Send payment reminders to customers

A contractor doing renovation work for a client is owed a retention amount held back until the final handover, plus smaller invoices from earlier milestones that quietly slipped past their due dates while busy on the next job. Remembering to call each client at the right moment, without sounding pushier than the relationship can bear, is its own ongoing task nobody really has time for.

Payment reminder automation sends a WhatsApp or SMS nudge to a customer once an invoice passes its due date, with the outstanding amount and a link to the invoice, on a schedule the owner sets. This is a collections communication tool, not a books-of-account feature — it never alters the ledger; it only nudges toward payment of an amount already recorded there, and the owner can see reminder history and pause reminders for any customer at any time they choose.

This capability sits deliberately apart from the books-of-account features elsewhere in Khata, and that separation matters a great deal. Payment reminders never alter the ledger — an invoice's recorded amount, due date, and payment status are exactly the same before and after a reminder goes out. What this tool does is nudge a customer toward paying an amount already recorded, using the channel they're most likely to read; it has no write access to the figures a CA would review, and makes no determination on whether an amount is owed or disputed.

Reminder content carries a specific compliance responsibility worth being deliberate about from the start. The message must never misstate a legal collections threat the business hasn't actually made or doesn't intend to pursue. A polite nudge naming the outstanding amount and linking to the invoice is straightforward; language implying legal action or credit-reporting consequences the business isn't prepared to pursue creates a real liability, separate from whether the amount is actually owed.

Delivery isn't guaranteed either, and the owner needs to know when it hasn't happened rather than assuming a reminder landed. A delivery failure — a wrong or disconnected number, a message blocked at the recipient's end — should surface as a failure the owner can see clearly, because the alternative is an owner falsely believing a nudge went out while a client relationship quietly sours over a payment nobody reminded them about. For a contractor managing a retention amount outstanding for weeks, knowing a reminder genuinely reached the client matters as much as sending it.