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Track payments and reminders

From sent invoice to payment: statuses, reminders, corrections and exports, step by step.

Billing10 min read
Table of contents+

Once issued, an invoice goes through several statuses. This guide explains what each one means and what you can do at each step: record a payment, chase a client who is late, correct or cancel an invoice. You send reminders with a click or, on the Team and Business plans, Bill Alps sends them for you if you turn this on.

1. Understand the statuses

  • Draft: being prepared, freely editable. The Finalize button moves it to Ready.
  • Ready: finalized, not yet sent. Send by email or Mark as sent move it to Sent.
  • Sent: sent to the client. Mark as paid moves it to Paid.
  • Overdue: sent and past its due date. The list shows the number of days, for example Overdue (5d). You can send a reminder or mark it as paid.
  • Paid: settled. The manual payment can be cancelled.
  • Cancelled: taken out of the workflow. The Reopen button puts it back in Draft.

The other actions are in the More actions menu, the three-dot icon at the top of the invoice page.

2. Find an invoice

The Bills menu lists the invoices of the chosen period, based on their issue date. By default, it is the current fiscal year: if an invoice seems to be missing, check the period first. The selector at the top right offers Fiscal year, Half-year, Quarter, Month and Custom.

The Search by number, client… field filters the list. There is no status filter: click the Status or Due date header to sort the list and group your overdue invoices together.

3. Record a payment

  1. Open the invoice, in Sent or Overdue status.
  2. Click Mark as paid. The invoice immediately moves to Paid.

The recorded payment date is the day you click: you cannot choose it. It appears in the CSV export, in the Paid date column. A Ready invoice cannot be marked as paid directly: first click Mark as sent.

If you make a mistake, open More actionsCancel manual payment. The invoice goes back to the status it had before the payment, or to Overdue if the due date has passed in the meantime.

4. Send a reminder

  1. Open an invoice in Overdue status.
  2. Click Send reminder. A window shows the sender, the recipient, the subject, the text and the attachment.
  3. Confirm with Send reminder in that window.
  • Without automatic reminders, nothing is sent without your click, and Bill Alps does not send you an overdue alert. Check the invoice list and the Total unpaid on the Dashboard regularly.
  • You can send as many reminders as needed, with no minimum delay. They are numbered in the subject of the message: Reminder 1, Reminder 2, and so on.
  • The text is written in the invoice language and cannot be edited. The message attaches the same PDF, without reminder fees or interest.
  • The invoice must be Overdue and the client must have an address in the Email field of their record.
  • Manual reminders are available on all plans.

5. Turn on automatic reminders

  1. Open My company, Invoicing tab. This setting is reserved for the owner and administrators.
  2. Turn on Send reminders automatically. The setting is saved right away.
  3. Choose the Rhythm: Gentle (14, 30 and 45 days after the due date), Standard (7, 21 and 35 days, the default) or Firm (3, 10 and 20 days).
  4. Read the text of each reminder under Preview of the messages.
  • Reminders leave from Monday to Friday in the morning, in the language of the invoice, with the PDF and the QR attached. Their text is the same as for manual reminders.
  • An invoice gets 3 reminders at most, manual ones included, with at least 7 days between two messages, the invoice itself included.
  • Only invoices that fall due from the day of activation onwards are chased, up to 60 days after the due date. Turning the setting off and on again resets this date.
  • No reminder for an imported invoice, a zero-amount invoice, a paused invoice, an excluded client or a client without an email, nor while a bank reconciliation awaits your validation.
  • The account owner gets a recap by email on the days when reminders leave or fail.
  • Your clients' replies go to the address shown on the card: the one of My company or, failing that, the owner's.

On the page of an open invoice, the Reminders card shows what has left, with the number, the date and the origin Automatic or Manual, then the date of the next reminder or the reason why none is planned. To hold back a single invoice, turn on Pause automatic reminders on this card.

To exclude a client, open their record, turn on Do not chase automatically and save. You can still send them a reminder from the invoice.

6. Edit an issued invoice

  1. Open More actionsEdit.
  2. Make your changes, then click Save.
  3. If the invoice is no longer a draft and its content changes, the Modification reason window opens. Enter the reason and click Confirm and save.

The PDF is recreated at the next download or send. The client is not notified: send them the new version yourself.

If the Accounting module is active, the Default account and the Account of each line can be corrected at any time, even on a Paid invoice. This correction does not ask for a reason and does not change the PDF.

7. Cancel, reopen or delete

More actionsCancel moves the invoice to Cancelled, immediately and without confirmation. The action is offered in Draft, Ready, Sent and Overdue statuses: a Paid invoice first requires its payment to be cancelled. The client is not notified, and Bill Alps does not create a credit note.

Reopen puts a cancelled invoice back in Draft, with the same number. Its finalization, sending and payment dates are erased, and the reminder counter restarts from zero. You then have to finalize it again.

8. Duplicate, bulk delete and export

  • Duplicate: in More actions, or with the copy icon in the list. You get a new draft, with a new number, dated today and due in 30 days. The copy counts toward the monthly invoice quota.
  • Bulk deletion: select rows in the list, or the header checkbox for all the rows shown, then click Delete selected (3), which shows the number of selected invoices. It is the only bulk action.
  • Export: choose Export CSV or Export JSON. The export contains the invoices shown, based on the period and the search. The CSV has one row per invoice line.

9. PDF and QR-bill

Download PDF is offered in Ready, Sent, Overdue and Paid statuses. The QR-bill is part of this PDF: the application does not offer a separate download of the payment slip. If you need the slip alone, the API provides it on the Business plan, see Invoicing with the API.

To automate your regular invoices, move on to the guide Create a recurring invoice.