for a specific client you're already in conversation with, give a high-value client a different schedule, or turn off reminders for clients who prefer a phone call.
This is the one that catches most people out. If a client pays the invoice but the reminder hasn't fired yet, QBO will still send it. You then have to manually go in and disable the reminder, or deal with the awkward "sorry, ignore that last email" message.
QBO doesn't give you a clear log of which reminders went out to which clients. If a client says they never received a reminder, there's no easy way to verify.
Workarounds for the most common problems
For the no-escalation problem
Write your three reminder emails with deliberately different tones. Make the first one friendly and casual, the second more direct, the third firm with a clear statement that you'll need to follow up further. It's not automatic escalation, but it gives each reminder a different weight.
For the per-client problem
QBO lets you disable reminders on individual invoices — go to the invoice, click "More," and look for reminder options. It's manual and easy to forget, but it's the only way to exclude specific clients from the global reminder schedule.
For the payment-doesn't-stop-reminders problem
Build a habit of checking your overdue invoice list after any payment comes in and manually disabling pending reminders. It takes a few extra minutes but prevents the embarrassing follow-up to a client who already paid.
When the built-in reminders aren't enough
For a small number of invoices and clients, QBO's built-in feature is perfectly adequate. But if you're managing more than a handful of clients, or if you've already been burned by the limitations above, it's worth looking at tools built specifically for invoice follow-up.
The core things to look for in any alternative: automatic escalation of tone across reminders, per-client control over who gets reminded and when, and automatic stopping when payment is detected in QuickBooks.
PayDuer is built specifically to fill these gaps. It connects to QuickBooks via OAuth, reads your invoices automatically, and sends escalating reminders on a schedule you configure once per client. Reminders stop the moment QuickBooks detects payment — no manual intervention needed. It's free to use right now.
Need a reminder email right now? Use our free invoice reminder email generator to get a ready-to-send email in seconds.
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