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Getting paid on time is a very important part of building a sustainable and thriving business. It's the cash flow that makes it possible for freelancers like me, to put food on the table and provide for our families. While getting paid on time, all the time is the ideal scenario, there's a harsh reality that delays in receiving payments are normal but can be managed.

Setting up Automatic Payment Reminders in Paypal Business Account

For the past 10+ years that I've worked online, Paypal has been my go-to invoicing and payment gateway tool for my freelance business. And while it's not a perfect tool, and can sometimes be a source of stress just like when I had my Paypal account limited, there are useful features that you can use to better manage your finances, and invoices. One of those features is automatic payment reminders.

How to Access Automatic Payment Reminders

Once you are logged in to your Paypal Business account, you can access the payment reminders option by going to the Pay & Get Paid tab or you can also go straight to the Invoicing link found in the quick links bar.

Late Payments? Send Automatic Paypal Invoice Reminders 1

Once you are in the invoicing window, click on the gear icon to reveal the options and then choose Automatic Reminders.

Late Payments? Send Automatic Paypal Invoice Reminders 2

There are two ways to set up your automatic payment reminders in Paypal Business.

Late Payments? Send Automatic Paypal Invoice Reminders 3

Before Due Date Invoice Reminders

As the name implies, this invoice reminder is set up so you can advise clients of an upcoming invoice. You can choose the days before the due date when this reminder will be triggered and sent out. In the text box, you can add your note to the customer of their upcoming payment. If you want to receive a copy of the said reminder, just tick the box beside “Get email copies of reminders”.

Once you have all items done, be sure to hit save.

Late Payments? Send Automatic Paypal Invoice Reminders 4

After Due Date Invoice Reminders

After the due date invoice reminders can be set up automatically too. The process is similar to creating the before due date reminder. You'll set how many days after the due date before it gets triggered to be sent out and how many times after should it be sent again if it remains unpaid.

Late Payments? Send Automatic Paypal Invoice Reminders 5

On the other hand, if you have not set up any of these automatic reminders and already have a past-due invoice that you need to collect, you can send a manual reminder to your client. To do that, go to your the “Invoicing” quick link or to the “Pay & Get Paid” tab. Choose the past-due invoice and click on the three dots and click “remind”.

Late Payments? Send Automatic Paypal Invoice Reminders 6

After clicking the link, you will then be taken to the window below. And in a similar way, just fill the note to customer (that's optional, by the way) then, click “send reminder”.

Late Payments? Send Automatic Paypal Invoice Reminders 7

So that's how you set up automatic Paypal invoice payment reminders, as well as a manual invoice reminder. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment on this post or on the video on YouTube and I'll try to answer them as best as I could.

One of the things that I really love about the clients that I work with is that they almost always pay on time and sometimes even earlier than expected. But of course, it's not always Christmas. So I understand that there will be delays at some point, or they may also encounter some financial problems which may hinder them to make their payments on time. That is definitely understandable. And one of the things that's really important for us is to make sure that we set up a system so that when they don't pay on time or there is a delay in the payment, we can send them a reminder just to give them a heads up that the invoice, just in case they forgot about it or they've lost track of the emails that they're going to their inbox, then they are still notified that we are waiting for their payment. So today I'm going to show you how to set up automatic reminders as well as manual payment or invoice reminders using PayPal business account.

Now, some of you may probably are using a personal PayPal account. I do have another video for that specific account or for that specific type of account. So be sure to check the link in the description. All right, let's get started. Now, what we need to do is, of course, we need to go and log into our PayPal account. I'll go ahead and hit log in. And of course, you also can definitely do this also on your mobile phone, if that is more convenient for you if that's easier for you.

But for me, since I'm on my computer right now, I'll just go ahead and make use of my desktop to record this video and create this tutorial for you. Now I have set up two-factor authentication, so I need to provide the security code, which I'm trying to grab right now here on mine. Computer. Okay, so I just need to provide the code that I have received. 405. Five, six two. So right now I do have a couple of invoices, two invoices that are unpaid. Now, what we're going to do is we'll go to the quick links. We do have your quick links. You can click on invoicing. Or another thing that you can do to access the invoices or the outstanding invoices that you have is you go to pay and get paid tab right here and then you can click on Create and manage invoices. So it will take you to the same spot if you're going to click on the Quick Links, invoicing. Quick Links. All right. So right now, I do have here my invoices. Okay. So I do have here one June 18, August 18. Another one is due on August ten. So what I can do is I could actually click on these three dots right here next to the invoice and there is this remind option so I can click on that. Or if not, I can also click on the invoice itself, the invoice name or the invoice title, and it will take me to the actual invoice and I can go ahead and click on Remind.

So let's do that. So I'll go ahead and click on Remind. Now this will send the reminder to my client, which is this one, the email address right here. And if I would like to get a copy of the reminder, I can leave this checkbox tick. But if I don't want to get a reminder or get a copy of the reminder, I can just go ahead and uncheck that one. So definitely I don't want to get a copy of the reminder. All right. Now, here you do have the subject that's already pre-filled, and you also have the text box right here where you have the option to provide some customized message, a note to your customer like Hi Florante. You may have overlooked this invoice. Just sending you a. This reminder. Just in case. You didn't see it. Thank you. All right. So that's it. Just a simple, very straightforward note to the customer. And I can just go ahead and click on Send a reminder. So that is for an existing invoice. Now what if I'll just go ahead and set up that? Every time someone fails to pay on time or on the due date, it will send a notification, a reminder for them. Well, that is very possible. So what you just need to do is to click on this cog icon or the settings icon right here, right next to create batch invoice.

You click on that icon and you will see here the different options. Scroll to the bottom. Automatic reminders. So this is what we're looking for. We're going to set up an automatic reminder so that we don't have to go through this every time someone fails to pay their invoice on time or on their due date. So I'll go ahead and click Automatic Reminders. So basically there are two options that you can choose from when to send this reminder. Now you can choose to send this before their due date, and also you can send this also after the due date. So it depends on you. If you'd like to send before and after or just one or the other. All right. So if we're going to send before the due date reminder, we'll just have to toggle this button right here. And turn that, make that active. And of course, we need to make sure that we customize this one to make sure the default is that it will remind customers three days before the due date. So let's go ahead and click edit. All right. So again, there is an option for you to provide some notes for this reminder. And you can also again provide yourself a copy by clicking this one. If you take this checkbox, you will get a copy of the reminder. But again, I don't want that. I'll just go ahead and make use of the default three days before the due date. Okay. I go.

Click on Save and for the second one, the after due date reminder. I'll go ahead and click Enable. And again, you will see here the default settings for after the due date. Reminder, there are things that we need to remember first is the trigger. The trigger is when will this reminder be sent to your customer? And then the next one is how often or how many times will this be sent out? Okay. So I'll go ahead and click on edit to make sure that we have the settings correct. So this one will be sent out after the due date one day after the due date, and then it will repeat every one day. For two times. So basically if, say, for example, the due date falls on the first and they have not paid on the second, they still haven't paid on that date. There will be a reminder that will be sent to them and if they still did not pay on the second, there will be another reminder that will be sent to them on the third. So that's twice. Okay. So you have to remember that. So of course, definitely we're not going to send it more than once. I don't really want to, you know, keep sending them this email reminder. I just wanted to make sure that they get reminded after their, uh, due date, and I'll just send it once. And I'll just put a note. Hi. All right. So again, you have the option to check this box if you would like to get a copy of the reminder.

But for me, I don't really prefer getting a copy of that reminder. So I'll just go ahead and click on Save. All right. So we now have successfully set up the before due date reminder as well as the after due date reminder. So moving forward, I won't have to go through this anymore. It will just automatically be triggered every time the conditions are met. So three days before the due date and one day after the due date they will be receiving this email notification or reminders to settle the invoices that we have sent them. So I hope this one would help you and make sure that your cash flow is, of course, in place, and of course, still keeping that great relationship with your client, even if for some reason they have been unable to pay on time. Thank you so much for watching. And if you would like more content like this, please don't forget to click on the Subscribe button. And also you can join us on our Facebook page, the freelance channel of the same name. And if you have an interest in doing freelance work, say, for example, as a podcast virtual assistant, I do have a course called the podcast VA Masterclass. It's now open and you can enroll. This is open to those who would like to provide podcasts, and VA services to podcasters. All right. Well, thank you so much for watching. My name is Florante. Live the dream life without leaving the home.

 

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