Does SimplePractice Send Automatic Payment Reminders to Clients?

The session went well. The invoice went out on time. And then nothing happened — no payment, no reply, just a balance that has been sitting there for three weeks while you try to decide whether bringing it up is worth the awkwardness.

If you run your practice on SimplePractice, this is a fair moment to wonder what the software is actually doing on your behalf. You know it creates invoices and that clients can pay through the Client Portal. What is less obvious is whether anyone is nudging the client when a balance goes unpaid, or whether that quiet part has been left to you.

The answer is a little of both, and the details matter. This post walks through exactly what SimplePractice can send when an invoice goes past due, where that setting lives, what triggers it, what it will not do, and how to build a simple follow-up rhythm that fits a practice where the client is also someone you will see again next Tuesday.

The Short Answer: Yes, One Email — If You Turn It On

SimplePractice can automatically send a client an email when their invoice becomes past due. It is a real feature, it works, and it costs you nothing extra.

There are two things worth knowing straight away. First, it is a setting you have to enable rather than something that runs by default. Second, it is one email tied to one moment — the point at which an invoice flips to past due — not an ongoing sequence that keeps checking in until the balance clears.

So if you were hoping the software has been quietly following up for months, it probably has not been. And if you switch it on expecting a persistent chase, that is not quite what you get either. It is a single, well-timed tap on the shoulder.

Where the Past-Due Setting Actually Lives

The controls are account-wide rather than per client, which makes them quick to set once and easy to forget forever. You will find them under Settings, then Client billing and insurance, then Client billing documents.

Inside that page, the invoice section holds three decisions that work together:

When invoices are created — daily, monthly, or manually. Most practices choose daily so that a session billed today produces an invoice overnight.
How many days after the due date an invoice is automatically marked past due. This is the trigger point for everything that follows.
Whether an email is automatically sent to the client when that invoice is marked past due. This is the checkbox that turns the whole thing on.

All automated billing documents are generated at midnight based on your practice's location and time zone, according to SimplePractice's own documentation on billing automations. That is useful to know when you are trying to work out why something arrived when it did.

What Triggers the Email — and What Quietly Doesn't

The past-due email is triggered by a status change, not by a calendar. An invoice has to cross your past-due threshold before anything sends. That sounds obvious, but it catches people out.

If your past-due window is set generously — say thirty days — a client who is two weeks late has not triggered anything. Nothing is wrong; the system simply does not consider that invoice late yet. Shortening the window is often the fastest change a practice can make.

A few other cases where nothing sends:

The client's billing notification method is set to None, which means the system is relying on you to share documents manually.
The invoice is for $0. Clients do not receive automatic notifications for zero-dollar invoices, though they can still see them in the Client Portal.
The client is enrolled in AutoPay and the balance was charged overnight, so the invoice never became past due in the first place.

That last one is worth pausing on. AutoPay charges an enrolled client's full balance overnight, so for those clients the past-due path rarely comes up at all. If most of your caseload is on AutoPay, past-due emails will feel rare — and that is the system working, not failing.

Billing Notifications Are Not the Same as Reminders

This is where a lot of confusion starts, because both arrive as email and both mention money.

A billing notification tells a client that a document exists. A new invoice was created, or a statement is ready, and here it is as an attachment or as a link to the Client Portal. It is informational. It goes out whether or not anything is overdue.

A reminder is different in intent. It exists because a balance is still open and someone needs to be gently pointed back to it. SimplePractice's past-due email is the closest thing it offers to a true reminder, which is why enabling it matters more than the volume of notifications your clients already get.

The distinction shows up in nearly every practice-management tool. We looked at how it plays out across a range of platforms in our guide to which accounting tools send automatic payment reminders and which leave you hanging, and the pattern holds almost everywhere: plenty of notification, much less follow-up.

What the Past-Due Email Won't Do for You

Knowing the edges of a feature is more useful than knowing it exists. Here is where SimplePractice's past-due email stops:

It does not escalate. There is no second message a week later, or a third after that. One trigger, one email.
It does not vary by client. The wording is the same for a long-standing client who is usually prompt and for a newer one who has been late twice.
It does not adapt its tone. You cannot soften it for a sensitive situation or firm it up for a balance that has been open for months.
It does not tell you it worked. You will still be checking balances yourself to know where things stand.
It does not reach invoices raised anywhere else. Anything billed outside SimplePractice sits entirely outside this automation.

None of that makes the feature bad. It makes it a floor rather than a ceiling. One well-timed email genuinely resolves most open balances. The gap only shows when a handful of invoices need a second or third touch — and those are exactly the ones that end up on a sticky note.

A Follow-Up Rhythm That Fits a Practice

Therapists, counsellors and wellness practitioners are in an unusual position. The person who owes you money is someone you will sit across from again shortly, and the relationship matters more than the balance. That rules out anything that feels like pressure.

A rhythm that works well for most practices looks roughly like this:

Set past due to seven days. Long enough to be fair, short enough that the invoice is still recent in the client's mind.
Let the automatic email carry the first touch. It is neutral, it is not from you personally, and it resolves most balances on its own.
Around day fourteen, send a short personal note if the balance is still open. Two sentences, warm, no explanation required.
Around day thirty, offer a path rather than a request — a payment plan, a card on file, or simply asking whether something has changed.

The consistency matters more than the wording. A predictable, unremarkable follow-up rarely damages a relationship, whereas an out-of-the-blue message after two months of silence almost always feels like a confrontation. We put together example language for exactly these moments in our post on reminder emails that preserve the relationship.

If Your Invoices Don't All Live in SimplePractice

Plenty of practitioners bill sessions in SimplePractice but handle supervision hours, workshops or consulting somewhere else. The past-due automation only ever sees invoices inside SimplePractice, so anything raised elsewhere is followed up by hand.

If that describes your setup, the practical question is not which billing tool to abandon. It is whether the follow-up layer can sit above all of them at once. Tools such as DueDrop exist for that reason — they handle the reminder sequence across the invoices you have already issued, without touching how or where those invoices were created.

The same thinking applies if you run more than one practice-management tool. We covered a near-identical version of this problem in our look at whether 17hats sends automatic payment reminders to clients.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does SimplePractice send automatic payment reminders to clients?

Yes, with a caveat. SimplePractice can automatically email a client when their invoice is marked past due, but the setting has to be enabled in your account and it sends a single email rather than an ongoing sequence.

Where do I turn on past-due emails in SimplePractice?

Go to Settings, then Client billing and insurance, then Client billing documents. In the invoice section you can set how many days after the due date an invoice is marked past due, and tick the option to automatically email the client at that point. Remember to save your changes.

Why aren't my clients receiving past-due emails?

The three usual causes are that the past-due setting was never enabled, that your past-due window is longer than you think so the invoice has not been flagged yet, or that the individual client's billing notification method is set to None. Zero-dollar invoices also never generate a notification.

Can I send more than one reminder in SimplePractice?

Not automatically. The past-due email fires once when the invoice changes status. Any further follow-up is either a manual message from you or something handled by a separate tool sitting alongside SimplePractice.

Does AutoPay replace the need for reminders?

For enrolled clients it largely does. AutoPay charges the client's full balance overnight, so those invoices usually never reach past-due status. Reminders still matter for clients who are not enrolled or whose card fails.

Key Takeaways

SimplePractice can automatically email clients when an invoice goes past due, but the setting is off until you enable it.
It sends one email at one trigger point — there is no escalation, no second nudge, and no variation by client.
Billing notifications and reminders are different things; only the past-due email is a genuine follow-up.
A short past-due window of about seven days resolves far more balances than a generous thirty-day one.
Invoices raised outside SimplePractice are never covered by this automation and still need following up by hand.