Does Practice Better Send Automatic Payment Reminders?

You finished the session, wrote your notes, sent the invoice, and moved on to the next client. Two weeks later you open your billing screen and there it is, still sitting there, unpaid. You know you should follow up. You also know you have four appointments today and a care plan to write, and the invoice quietly slides down the list again.

If you run your practice on Practice Better, there is good news. The platform can chase that invoice for you. The feature is called Automated Invoice Reminders, and it will email your client on a schedule you choose without you touching anything. The catch is that it is switched off by default, it lives in a settings screen most practitioners never open, and the way the timing works is not quite what people assume.

This post walks through what the feature actually does, how to turn it on, how many reminders your plan gives you, and where it stops short. By the end you will know whether the built-in reminders are enough for your practice or whether you need something sitting alongside them.

The short answer: yes, but you have to switch it on

Practice Better does send automatic payment reminders. According to the platform's own Automated Invoice Reminders documentation, the feature follows up with clients about unpaid invoices on a schedule you define, using an email template you can adjust on higher plans. It runs quietly in the background once configured.

The important word is configured. This is not a default behaviour. A brand new Practice Better account will not send a single reminder until someone ticks a box. Plenty of practitioners assume the reminders are already running and only discover otherwise when they audit their unpaid invoices at the end of a quarter.

How to turn on automated invoice reminders

The setup takes about two minutes. Here is the path:

Open Settings, then Invoices & Payments from your practitioner portal.
Tick the box to enable Invoice Reminders. If you are on a team account and cannot see the option, use the Team Member Switcher in the bottom left to select the right team member first.
Set the timing of the first reminder. You can choose anywhere from one day to eight weeks after the invoice was originally sent.
Add follow-up reminders with Add another. How many you can stack depends on your subscription plan, up to a maximum of three.
Decide whether you want a task after the last reminder. There is a checkbox that creates a task for you if the invoice is still unpaid once the final reminder has gone out.
Save your changes using the button near the top right.

One detail worth writing on a sticky note: changes only apply to invoices you send from that point forward. Every invoice already sitting unpaid in your account keeps whatever settings existed when it was created, which is usually none. If you have a backlog, those still need a manual nudge.

The schedule counts from the send date, not the due date

This is the part that trips people up. When you set a reminder for, say, twenty-one days, that clock starts the moment the invoice was sent. It does not start when the invoice becomes overdue.

So if your terms are net 14 and you set a reminder at seven days, that reminder arrives a week before anything is late. That can be exactly what you want. A gentle heads-up before the due date is often the single most effective message you can send, and many practitioners deliberately place a reminder two days ahead of the deadline for that reason.

But it means you have to do the arithmetic yourself. Work out your terms first, then translate each moment you care about into days-since-sent. With net 14 terms, a sensible three-reminder pattern might be day 12 as a friendly heads-up, day 18 as a first overdue note, and day 28 as a firmer check-in. Write those numbers down before you open the settings screen, because the interface will not do the conversion for you.

How many reminders you get depends on your plan

Three is the ceiling. Practice Better allows up to three scheduled reminders per invoice, and the number available to you depends on which subscription tier you are on. Lower tiers get fewer.

Editing the wording of the reminder email is gated too. Personalising the Invoice Payment Reminder notification requires the Professional plan or above. On lower tiers your clients receive the standard template, which is perfectly polite but sounds like software rather than like you. For a wellness practice built on warmth and rapport, that gap between how you speak in session and how your billing emails read is worth noticing.

What happens after the last reminder

Once the third reminder has gone out, the automation is finished. Practice Better does not keep emailing indefinitely, which is a sensible design choice. Nobody wants a tool that hounds a client forever on their behalf.

This is where that optional task checkbox earns its place. Tick it, and an unpaid invoice that survives the full sequence lands on your task list instead of disappearing. Without it, the invoice simply goes quiet, and quiet invoices are the ones that turn into write-offs six months later. Turn it on even if you think you will remember.

Where practitioners still get stuck

The built-in reminders solve the most common problem, which is forgetting entirely. But there are a few edges worth knowing about before you decide you are covered.

Email only. Invoice reminders go out by email. If a client is the kind of person who reads texts and lets email pile up unopened, the reminder may never be seen.
One schedule for everyone. The cadence you set applies across the board. A long-standing client who always pays on day 20 gets the same sequence as someone new who has never paid on time.
Configured per team member. In a group practice, turning it on for yourself does not turn it on for your colleagues. Each practitioner has their own setting to check.
Not retroactive. Your existing unpaid invoices stay untouched. Clear that backlog by hand once, then let the automation handle everything after.
Tone is fixed on lower plans. Below the Professional tier you cannot rewrite the message, so the reminder will not sound like the rest of your client communication.

None of these are dealbreakers. They are just the shape of the tool. Knowing them means you can plan around them rather than being surprised in three months.

A cadence that suits a wellness practice

The stakes here are real. In Intuit QuickBooks' 2025 US Small Business Late Payments Report, 56% of small businesses said they were owed money on unpaid invoices, averaging around $17,500 each. For a solo practitioner that scale of gap is the difference between a comfortable quarter and a stressful one.

If you want a starting point, this three-step pattern works well for practices billing on net 14 terms:

Day 12: a warm heads-up. Two days before the due date. No pressure, just a note that the invoice is coming up.
Day 18: a light check-in. Four days past due. Assume it was missed rather than ignored, because it almost always was.
Day 28: a clear ask. Two weeks past due. Still friendly, but name the amount and ask for a date.

That rhythm catches most people well before the situation gets uncomfortable. It is also close to what other practice platforms default to, so if you are comparing options it is worth reading how Jane App handles the same job. And if you have been wondering whether late fees belong in the mix at all, we looked at whether they actually work in a separate piece.

When the built-in reminders are not quite enough

For a lot of practices, three plan-limited email reminders on a fixed schedule are genuinely all you need. If your clients pay reliably and you just want a safety net, switch it on and stop thinking about it.

It gets thinner if you bill more than a handful of clients, if you are on a plan that caps you at one reminder, or if you want the follow-up to sound like a person rather than a template. In those cases some practitioners add a dedicated reminder layer on top of the tool they already use for scheduling and billing. That is the niche DueDrop fills: it watches the invoices you have already issued elsewhere and handles the follow-up messages, so you keep Practice Better exactly as it is and just get a warmer, more persistent nudge sequence behind it.

Whichever way you go, the decision worth making today is smaller than it looks. Open your settings, tick the box, pick three sensible day counts, and tick the task option. That alone will recover invoices you would otherwise have forgotten about.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Practice Better send payment reminders automatically by default?

No. Automated Invoice Reminders are switched off until you enable them under Settings, then Invoices & Payments. Until you tick that box and save, no reminder emails are sent, no matter how overdue an invoice becomes.

How many automatic reminders can Practice Better send?

Up to three per invoice, and the number you can actually use depends on your subscription plan. Lower tiers allow fewer. Once the final scheduled reminder has been sent, the sequence ends and nothing further goes out automatically.

Can I change the wording of the Practice Better reminder email?

Only on the Professional plan and above. Customising the Invoice Payment Reminder notification template is a higher-tier feature. On lower plans your clients receive the standard wording, which is professional but generic.

Do the reminders apply to invoices I already sent?

No. Reminder settings only apply to invoices created after you save the change. Anything already sitting unpaid in your account will not pick up the new schedule, so clear that backlog manually before relying on the automation.

Does Practice Better send reminders by text message?

Automated invoice reminders are sent by email. If you work with clients who rarely check email, plan on a separate personal touch for those accounts rather than assuming the automated sequence has reached them.

Takeaways

Practice Better does send automatic payment reminders, but the feature is off until you enable it in Settings, then Invoices & Payments.
The schedule counts days from when the invoice was sent, not from the due date, so translate your terms into day counts before you configure it.
You get up to three reminders, and both the count and the ability to edit the email wording depend on your subscription tier.
Tick the option to create a task after the final reminder so unpaid invoices resurface instead of going quiet.
Settings are per team member and are never retroactive, so check each practitioner in a group practice and clear your existing backlog by hand.