Does AdvicePay Send Automatic Payment Reminders? What Financial Advisors Should Know

You sent the invoice through AdvicePay two weeks ago. The planning work is done, the client was happy on the last call, and the fee is not large by any measure. But the payment still has not come through, and now you are sitting with a decision you did not want to make on a Tuesday morning: do you email them about it, or do you give it another week?

It is an uncomfortable spot for a financial advisor. You spend your days helping people get organized with money, so a note about your own unpaid fee feels like it lands differently than it would coming from a plumber or a web designer. Most advisors wait longer than they should, and then the message they finally send carries more weight than they wanted it to.

The good news is that AdvicePay does not leave you to do all of that by hand. It sends automatic reminders on a schedule, and that schedule is more adjustable than most advisors realize. This post walks through exactly what AdvicePay sends and when, which settings control the timing, the two situations where a reminder quietly does not go out at all, and how to build a follow-up rhythm that fits a long-term planning relationship.

Does AdvicePay Send Automatic Payment Reminders? Yes

AdvicePay sends automatic email reminders to your clients about invoices they have not paid. This is not an add-on or a premium tier feature. It is on by default in every account, and it works whether or not you personally emailed the original request for payment.

Out of the box, the schedule has two touches. Your client gets an email three days before the due date reminding them a payment is coming up. If they do not log in and pay, they get a second email one day after the due date. Then, by default, the emails stop. AdvicePay's own documentation is direct about this: no further emails will be sent unless you set up subsequent reminders.

That last sentence is the part worth sitting with. Two emails is a reasonable start, and it will shake loose the invoices that were simply forgotten. But an invoice that survives both of those emails is now in silence, and silence is where a small unpaid fee turns into a three-month-old one.

The Default Schedule, Written Out

Here is what a typical unpaid one-time invoice looks like on default settings, assuming you send it well before the due date:

• Three days before the due date: your client gets an upcoming invoice reminder.
• The due date passes with no payment.
• One day after the due date: your client gets an overdue reminder.
• Day two onward: nothing further is sent automatically. The invoice sits.

Subscriptions work a little differently. For recurring planning fees, AdvicePay notifies the client seven days before they are billed and sends a confirmation each time the billing runs. That heads-off-surprise email is genuinely useful for retainer relationships, because the most common reason a card gets declined is that nobody expected the charge.

One more detail that trips people up: reminder emails go out at 7:00 p.m. UTC. If you are in the United States, that means your client is getting the nudge in the afternoon or early evening local time, not first thing in the morning. It is worth knowing when you are wondering whether a reminder has already gone out today.

Two Situations Where the Reminder Never Fires

This is the part most advisors do not find out about until an invoice goes strangely quiet. There are two documented cases where AdvicePay skips the reminder entirely.

The first is a timing window. A reminder will not be sent if the invoice was created inside that reminder's own interval. If your overdue reminder is set to one day after the due date, and you create an invoice that is already due tomorrow, that overdue email will not go out. The system reads it as too late to be useful. Any advisor who bills at the end of a quarter and dates the invoice tightly has probably hit this without noticing.

The second involves eSignature documents. If an invoice has a document attached that is still waiting on signatures, AdvicePay does not send the unpaid invoice reminder. It sends a document reminder instead. That is sensible behavior, since the client cannot really settle up before signing. But it means the invoice reminder you were counting on is not running, and the fee stays open while the signature chase plays out.

Both cases are quiet. Nothing errors, nothing appears in your dashboard. The invoice simply sits there looking like every other unpaid invoice, with no reminders behind it.

The Settings Screen Most Advisors Have Never Opened

The defaults are adjustable, and the controls live under Account Settings, in Emails and Notifications. Open it once and you can change the whole rhythm in about two minutes.

• Upcoming invoice reminder: send it 1, 3, or 7 days before the due date. Default is 3.
• Fee change due soon reminder: same 1, 3, or 7 day choices, for when a client's fee is about to change.
• Overdue invoice reminder: send it 1 or 3 days after the due date. Default is 1.
• Subsequent overdue reminders: repeat at any interval from 1 to 31 days until the invoice is paid.

That fourth setting is the one that matters most, and it is off unless you turn it on. Switching subsequent reminders to something like every seven days changes AdvicePay from a two-email system into one that keeps a polite hand on the invoice until it clears. For most advisory practices, that single change does more than any email template rewrite ever will.

There is also a manual option. From Invoices or Subscriptions in the sidebar, the dropdown next to any payment request has a Send Reminder action, and it lets you add a custom message. That is the right tool for the client who needs a human sentence rather than a system email. And if you are ever unsure whether a reminder actually reached someone, the Email Log will tell you.

What About Fees You Do Not Bill Through AdvicePay?

AdvicePay can only remind clients about invoices that live inside AdvicePay. That is not a criticism, it is just the boundary of any billing platform. But very few advisory practices run every dollar through one system.

Think about the edges of your practice. A one-off financial plan billed out of your accounting software. A hourly consultation invoiced from a different tool because the client is not on a planning agreement. Work you do for a centre of influence, or a small corporate engagement that never fit the retainer structure. Those invoices are outside the reminder schedule entirely, and they tend to be the ones that age quietly, because nothing is watching them.

There are two honest ways to close that gap. The first is consolidation: move everything you reasonably can into AdvicePay so one reminder schedule covers it. The second is to add a follow-up layer that sits above whichever tool sent the invoice. Reminder tools like DueDrop exist for exactly this situation, and they follow up on invoices you have already issued elsewhere rather than replacing your billing setup. Either approach beats the third option, which is remembering on your own.

If you want the wider view of how different billing tools handle this, we compared them in which accounting tools send automatic payment reminders. The pattern across the category is consistent: sending an invoice and following up on one are separate features, and the second is usually weaker.

A Follow-Up Rhythm That Fits a Planning Relationship

Advisory relationships are long, and they are personal. A follow-up sequence built for a one-time transaction does not translate. Here is a rhythm that works well for planning fees and keeps the tone right:

• Three days before due: the standard upcoming reminder. Purely informational, no pressure.
• One day after due: the standard overdue reminder. Still neutral, still automated.
• Seven days after due: an automatic subsequent reminder. This is the one you have to enable.
• Around day fourteen: a manual Send Reminder with a personal line from you.
• Around day twenty-one: if it is still open, raise it in conversation instead of email.

Notice how much of that is automatic. By the time you are personally involved, the client has already had three chances to handle it quietly, so your message reads as a check-in rather than a confrontation. Tone matters more here than frequency, and we have written about why friendly reminders tend to outperform firm ones if you want the reasoning.

One caution specific to advisors: do not let an unpaid fee sit across billing periods without saying something. A client who is quietly unhappy about scope or value sometimes signals it by not paying rather than by raising it. Catching that at day fourteen is a conversation. Catching it at day ninety is a problem.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does AdvicePay send automatic payment reminders by default?

Yes. Every account sends an upcoming invoice reminder three days before the due date and an overdue reminder one day after. Both are on by default and require no setup. What is not on by default is the repeating reminder after that second email.

Can I change when AdvicePay sends reminders?

You can. Under Account Settings, in Emails and Notifications, you can move the upcoming reminder to 1, 3, or 7 days before the due date and the overdue reminder to 1 or 3 days after. You can also enable subsequent overdue reminders at any interval between 1 and 31 days until the invoice is paid.

Why did my client never get a reminder about an unpaid invoice?

Two likely reasons. Either the invoice was created inside the reminder's own interval, which suppresses that reminder, or the invoice has an eSignature document still waiting on signatures, in which case a document reminder is sent instead. The Email Log will confirm which emails actually went out.

Does AdvicePay remind clients about recurring planning fees?

Yes, though the emails are different. For subscriptions, clients get a notification seven days before they are billed and a confirmation after each billing. If a subscription payment fails and creates an unpaid invoice, the standard reminders apply to it.

Can AdvicePay remind clients about invoices from other tools?

No. Reminders only cover invoices created inside AdvicePay. Fees you bill through your accounting software sit outside that schedule, so you either consolidate billing or add a separate follow-up layer for those invoices.

The Short Version

• AdvicePay does send automatic reminders: three days before the due date and one day after.
• By default the emails stop after that second one, which is the biggest gap in the setup.
• Turning on subsequent overdue reminders takes two minutes and changes the whole result.
• Reminders are skipped when an invoice is created inside the reminder window, or when an eSignature is still pending.
• Anything you bill outside AdvicePay gets no reminders at all, so decide deliberately how those invoices get followed up.
• Automate the first three touches so that when you do reach out personally, it reads as a check-in.