As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly send payment reminders to customers.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, power-user skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open your current invoicing or accounting system and export the debtor ledger with customer names, contact details, invoice numbers, invoice dates, due dates, amounts, statuses, disputes, payment plans and last reminder dates.
   2. Open your written payment policy and copy the approved payment terms, reminder wording, escalation rules and payment instructions into a separate document.
   3. Remove records that contain unnecessary personal data, then paste the policy, payment instructions and current ledger into the prompt in the labelled sections.
   4. Ask the AI to produce the reminder table and exception list, then compare every recipient, invoice number, amount, due date and status against the live ledger.
   5. Open each customer record and check for recent payments, credits, disputes, agreed arrangements or previous personal contact that is not visible in the export.
   6. Copy only the approved reminders into your invoicing system or email tool, check the final recipient and invoice details again, and send the batch through the approved account.
   7. Record the send date, message and outcome in the customer or invoice record, and route every exception to the person responsible for credit control.

   Prompt

   Act as a UK business credit-control assistant. Using only the ledger and policy information below, prepare payment reminders for invoices that are genuinely overdue. Do not invent or infer any customer, invoice, amount, due date, payment status or contact detail. Exclude invoices marked paid, credited, disputed, under investigation, subject to an agreed payment plan, or missing a reliable due date. Flag every excluded or ambiguous record for manual review.
   
   For each reminder, return:
   1. Customer name and email exactly as supplied
   2. Invoice number
   3. Invoice date and due date exactly as supplied
   4. Outstanding amount and currency exactly as supplied
   5. A concise subject line
   6. A polite reminder in plain UK English
   7. A clear payment action using only the payment instructions supplied
   8. A note stating which ledger fields support the reminder
   
   Use this tone: firm, factual and professional. Do not threaten legal action, add fees or interest, make claims about statutory rights, or imply that payment has failed unless the supplied records say so. If the records conflict, do not resolve the conflict yourself. Mark the reminder as NEEDS HUMAN CHECK.
   
   Return a table of all reminders, followed by a separate exception list. If this chat is connected to an approved invoicing system, do not send anything until I approve the final recipient, invoice and amount for each reminder.
   
   BUSINESS PAYMENT POLICY:
   [Paste current payment terms, escalation rules and approved wording]
   
   PAYMENT INSTRUCTIONS:
   [Paste the exact approved payment instructions]
   
   LEDGER EXPORT:
   [Paste the current debtor ledger, including customer name, email, invoice number, invoice date, due date, amount, currency, status, dispute or payment-plan notes, and last reminder date]

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.