How to Automate Payment Reminders in Odoo (Escalating Dunning)

🎯 Why Manual Invoice Follow-Up Quietly Drains Cash Flow

Unpaid invoices are not just an accounting annoyance — they are your working capital sitting in someone else’s bank account. Manual dunning fails in predictable ways:

• It happens late or not at all. Reminders are nobody’s favorite task, so they slip. Every week of delay in the first reminder pushes the whole payment cycle back by a week.
• It’s inconsistent. One customer gets a firm notice at 30 days, another hears nothing for 90 — depending on who was busy. Customers learn quickly which suppliers tolerate late payment.
• It’s error-prone. Reminding a customer who paid yesterday is embarrassing; reminding a key account you meant to handle personally can damage the relationship; sending two reminders in one week looks unprofessional.
• It doesn’t scale. Checking each invoice against bank statements, previous reminders, and account status takes real time — time that grows linearly with your customer base.

Effective dunning is really just a policy applied consistently: who gets reminded, when, how firmly, and when to stop. Policies are exactly what software applies better than people.

🔍 The Usual Approaches — and Where They Fall Short

Spreadsheets and calendar reminders

The default in most SMBs: an aging report exported to a spreadsheet, colored cells, and copy-pasted email templates. It works at ten invoices a month and collapses at a hundred — and it has no memory of cooldowns, exclusions, or escalation history.

Odoo’s built-in follow-up features

Odoo Enterprise’s follow-up reports define reminder levels by days after the due date, and for simple cases they help (Odoo Community has no follow-up module). In practice, teams often want more operational control than they get out of the box: a preview of exactly who will be contacted before anything goes out, per-company exclusions and repeat gaps, a minimum amount, run reports after every cycle, and a pause while incoming payments are still being recorded. Assembling that reliably usually means customization.

Generic email automation tools

Zapier-style connectors and marketing email tools can send scheduled emails, but they don’t read invoice state from Odoo, track escalation levels per company, or stop when the invoice is paid. Dunning that isn’t driven by live ERP data will eventually remind someone who already paid.

⚙️ The Automated Way: AutoCASH’s 4-Level Escalation Engine

Each level has its own email template. Start with Level 1 only and enable the firmer levels once you are comfortable. Here is the full setup:

• Step 1 — Start your free Discovery month: Sign in at bots4.me/bots, click Start free Discovery month on the AutoCASH card and accept the Terms once — no credit card needed.
• Step 2 — Connect Odoo: open Settings (gear) → AutoCASH → Access Manager → Add Source → ERP → Odoo (for AutoCASH your ERP is the source). Odoo.sh and on-premise use the free one-click BOTS4.me Connect module (Odoo 13–19); Odoo Online uses a zero-code XML helper with an API key from Settings → Users & Companies → Users → your user → Account Security (turn on developer mode if the tab is hidden). Odoo Online needs Odoo’s Custom plan for API access. The Odoo user needs Invoicing (Billing) rights. One connection serves every BOTS4.me app that works with Odoo.
• Step 3 — Set your dunning policy in the Control tab: Run on these days (pre-filled 1,15; weekday names such as friday also work; an empty field means AutoCASH contacts nobody), Only chase after (days past due), Ignore debts below (a customer’s overdue total) and Never chase these customers (Odoo customer IDs of key accounts or internal entities). Escalate up to and Repeat reminders every are Family-plan settings; their tooltip says they are included in your free Discovery month.
• Step 4 — Run in Demo Mode: AutoCASH reads your real invoices but sends nothing — whenever anyone would be reminded, you receive a preview report showing exactly which companies and at what level.
• Step 5 — Go live gradually: when the DEMO reports look right, set Mode to LIVE on the Control tab — it unlocks after the first DEMO report email. Keep Escalate up to on 1st reminder at first and raise it as confidence grows. From the Personal plan — your Discovery month included — Send Previews emails you the day before each run with exactly who will be contacted, so you can still pull someone off the list.

Who sends the reminders — and in whose name

With Odoo, AutoCASH sends the invoice lists and reminders itself, in each customer’s language and in your company’s name. Add your own mailbox as the AutoCASH destination in the Access Manager and they go out from your address; without one they go out from the BOTS4.me mailbox, with replies going to your account email or to the Reply-To for reminders address you set. Fill in Payment details in reminders (one bank account per currency) and Signature in reminders in the Control tab, or leave them empty to use the accounts Odoo knows and your company name.

📅 Day-to-Day Operation: Previews, Reports, and a Stop Switch

Once live, AutoCASH runs on your schedule days: it queries Odoo for overdue invoices, applies your thresholds and exclusions, checks each company’s cooldown and current escalation level, and sends the appropriate reminder. After every run you get an execution report — how many companies were reminded, at which levels, total overdue amounts, and any errors. The dashboard’s Logs tab keeps the full decision history.

The safeguards keep working in production: a repeat gap between reminders prevents accidental double-sends, excluded customers are never contacted, customers whose overdue total is below your minimum or whose invoices are not yet past your overdue-days gate are skipped, and a customer whose open credit notes cover their invoices is never reminded. Bot Power switches the app off instantly, and every feature is individually toggleable. The platform is EU-hosted, built for GDPR, offers 2FA, and sends its reports in 31 languages.

🎁 Try It in Your Free Discovery Month

Your first AutoCASH month is a free Discovery month: the usage allowance of the Personal plan with the Family-plan settings Escalate up to and Repeat reminders every unlocked to try, and no credit card needed. AutoCASH uses no AI at all, so nothing about your customers goes to an AI provider — in the free month or later.

• Day 1 — Start and connect: sign in at bots4.me/bots, click Start free Discovery month on the AutoCASH card and accept the Terms once — no credit card needed. Then open Settings (gear) → AutoCASH → Access Manager → Add Source → ERP → Odoo, and optionally Add Destination with your own mailbox so reminders go out from your address.
• Day 1 — Set the rules: in the Control tab check Run on these days, Only chase after, Ignore debts below and Never chase these customers, and fill in Payment details in reminders and Signature in reminders. Leave Escalate up to on 1st reminder for now.
• Day 1–2 — Read the DEMO report: AutoCASH starts in DEMO and sends a first DEMO report soon after you start, within your Operating Hours — you do not have to wait for a run day. It lists the money (total open, overdue and how it splits across the levels), who would be contacted and who would not, and why. No customer hears anything.
• Before the first run day — go LIVE: when the DEMO reports look right, set Mode to LIVE on the Control tab — it unlocks after the first DEMO report email. With Send Previews on you get an email the day before each run with exactly who is about to be contacted; to pull someone off, add their customer ID to Never chase these customers and it applies to tomorrow’s run.
• Weeks 2–4 — Try what Discovery unlocks: raise Escalate up to to 2nd reminder or Final reminder, and set Repeat reminders every to the gap that suits your customers — their tooltip says they are included in your free Discovery month. If you also run Pay2ERP, keep Hold reminders while payments are unprocessed on — it is on by default.
• Check it worked: after each run read the execution report and the Logs tab — every customer, level, amount and the address the reminder went to. Watch the dashboard’s Level 0–3 counters and Total Amount Reminded grow.
• After the month: when the month ends, AutoCASH continues on the free plan by itself with a small monthly allowance: when it is used, new items wait until next month or until you choose a plan, and an item already started always finishes. The day-before previews and the Family escalation settings need a plan — see the plan table on the AutoCASH product page.

🌍 Works Beyond Odoo Too

AutoCASH works with Odoo (13–19), ERPNext (15–16), Zoho (Books / Inventory), Dolibarr (23 and newer), Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (online), QuickBooks Online, Xero and SAP Business One today. Any other ERP with an API — SAP S/4HANA, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance / Sales, Oracle NetSuite and more — is connected on request. Contact us if yours is missing.

📚 Related Odoo Automation Guides

• The natural pair: How to Match Bank Payments to Invoices in Odoo Automatically — Pay2ERP detects payments so AutoCASH stops reminding.
• Where the invoices come from: How to Automate Order Confirmation, Delivery and Invoicing in Odoo.
• Start of the chain: How to Import Email Orders and RFQs into Odoo Automatically.
• The big picture: How to Automate Odoo End-to-End: From Email Order to Paid Invoice.

🔗 Sources and Further Reading

Official documentation and standards referenced in this guide. External links open in a new tab.

• Odoo 18 documentation — Follow-up on invoices
• Directive 2011/7/EU on combating late payment in commercial transactions (EUR-Lex)
• Intrum — European Payment Report
• Odoo 18 developer reference — External API