Set reminder defaults and safety rails

Open Settings → Reminder defaults. These apply to every invoice unless a customer or a Workflow step is more specific. The main nav label is Workflows; this Settings pane is still Reminder defaults.

Prerequisites

• Admin or Owner to save workspace defaults.
• Timezone on Settings → Localisation — quiet hours and contact days use it.
• A verified business mailbox before anything can actually send — see Email sending.

Set chasing mode and timing

1. Choose How do new overdue invoices start chasing?
   • Automatic — overdue invoices start chasing on their own using your timing. Keeps working when nobody is logged in.
   • Manual approval — new overdue invoices wait until you press Start chasing on each one.
2. Set Start chasing (days after the due date).
3. Set Preferred daily run time.
4. Set Quiet hours from / to. Times follow your business timezone.
5. Press the Contactable days pills (Mon–Sun). Work due on an off day waits for the next on day.
6. Press Save changes. A mode change does nothing until you save; the page warns you what will happen next.

Approvals and tone

• Hold new Friendly and Standard steps for approval — this is the optional switch. It only affects newly added Friendly and Standard steps. Existing steps keep their current choice.
• Firm and Final always wait for approval because they carry more legal risk. You cannot turn that off here, and a Workflow save cannot store Firm or Final without approval.
• Free-type edits that name court or enforcement need an extra logged confirmation.
• Default tone — used when a step does not name one: Friendly / Standard / Firm / Final.

Promises (when your plan includes them)

• Promise grace period — working days after a promised date before it counts as broken. Locked with a Pro badge when your plan does not include promises.
• Email the customer a confirmation / Text the customer a confirmation — optional confirmations. Text only queues when SMS is actually available; it is not a way to launch SMS.

Safety rails

1. Minimum chase amount — skip tiny balances. Off and zero are the same stored floor. Never-contact for one customer lives on that customer’s page, not here.
2. Review the first run — always on; the catalogue marks it never switchable. Nothing sends on a new account until you have seen the list once.
3. Messages per customer per day and Messages per hour (whole account) — the inputs do not go below 1. Zero does not turn a limit off. Over the limit, the message is held with a reason in Activity, never silently dropped.
4. Stop all automated sending — the kill switch. See its own guide. Buttons: Halt all sending / Resume sending, each with a required reason.

Expected result

New overdue invoices follow the mode and timing you saved. Firm and Final sit in Approvals until a person approves. Over-limit or halted messages appear as held in Activity.

What still always applies

Never-chase customers, a verified mailbox, first-run review, and the kill switch still apply no matter which mode you pick. Payment, an untriaged customer reply, an open dispute, or an active promise still stop or hold automated follow-up. A reply holds further automated messages until someone reviews it in Activity — it does not flip the invoice to a “paused” state by itself. A portal stop request is a request for you to accept or decline; it is not an automatic mute.

What this will not do

• It will not let you turn Firm/Final approval off.
• It will not let you set rate limits to zero to disable them.
• It will not send as a collector or auto-threaten legal action.