Pennylane reminders

How do you automate unpaid invoice reminders with Pennylane?

To automate unpaid invoice reminders with Pennylane, connect Pennylane to a Muzau agent. It reads your invoices and emails a reminder for those past their due date, quoting their reference, amount and due date. It stops as soon as Pennylane shows the invoice as paid or the customer replies. You choose whether each reminder waits for your approval before it goes out.

Why invoice reminders fall behind

Your invoicing software knows which invoices are past their due date. What is missing is the time to do something about it: open each invoice, check it has not been paid since, write to the customer, then come back a week later. Reminders go out in waves, the day someone finds an hour, and an invoice forgotten for a month becomes an awkward conversation.

The opposite mistake costs too: chasing an invoice the customer paid the day before, because nobody looked before writing. Your team keeps the relationship with the customer and the decision to go further; tracking due dates and writing the reminders is the part the agent takes on.

How the agent goes about it

Input

Your Pennylane invoices: reference, amount, due date

It does

Emails a reminder for each overdue invoice, firmer from the second reminder on

It delivers

Reminders that stop as soon as the invoice is paid or the customer replies

Pennylane connected, every overdue invoice followed up

You connect Pennylane in Muzau's tools, then create the agent by describing the job in your own words, for example "remind customers about invoices more than 3 days overdue". The agent reads your invoices and sends a reminder once the due date has passed, or before if you ask. The amount quoted is the invoice's own, never calculated. Reminders go out on the agent's run days, by default Monday to Friday at 9 a.m., from your own address when the company mailbox is connected.

The reminder stops as soon as the invoice is paid in Pennylane

As soon as Pennylane shows the invoice as paid, no more reminders go out for it. The reminder also stops when the customer replies, even from another address on the same thread, or when someone on the team writes to them from the connected mailbox. An out-of-office message does not count as a reply. If your invoices live in a spreadsheet, a row marked "Paid", "Settled" or "Cleared" stops the reminder in the same way: see unpaid invoice reminders from Google Sheets.

A customer replies that they have already paid the invoice

Their reply is enough: the reminder stops, whether it comes from them or from the person who handles payments on their side, on the same thread. You check in Pennylane: if the invoice shows as paid there, nothing more goes out for it; otherwise, your team picks the conversation back up with the customer.

A firmer tone from the second reminder, under your eye

Each reminder quotes the reference, the amount and the due date, then gets firmer from the second one on, without threats. These are instructions given to the AI: on the Autonomy page, choose "I look at everything" so that each reminder waits for your green light. In "Management", you read each planned reminder in advance, have it rewritten with an instruction, or write your own text. Cancelling the next reminder stops the follow-up for that customer.

Not chasing an invoice that is already paid: the checklist

An automatic reminder is only as good as your invoices. With or without a tool, check these points before you start it.

• Payments received are recorded as they come in, before each round of reminders. An invoice that is paid but not yet marked as settled will be chased.
• Each invoice has a unique reference, and the customer is asked to repeat it in the label of their transfer. That reference is what ties a payment to its invoice.
• A transfer that settles several invoices is allocated to each of them. Otherwise, the ones left open keep being chased.
• A credit note is matched to the invoice it cancels or reduces. Otherwise, the customer is chased for a sum they no longer owe.
• Only one tool chases a given invoice. If your invoicing software already sends its own reminders, switch them off for the invoices followed elsewhere, or the customer gets two messages.
• Disputed invoices come out of the reminders. A customer who disputes an invoice expects an answer on the substance, not a reminder: see how to follow up with a customer who disputes their invoice.

When a customer replies that they have already paid, thank them, ask for the payment date and the reference they used, then check before any further reminder. If nothing shows up, go back to them with the invoice's reference, amount and due date, with no suspicion in the tone: the payment may have gone out under another reference. For the wording of a reminder, see how to chase an unpaid invoice by email.

What it does not do

• It only sees a payment if Pennylane shows it, if the spreadsheet row it follows says so, or if the customer replies: a payment that nothing records does not stop it, and you cancel the reminder yourself.
• It does not settle a disagreement: when the customer says they have paid or disputes the invoice, their reply stops the reminder and the rest goes back to your team.
• It sends no formal notice and no penalty, and gives no legal advice: it sticks to friendly reminders.

Frequently asked questions

Can an AI tell whether an invoice has been paid?

With Pennylane connected, a Muzau agent sees the invoice as paid and stops chasing it. Without connected invoicing software, it only knows from the row in your Google Sheet ("Paid", "Settled", "Cleared") or from the customer's reply. A payment that nothing records is not seen.

What should you do when a customer says they have already paid a chased invoice?

Their reply stops a Muzau agent's reminder, even if it comes from another address on the same thread. Thank them, ask for the payment date and the reference they used, then check in Pennylane: if the invoice shows as paid there, nothing more goes out for it, otherwise your team picks the conversation back up.

Does a Pennylane invoice reminder go out from my email address?

Yes, when your company mailbox is connected to Muzau, whether it is Gmail, Outlook or another mailbox. Without a connected mailbox, the reminder goes out from your company's Muzau address, and the customer's replies come back into Muzau.

Can you chase a Pennylane invoice before its due date?

Yes, if you ask for it when creating the Muzau agent: it then writes before the date, for invoices whose due date falls within the number of days you give, for example 7. An invoice with no due date is not part of a due-date reminder.

How many automatic reminders can you schedule for an unpaid invoice?

With a Muzau agent, you choose the number of reminders when creating the agent, up to six, each spaced 1 to 90 days after the previous one. The same person never receives more than one scheduled message per 24 hours, across all agents.