From Manual Follow-Up To 8 Automated Workflows

The Situation

A building compliance consultancy came to us with a problem familiar to any growing services firm: overdue invoices were eating their finance team's time. Xero handled reminders up to 14 days overdue, but after that, the Financial Controller took over manually. Every week, she chased payment by email, attached the invoice, waited for a response, and followed up again the next week if nothing came back. For every overdue invoice, this could repeat for months.

The work itself wasn't complicated. It was repetitive, and it never ended. Hours that should have gone into actual financial work were going into sending the same kind of email over and over.

The brief was direct. Take this entire follow-up process out of human hands and into automation, with the right exceptions handled correctly so no client gets a reminder they shouldn't.

Our Approach

We built a system in Zapier that takes over from where Xero stops, with everything running through the Financial Controller's Outlook so emails come from her address just like before.

The logic is simple from the outside. Once an invoice is 15 days overdue, the system sends the first reminder automatically. Every 7 days after that, it sends another one, until the invoice is paid or voided. The moment a payment comes in, the loop stops on its own.

Underneath, the system handles the cases that make this kind of work tricky in the real world. Clients on long payment terms are excluded automatically, tagged through a contact group in Xero so the system knows to skip them. When a client confirms a new payment date, the system waits until that date passes before resuming reminders, so no one gets chased while a payment is already on the way. If a contact email is missing in Xero, the system tries the general contact email next, and only if that fails does it notify the Financial Controller directly, so nothing falls through the cracks. Internal team members are CC'd on every outbound reminder so the whole finance team has visibility without anyone digging through sent folders.

The full system runs across 8 connected workflows, with error handling and fallback logic built in so the automation keeps working reliably even when external systems hiccup.

Before

• The Financial Controller manually followed up on every overdue invoice after day 14, every week, until payment came in

• Long-term clients on extended payment terms had to be tracked separately and excluded manually

• When clients responded with a payment date, follow-ups had to be paused and resumed by hand

• Missing contact emails meant lost follow-ups, with no clear way to flag them for manual action

• Internal visibility into reminder activity meant digging through someone else's sent folder

• Hours every week went into work that was identical from one invoice to the next

After

• 8 connected Zapier workflows running the entire overdue invoice follow-up process automatically

• First reminder at 15 days overdue, with 7-day follow-ups continuing until the invoice is paid or voided

• Automatic exclusion of clients on extended payment terms, managed through a contact group in Xero

• Expected payment date handling, so reminders pause when a client confirms a new date and only resume if payment doesn't arrive

• Email fallback logic that tries the invoice email first, then the general contact email, then flags the Financial Controller if neither is available

• Internal CC on every outbound reminder, giving the whole finance team visibility without extra steps

• Error handling and stability built in, so the system keeps running reliably even when external integrations hiccup

• Logging and tracking of every reminder sent, so the finance team has a clear record of what went out and when

The Outcome

Overdue invoice follow-up is now a process the finance team manages, not one they perform. Reminders go out on schedule, exceptions are handled automatically, and the Financial Controller only gets pulled in when something genuinely needs a human, like a missing contact email or a payment conversation in progress. The hours that used to go into weekly email chasing are now available for the financial work that actually requires her expertise.

What used to be a manual, never-ending task is now a system that runs itself. The automation is built to handle the edge cases that make collections work messy in practice, and it does so without needing the finance team to think about it. As the business grows and invoice volume increases, the system scales with it, and the savings compound over time.