How to Set Up Automatic Payment Reminders in QuickBooks Online (2026)

Here's the good news most QuickBooks users never act on: QuickBooks Online can chase your unpaid invoices for you, automatically. The feature is built in, it's included in your plan, and it takes about two minutes to switch on. The catch is that it's off by default — so unless you've deliberately set it up, QuickBooks isn't sending a single reminder.

This guide walks through exactly how to turn on automatic payment reminders in QuickBooks Online, what you can and can't customize, and where the built-in feature stops short — so you can decide whether it's enough on its own.

How to set up automatic payment reminders in QuickBooks Online

You'll need to be signed in on a browser (the setting lives in company settings, not the mobile app). Then:

1. Select Settings ⚙ (the gear icon, top right), then Account and settings.
2. Open the Sales tab.
3. Find the Reminders section and select Edit (the pencil).
4. Turn on Automatic invoice reminders.
5. Open the Reminder 1 dropdown and toggle it on. Choose the number of days and before or after the due date to tell QuickBooks when to send it. You can schedule anywhere from 90 days before to 90 days after the due date.
6. Add a Reminder 2 and Reminder 3 if you want (more on that limit below), then edit the reminder message for each.
7. Select Save, then Done.

From then on, any qualifying invoice gets those reminders automatically. You can still send a one-off manual reminder any time from the invoice itself, and QuickBooks Online Advanced users can build more elaborate reminder workflows if they need them.

What you can and can't customize

• Timing: each reminder can fire from 90 days before to 90 days after the due date — flexible enough for most terms.
• Message: you can edit the subject and body of each reminder to match your business's voice.
• Count: you get three reminders per invoice — no more.

Where QuickBooks reminders stop short

The built-in feature is genuinely useful, and if you use QuickBooks you should absolutely turn it on. But it's worth being honest about its edges:

• It caps at three reminders. For an invoice that drags to 30, 45, or 60 days overdue, three touches often isn't enough — and there's no built-in escalation past the third.
• The tone is on you. QuickBooks gives you empty message fields. There's no done-for-you sequence that starts as a gentle heads-up and firms up only if an invoice really drags — you write and tune every line yourself (and most people never do).
• It's off by default, and buried. The setting sits several menus deep in a full accounting suite. Plenty of businesses run QuickBooks for years without ever finding it.
• Your collections live inside your books. For some owners that's fine; others would rather not run customer follow-up through the same tool as payroll and tax.

When a dedicated reminder tool makes more sense

If the built-in three reminders cover you, you're done — no new tool needed. A dedicated reminder tool earns its place when you want the follow-up handled for you rather than configured by you. That's the bet invoice reminder software makes, and it's what FieldNudge does:

• A longer, done-for-you cadence. Six polite touches, not three — a nudge before the due date, on the due date, then 3, 7, 14, and 30 days overdue — with the tone written for you and escalating from friendly to firm, never debt-collector.
• It never touches your customer's money. Your customers keep paying exactly how they already do — check, Venmo, Cash App, ACH, or your own card link. There's no processor to switch to and no fees skimmed off the payment.
• It works without QuickBooks. If you don't use QuickBooks — or don't want your invoicing and chasing tangled up with your accounting — FieldNudge is a standalone layer that just gets the invoice paid.

Here's the full cadence FieldNudge runs, versus QuickBooks' three:

None of this makes QuickBooks' reminders bad — they're a solid, included feature, and turning them on is the single highest-value thing in this guide. It's just worth knowing where three self-written reminders end and a done-for-you follow-up system begins. If you'd like the exact wording to start from either way, we've published copy-paste payment reminder email templates you can drop straight in.