You’ve turned on automatic invoice reminders in QuickBooks. You have a handful of overdue invoices sitting in your account. You wait for the reminders to go out.
Nothing happens.
This is one of the most common points of confusion for QuickBooks users setting up reminders for the first time - and QuickBooks doesn’t make it obvious. Automatic invoice reminders in QuickBooks Online only apply to invoices created after you turn the feature on. Any invoice that already exists in your system when you enable reminders is permanently excluded from the automated sequence.
It doesn’t matter how overdue those invoices are. It doesn’t matter whether they were created yesterday or six months ago. If they existed before you switched reminders on, QuickBooks will not automatically chase them.
Why QuickBooks works this way
QuickBooks ties its reminder schedule to the invoice creation date. When a new invoice is created and reminders are enabled, QuickBooks starts a clock: it will send reminder 1 at X days, reminder 2 at Y days, and so on, relative to that invoice’s due date.
For invoices that were already in the system when you turned reminders on, that clock never started. There’s no mechanism inside QuickBooks to retrospectively enrol existing invoices into the automated sequence. They fall outside the system’s logic entirely.
Intuit’s own documentation notes this in a single line: “Automatic invoice reminders only apply to new invoices.” It’s accurate, but easy to miss when you’re working through the setup steps for the first time.
What this means in practice
The impact depends on your situation when you turn reminders on.
If you’re a new QuickBooks user setting up reminders from day one, it barely matters. Your first invoices will be created after the feature is live, so they’ll be picked up automatically from the start.
If you’re an existing user who has been sending invoices without reminders and decides to turn the feature on, the gap is significant. Every invoice already in your system - including everything currently overdue - is outside the automated flow. Your reminder sequence will work for new invoices going forward, but your existing AR isn’t being chased.
This second scenario is much more common. Most businesses don’t set up reminders the moment they start using QuickBooks. They run manual collections for a while, it becomes unmanageable, and then they look for a better system. When they turn on reminders expecting them to take over, they find that only new invoices are covered.
The workaround inside QuickBooks
For any invoice that existed before you turned on reminders, you’ll need to send manually.
Go to Sales > Invoices, find each overdue invoice, click the dropdown arrow next to Receive Payment, and select Send Reminder. QuickBooks will use your saved reminder template and send it immediately.
There’s no way to do this in bulk. Each invoice requires its own action. If you have ten overdue invoices, that’s ten separate steps. If you have fifty, it’s fifty.
Once you’ve manually chased the existing backlog, new invoices created going forward will be handled by the automated sequence. You won’t have to do this again - as long as you keep reminders enabled and don’t add a large number of invoices at once (for example, if you import historical data from another system).
A few things to check before you start
Before working through your existing overdue invoices manually, it’s worth a quick audit to make sure you’re not wasting effort.
Has the invoice been emailed to the customer? QuickBooks only sends automatic reminders for invoices that have been sent to the customer via QuickBooks. If an invoice was created but never emailed through the system - for example, if you sent it as a PDF from your own inbox - QuickBooks won’t send reminders for it, even for new invoices going forward. Check the status column on your invoices list: it should say “Sent” rather than “Not sent.”
Is the customer email address correct? Check the contact record for any customer you’re about to chase manually. If the email address is wrong or missing, the reminder won’t go anywhere. It’s also worth knowing that QuickBooks will send automated reminders to any customer with an email address on file, even if you didn’t originally email the invoice through QuickBooks - so make sure contact records are accurate before you turn reminders on more broadly.
Are any of these invoices in dispute? If a client has raised a query or you’re in conversation about the balance, a reminder landing in their inbox at the same time could complicate things. It’s worth checking your notes before sending.
When the workaround isn’t enough
For businesses with a large volume of existing overdue invoices, working through them one by one isn’t a practical solution. The manual process also doesn’t give you a way to track which ones you’ve chased, when the last reminder went out, or what response (if any) you’ve received.
Trove handles this differently. When you connect QuickBooks to Trove, it imports all your outstanding invoices - including everything that already exists in your account - and makes them available in a single view. You can see which invoices are overdue, which have never been contacted, and which are in a reminder sequence. There’s no manual backlog to work through and no gap between your existing AR and your new invoices.
Trove also sends reminders from your own email account rather than from QuickBooks’ servers, which addresses the deliverability problems that come with QuickBooks’ sending domain.
Trove runs a free 30-day trial and takes about fifteen minutes to connect to your QuickBooks account.
