Reminders, follow-ups and status emails

OrderDen sends three kinds of email by itself, in your words:

• Payment reminders chase an unpaid invoice, before and after its due date.
• Quote follow-ups email a client who hasn't answered a quote.
• Order status emails tell a client their order has shipped, is ready to collect, or was delivered.

The schedule and the switches are in the Reminders section of Company Settings → Email.

Payment reminders and quote follow-ups start off. Nothing chases a client until you tick the steps you want and save. The card says Automatic reminders are off until you do.

Payment reminders

The schedule is ready with these steps, each switched off until you tick it:

You can change any step's day, switch a step off, remove it, or add your own. Each step uses one of three templates: before the due date, on the due date, or overdue. All the overdue steps share the overdue template.

When they go

• Send at is an hour in your workspace's timezone (Company Settings → Profile), 9am by default.
• Skip weekends moves a Saturday or Sunday send to Monday.
• If several steps have passed (the schedule changed, or the invoice is a month late), only the latest one is sent. The client gets one email, not three.

When they stop

Reminders stop when the invoice is paid, credited to zero, written off or voided. A step is never sent twice.

Quote follow-ups

Counted from the day the quote was created: steps at 3 and 7 days are ready to tick on; none go until you do. They go only while the quote is Sent, and stop when the client accepts or declines, or when the quote passes its Valid until date.

Pausing

Three switches stop reminders and follow-ups:

• One document. The Pause switch on an invoice's or a quote's Sharing tab, for the client who has promised a check, or one you'd rather call.
• One client. No automatic payment reminders (the client's Money tab, Billing & tax card) and No automatic quote follow-ups (the Sales tab, Sales defaults card). They cover every invoice or quote the client has and will have. The document's card says when this is what's stopping it.
• The whole workspace. Pause all automatic chasing in the Reminders section. It stops payment reminders and quote follow-ups for every client. Order status emails, statements, recurring invoices, late fees and automatic charge emails still go out, and your daily summary still arrives.

Send now, next to the pause switch, sends one straight away, whatever the schedule says and whatever is paused. It's recorded separately, so it doesn't cancel the reminder the schedule was due to send later that day.

Already sent, under both buttons, lists every reminder sent for the document: which step, to whom and when. One that failed shows there too, marked failed with the reason.

Overdue invoices

A sent invoice that's unpaid past its due date becomes Overdue each night, by the date in your workspace's timezone. You don't set it. An invoice due today in Honolulu doesn't become overdue when it's already tomorrow in New York.

Overdue shows in three places:

• the Overdue filter and Age column on the invoices list;
• Reports → AR aging, which shows who owes what and for how long, in buckets of current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 and over 90 days;
• the Overdue by age dashboard widget, the top of that report.

If you move a due date out, the nightly pass puts the invoice back to Sent. A part payment on an overdue invoice shows Partially paid until the nightly pass marks it Overdue again.

Order status emails

The Order status emails card has three switches:

• Order shipped, on by default, with the carrier and tracking number. It goes when you buy a label in OrderDen. The same switch covers Ready for collection, sent when you set an order aside for pickup and choose to tell the buyer, with the date it can be collected. Recording tracking by hand sends nothing.
• Order delivered, off by default. It goes when the carrier reports that a label bought in OrderDen was delivered.
• Order confirmed, off by default. OrderDen doesn't send this one yet, even with the switch on.

The pause switches don't affect these. Only their own switches do.

Email templates

The Email templates section of Company Settings → Email holds the wording of the emails OrderDen sends by itself: payment reminders, quote follow-ups, order status emails, deposit requests, recurring invoices, late fees and automatic charges.

A quote, invoice or order you email by hand from its Sharing tab uses built-in wording, with a note you can add. The Quote, Invoice, Payment receipt and Share link templates on the list aren't used for those emails. The Invoice template is used for recurring invoices.

Each template starts with default wording. Change a word and the list marks it Edited. Reset to the built-in wording puts the default back.

Variables

Add a variable with the chips under the box, and it's filled in when the email goes out:

A variable the document doesn't have comes out blank, so an email never goes out with braces in it. Templates have no conditions or arithmetic.

The body takes a little Markdown: **bold**, *italic*, [links](https://…) and - bullets.

Signature and blind copies

Signature (what {{org.signature}} becomes) and Blind-copy every email to are in the Signature and blind copy card in Company Settings → Email.

The blind copy goes on reminders, follow-ups, recurring invoices, late fees, automatic charges, shipping emails and deposit requests. It doesn't go on statements, portal invitations and sign-in links, message replies, or documents you email by hand. A single template can add a second blind copy of its own.

Send yourself one

Send test sends a sample through your mail route, filled in with a made-up client and invoice, never a real one. It sends the text in the box, saved or not.

Notifications: the bell and the daily summary

The bell in the header lists what happened while you were busy: a quote accepted or declined, a payment received, an invoice gone overdue, a shipment delivered. Clicking one opens the record and marks it read. Mark all read clears the count and keeps the list. The ✕ on a row removes it without opening it, and Clear all empties the list.

Personal Settings → Notifications decides what reaches you, per kind, by In app, Email and Push. Your choices affect only you.

The daily summary is one email each morning with what needs you today: quotes waiting for an answer, invoices due today and overdue, orders promised this week, and stock at its reorder point. Nothing is sent on a quiet day. Set its hour in the Reminders section. Whether you get it is in your own notification settings.

Where the mail comes from

Reminders go out the same way as a document you send by hand: through a connected Google or Microsoft 365 mailbox if you have one, and otherwise through OrderDen's mail service.

Through the API

• GET/PUT /api/v1/settings/reminders: the schedule.
• GET /api/v1/email-templates, GET/PUT/DELETE /api/v1/email-templates/{key} and POST /api/v1/email-templates/{key}/test.
• GET/PUT /api/v1/invoices/{id}/reminders and POST .../reminders/send; GET/PUT /api/v1/quotes/{id}/follow-ups and POST .../follow-ups/send.
• GET /api/v1/notifications?userId=… and PUT /api/v1/notifications/{id}/read.
• GET /api/v1/reports/ar-ageing.

Other emails that send themselves

Four more emails go out on their own, each with a template you can edit in Email templates:

• Late fee added, when the nightly pass adds one to an overdue invoice.
• Automatic payment taken, the receipt for a charge on a card on file.
• Automatic payment failed, after each declined charge that still has a retry coming.
• Your bank needs you to confirm, when a charge needs the cardholder to approve it (3-D Secure), with the link to do it.

The last three depend on scheduled card charges, which aren't being taken right now. See Recurring invoices, cards on file and late fees.