Moxie Payment Reminders Not Sending? How to Fix the Automation Trigger

You set up the automations in Moxie weeks ago. The recurring invoice fires on schedule, the client gets the email, and everything looks like it is running the way you designed it. Then an invoice goes eleven days past due and you realize you have no idea whether Moxie ever nudged anyone about it, because you have not seen a single reminder land in your own sent folder.

That uncertainty is the actual problem, more than the missing email. You do not want to double up on a reminder the software already sent, because that reads as pushy. You also do not want to assume it was handled and let the invoice sit another two weeks. So the follow-up stalls in the middle, and the client keeps not paying.

The good news is that when Moxie reminders are not going out, the cause is usually one specific and very fixable thing. This post covers where the reminder setting actually lives, the conditions that quietly stop reminders from firing, how to confirm what is really scheduled, and what to do about the invoices Moxie was never going to reach.

The short answer: you are probably looking in the wrong place

Most people who go hunting for broken invoice reminders in Moxie start in workflow automations. It makes sense. That is where the drag-and-drop builder lives, where a form fill schedules a meeting and a pipeline stage sends an agreement.

Moxie did not. Invoice reminders are a feature automation, not a workflow automation, and they live somewhere else entirely. Per Moxie's own documentation on common automations, you manage automatic invoice reminders and their frequency in your workspace settings in the lower left corner, then preferences, then invoices. None of that is visible from the workflow builder, so you can stare at it for twenty minutes and conclude reminders are broken when they were never switched on.

Where the reminder settings actually live

The path is short once you know it, and it is worth walking through it now rather than the next time an invoice ages out:

1. Click your workspace settings in the lower left corner of the Moxie sidebar.
2. Open preferences.
3. Click invoices.
4. Check the reminder cadence, which is where you set how often automatic reminders go out or turn them off completely.
5. Check the dropdowns underneath it, which assign an email template to each reminder type.

That last step is the one that catches people. Moxie's invoice preferences include separate dropdowns for a new invoice email, a payment confirmation, a due date approaching notice, and a past due notification, each pointing at a template you created. If the cadence is set but the past due dropdown is empty, the schedule exists and the message does not. The result is silence.

The five reasons Moxie reminders stop going out

Almost every case of missing reminders traces back to one of these. Work through them in order; the first two account for the large majority.

1. No email template is assigned to the reminder

This is the big one. Moxie asks you to build the reminder email yourself as a template, then select that template in invoice preferences. If you set the cadence first and meant to write the template later, the reminder has nothing to send. There is no error and no warning; the invoice simply ages quietly. Building the template is quick, and Moxie supports tokens that pull the due date, amount due, days past due, and late fees straight from the invoice, so one template covers every client.

2. Reminders are switched off at the workspace level

The same preferences screen lets you turn invoice reminders off entirely. If you or a collaborator disabled them during a busy stretch, or while testing a client-facing sequence, they stay off until someone turns them back on. Worth a glance even if you are sure you never touched it.

3. The invoice was never actually sent from Moxie

Reminders attach to invoices that exist as sent invoices inside Moxie. A draft you exported to PDF and emailed yourself, or an invoice raised in a separate accounting tool, is invisible to the reminder system. Not a bug: Moxie can only follow up on what it can see, and a PDF in your sent mail is not something it can see.

4. A recurring invoice is waiting on your approval

When you build a recurring invoice, Moxie lets you choose whether to approve it before it goes out. That option is useful when the amount changes month to month. It also means an unapproved invoice never sends, and an invoice that never sends never becomes overdue, so no reminder is ever due. If a client's whole follow-up chain has gone missing, check whether the invoice at the top of it is still sitting in approval.

5. The reminder sent, and the client never saw it

Automated reminders come from a platform sending domain and carry the visual signature of transactional mail, so corporate filters route them to a promotions tab or quarantine folder more readily than a plain note from a human address. Here the automation worked exactly as designed and still produced nothing, which is the most frustrating version because there is nothing to fix in the settings.

How to confirm what is actually scheduled

Rather than guessing, run two checks that take about five minutes together and will tell you whether the system is live.

First, test on yourself. Create a client record using your own email address, raise a small invoice with a due date in the past, and watch whether the past due message arrives. If it lands, your cadence and template are wired correctly and the issue is specific to one invoice. If nothing arrives, the problem is in preferences and you know where to look.

Second, open a client and check their invoices view. Moxie surfaces invoice health metrics there along with a dropdown listing recurring invoices, which is the fastest way to spot one stuck awaiting approval or drafted and never issued. An invoice that feels overdue to you but does not appear as sent in Moxie is the explanation for the missing reminder.

What reminder cadence to set once it is working

Once reminders are firing, the next question is how often. There is a real temptation to set the tightest cadence available on the theory that more nudges mean faster payment. That is usually a mistake, and not only because of tone. Timing beats frequency.

A sequence that works for most service businesses: one note a few days before the due date framed as a heads up, one on the due date itself, one about a week past due, and one around two weeks past due. Four touches over roughly three weeks, each with a slightly clearer ask than the last.

The pre-due-date message is the one people skip and the one that pays for itself. Most late invoices are not disputes; they landed in the wrong week and slipped. A reminder that arrives before anything is late is not awkward at all, and it catches the forgetting before it becomes a conversation about being overdue.

The invoices Moxie reminders will never cover

Even a perfectly configured cadence has a boundary. Moxie follows up on invoices that live in Moxie, so if your work spans more than one system, some of what you are owed sits outside it.

This matters more than it sounds like it should. A 2026 study of roughly 100,000 independent contractors found that just under a third of freelance invoices arrive at least one day past their due date. If a meaningful share of your invoicing happens outside Moxie, your carefully configured reminders cover only part of the problem, and the uncovered part is invisible by definition.

Three categories tend to fall outside the net: invoices raised in a second tool for a client with different billing requirements, retainers and deposits collected through a payment link rather than a formal invoice, and anything on hold where a client gave you a date.

The practical move is to keep one short list of anything owed to you that Moxie is not tracking, and look at it on a fixed day each week. A recurring task inside Moxie works fine. It is unglamorous, and it is the difference between four covered invoices and all of them. For follow-up that spans several tools, a dedicated reminder layer like DueDrop sits alongside whatever you already use for billing and keeps the nudges going without asking you to consolidate first.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where are invoice reminders configured in Moxie?

In workspace settings in the lower left corner, then preferences, then invoices. They are not in the workflow automation builder, where most people look first. That screen holds the reminder cadence and the dropdowns that assign a template to each reminder type.

Why did my Moxie reminders stop sending with no error message?

The most common cause is a reminder cadence that is set while no email template is assigned to it. Moxie has a schedule to run but no message to send, so it does nothing and reports nothing. Create an email template, then return to invoice preferences and select it in the past due notification dropdown.

Can I customize what the reminder email says?

Yes. Reminders are built from your own email templates, which support tokens that pull the due date, amount due, days past due, and any late fees from the invoice.

Will Moxie remind clients about invoices I created somewhere else?

No. Reminders only apply to invoices sent from inside Moxie. An invoice raised in a separate accounting tool, exported as a PDF, or collected through a standalone payment link is outside the reminder system and needs its own follow-up plan.

How many reminders should I send before it feels pushy?

Four across about three weeks is a comfortable ceiling: one before the due date, one on it, one around a week late, one around two weeks late. Spacing and tone matter far more than volume, and a pre-due-date heads up prevents more late payments than anything sent after the fact.

The takeaway

• Invoice reminders live in workspace settings, then preferences, then invoices, not in the workflow automation builder.
• A cadence with no email template assigned to it fails silently, and that is the single most common reason reminders stop.
• Reminders only fire on invoices actually sent from Moxie, so drafts, unapproved recurring invoices, and PDFs are all outside the system.
• Test the setup on yourself with a backdated invoice to your own email before trusting it with a real client.
• Four well-spaced touches beat a tight cadence, and the one that arrives before the due date does the most work.
• Keep a short weekly list of anything owed to you that lives outside the tool, because those invoices will never trigger a reminder on their own.

If you are still deciding whether Moxie's reminders cover what you need at all, it helps to start with what Moxie sends automatically and when. And if you run a second system alongside it, the same silent-failure pattern shows up elsewhere, which is worth reading about in why Dubsado payment reminders stop going out.