Collection Emails: How to Write Reminder & Past Due Balance Email

Studies show that the more contact you have with customers, the more success you will have with collecting your open accounts receivable payments on time. The least amount of work goes into this step, especially if using an automated email collection service which sends out pre-created payment reminder emails to customers automatically. However, you can’t simply send the same email to every customers. Some may be later than other, which means your tone should be different for each. Many of our customers have also found that emails for collection that sound exactly the same over and over will eventually get ignored by customers.

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Below are each different email you should be sending out to past due accounts and how to write an email to collect payment.

Reminder Emails

You should remind customers to pay you a few days before the invoice is due and remind them that there is still a balance due on their account. You may want to wait until the due date for strategic customers, but newer customers 3-5 days before the invoice due date.

Example

Attached are invoices that are due in the next of days that have an outstanding balance of . Please notify us if there are any problems with the invoices in question and let us know when payment will be processed.

You can also CLICK HERE to pay your account with a credit card in our secured, self-service online customer portal. You can make a note on invoices in the portal should you have an issue that requires our attention.

Kindly disregard this email if payment has already been processed. We realize you have many choices and thank you for your business and look forward to serving your future business needs.

Past Due Balance Emails

This email notification should be sent the day the invoice is past due, or within a few days of the invoice due date. It can be friendly in tone and like the reminder email, should include a copy of the invoice with the information the customer will need to remedy the situation

Example

Attached are invoices that are due today that have an outstanding balance. Please notify us if there are any problems with the invoices in question and let us know when payment will be processed.

You can CLICK HERE to pay your account with a credit card in our secured, self-service online customer portal. You can also make a note on invoices in the portal should you have an issue that requires our attention.

Kindly disregard this email if payment has already been processed. We will contact you in a few days if payment has not been received.

We realize you have many choices and thank you for your business and look forward to serving your future business needs.

Collection Emails

As the invoice ages you will need to adjust the tone of your communications with customers. Invoices that have aged beyond two weeks are becoming a serious risk. A collections email should be sent reminding the customer of the past due balance with a more serious tone than previous communications. The customer needs to understand that this is becoming a serious issue for your organization and that failure to remedy the situation will have negative consequences. Still, your communication does not need to be hostile and can still reinforce your commitment to working with them to resolve the issue.