How to Send Payment Reminders to Customers: Complete Guide

It is two days after the due date. Your staff member sits with the register in one hand and the phone in the other. She calls the first name on the list. The customer sounds hurt. "I paid at the counter on Saturday. Did nobody write it down?" The payment was in the drawer all along. The list was old.

A good payment reminder does the opposite. It goes out before the due date, to the right person, from a list that is correct today. It says the amount, the date and how to pay. It stops the moment the money is recorded. This guide shows you how to set that up, by hand or with software.

What is a payment reminder, and why do so many go wrong?

A payment reminder is a short notice that tells a customer an instalment is coming due or is overdue, with the amount, the date and a way to pay. Most reminders go wrong for one of three reasons: they are sent too late, they are sent from an old list, or they give the customer nothing to act on.

We see the same pattern in shop after shop. Jewellers who run a saving scheme, a kitty or a layaway plan by hand end up chasing customers by phone, by chat and by email. The chasing starts after the due date, and by then the message reads as a complaint.

The customer is rarely the problem. Most late payers simply forgot. A scheme runs for many months, and an instalment is a small thing in a busy life. If you are new to how these plans run, our guide to what a gold saving scheme is and how each month works gives the full picture. Here we stay on one question: how to remind well.

What do you need in place before you send the first reminder?

You need four things before any reminder goes out: a due list that is correct today, the customer's chosen channel and number, a way to pay that fits inside the message, and one named person who sends. Skip any one of them and even a polite reminder will cause trouble at the counter.

1. A due list that is correct today

This is the rule we care about most. Never send a reminder from a list that is older than your last payment. Before any message goes out, every payment received so far must be written against the right member. That means the cash in the drawer, the card slips and the bank or wallet transfers.

This is where shops struggle. Cash, card and transfers sit in different places, so payments cannot be matched on time. Then a customer who paid on Saturday gets a reminder on Monday. One wrong reminder costs more trust than ten right ones earn. If your book is the weak point, start with our guide to keeping a scheme register with the right columns.

2. The customer's chosen channel

Ask three questions on the day a customer joins, and write the answers next to their name:

• Which number should we use for reminders?
• Do you prefer SMS, WhatsApp, a call, or a notification from our app?
• Is there a day of the month that suits you best to pay?

The third answer is worth a lot. Many customers are paid on a fixed day. A reminder that lands just after that day gets paid. The same reminder a week earlier gets forgotten.

Writing down the customer's choice also protects you. Rules about business messages and calls differ by country, and some are strict. We cannot tell you the law for your market. Ask your own adviser, keep a dated record of each customer's consent, and stop at once if a customer asks you to.

3. A way to pay inside the message

A reminder without a way to pay is only a nag. The customer reads it, agrees, and then has to work out what to do. Give them the next step: a payment link, your counter hours, or the local payment methods you accept. One step is best. Three options in one message is already too many.

4. One sender

Name one person who sends reminders, and one backup. When two staff members both message the same customer, the shop looks careless. When nobody is named, nobody sends.

When should you send a payment reminder?

Send most of your reminders before the due date, not after. An example calendar, which you adjust to your own shop, has six moments: five days before, one day before, the due date, two days after, five days after, and the last day of your grace period. The grace period is the extra days a customer has to pay after the due date.

Read the picture in three parts.

Before the due date. Two messages, five days before and one day before. Message only, never a call. A call before the due date feels like you do not trust the customer.

On the due date. One message, with how to pay. Send it in the morning, so the customer has the whole day.

After the due date. The channel gets stronger, but the tone stays the same. Two days after, a message. Five days after, a call from the staff member the customer knows. On the last day of the grace period, a call or personal message from the owner.

That last point is the one most shops get backwards. When a payment is late, they keep the same channel and make the words harder. Do the opposite. Keep the words kind and change who is speaking. A calm call from the owner says more than any angry message.

Two more rules sit under this calendar. First, every reminder stops the moment the payment is recorded. A member who pays after the first message gets no more that month. Second, members who have paid in advance are taken off the list before the first message goes out.

Which channel should you use for each reminder?

Use the channel the customer chose, and match the channel to the stage. Written channels suit the early reminders because they are light on staff and easy on the customer. A phone call suits a late payment because it is personal. The grid below places the four common channels by the effort they take and by what the customer needs.

• SMS. Works on any phone, with less staff effort. It reaches every customer, but it is short, one way and easy to miss.
• Phone call. Works on any phone, with more staff effort. The most personal channel and the slowest. Keep it for members who are already late.
• App notification. Needs your app, with less staff effort. An app notification, also called a push notification, is a short message that appears on the customer's phone from your own shop app. One tap opens the payment screen.
• WhatsApp. Needs a chat app, with more staff effort. Customers read it and reply, so someone in the shop must answer. If your customers use a different chat app, the same points apply.

Effort here means sending by hand. Software can send the three written channels automatically. A call always needs a person.

One warning for anyone sending by hand. Never put scheme members in a group chat to remind them. Every member sees every other member's number, and a late payer is shamed in front of neighbours. Send one to one, or use a broadcast feature that hides the other names.

What should a payment reminder say?

A payment reminder should carry five facts and nothing else: the customer's name, the exact amount, the due date, how to pay, and your shop name. Early reminders should also say "if you have already paid, please ignore this". Keep each one to two or three sentences, and leave penalties out of it.

The table below is the full reminder calendar, with the channel, the sender and a message for each day. The words in square brackets are blanks for you to fill.

Notice how the messages change. The first three do not mention lateness at all. The call asks "Is everything all right?" before it asks for money. Nothing in the calendar threatens.

If you want more wording to choose from, for different tones and channels, we have a separate set of payment reminder message examples you can copy.

A worked example: one due date in one shop

The numbers here are made up to show the method. They are not results from any shop. Say your scheme has 120 members and the due date is the 10th. Your grace period ends on the 17th.

1. The 5th, five days before. You update the list. Eight members have paid in advance, so 112 get the first message.
2. The 9th, one day before. You update the list again. Say 40 have paid. The second message goes to 72.
3. The 10th, the due date. Say 30 more paid overnight and that morning. The due date message goes to 42.
4. The 12th, two days after. Say 25 are still unpaid. They get the fourth message, with the grace period date.
5. The 15th, five days after. Say 9 are still unpaid. The staff member they know calls each one.
6. The 17th, the last day of grace. Say 3 are left. The owner calls or writes to each one personally.

Look at what happened to the phone. In this example the shop made twelve calls in the month, not 112. Everything before that was a short message.

Now make it real. For one month, write down your own count at each of the six moments. You will see at which step most of your customers pay. If most pay after the due date message, your first reminder may be too early. If many pay only after the call, look at whether the messages include a clear way to pay.

How do you send reminders by hand, and when does software help?

By hand, you need a daily updated list, saved message templates, one sender and a fixed sending time. That is enough for a small scheme. Software helps when the list can no longer be kept correct by one person, because then every reminder is a risk.

Doing it by hand

• Pick one time of day for sending, after the previous day's payments are written up.
• Save the six messages from the table as templates on the shop phone.
• Use a shop number, not a staff member's personal number. Staff leave, and the chat history leaves with them.
• Tick each name as the reminder is sent, and again when the payment arrives.
• Reply to every answer the same day. A customer who writes "I will pay Friday" and hears nothing assumes nobody read it.

Doing it with software

Software does one thing a person cannot do every day without fail. It checks the list before each message. We built GoldKitty, our gold scheme software, hand in hand with a working jewellery store, and reminders were one of the first jobs the counter staff wanted gone.

In GoldKitty, due date reminders appear in the customer app and are mirrored on WhatsApp, so members without the app still get them. Cash, counter and in app payments land in one list, which is what keeps a reminder from reaching someone who has paid. You choose the grace period. After it, the member is shown as overdue and gets a reminder automatically. Staff can send a polite reminder to overdue members in one tap. Members can also pay months in advance, which removes them from the reminder list altogether.

The product is modular. It is set up for each jeweller according to their country and their offer, and payments run through local payment gateways that follow that market's banking guidelines. If you are still deciding between a book, a spreadsheet and an app, our comparison of paper, Excel and software will help you place your shop.

What mistakes should you avoid with payment reminders?

The mistakes that do the most damage are reminding someone who has already paid, starting only after the due date, and making the words harsher with each message. All three are avoidable with a correct list, an early start and a fixed calendar.

• Reminding a customer who has paid. Update the list first, every time.
• Starting after the due date. The first contact of the month should never be about a late payment.
• Sending at odd hours. Send during shop hours. A message late at night feels like pressure.
• Different rules for different customers. If one member gets extra days quietly, others will hear of it. Apply the grace period the same way to everyone.
• Treating reminders as the whole answer. If the same members are late every month, the cause may be the due date or the amount. Our guide on how to stop late payments at the source covers those causes.

What are the limits, and when is a reminder system not worth it?

Reminders help customers who forgot. They do not help customers who cannot pay this month, and they cannot repair a record that is wrong. If your scheme is small and you know every member by name, a formal calendar and software may be more than you need.

Be honest about three limits.

• A reminder is not a collection tool. If a customer has a hard month, no message will change that. A conversation about what your scheme rules allow might.
• Automatic does not mean unattended. Customers reply to messages. Someone must read and answer, or the shop looks like a machine.
• Reminders do not fix leaks elsewhere. Late instalments are one of several places where a manual scheme loses money. The others are set out in our guide to why jewellers lose money in gold schemes.

You probably do not need software for reminders if you have few members, most of them visit the shop every month anyway, and one careful person updates the book daily. A due list on paper and three saved messages will do. Look again when a second person starts taking payments, when payments arrive in more than two places, or when your own monthly count of calls keeps rising.

Our take

The software does not run the scheme, trust does. A reminder is a small test of that trust every month. When it arrives early, with the right amount and a way to pay, the customer feels looked after. When it arrives late, to someone who has already paid, the customer wonders what else in your book is wrong.

So fix the list first, then the calendar, then the wording. Do it by hand if your scheme is small. When the list outgrows one person, you can see how GoldKitty handles reminders on your own scheme in a private demo. Pricing is given after that demo, on your own numbers. If your plan has rules that no ready product fits, a custom app built for your shop is the other route.

Frequently asked questions