How to send different invoice reminders to different customers in Xero

Not every customer is the same. You’ve got the reliable ones who pay within a week of receiving an invoice, the ones on direct debit who occasionally have a failed payment and need a helpful nudge rather than an overdue notice, and the slow payers who need chasing every ten days for three months. Sending them all the same reminder doesn’t make sense for your business.

Xero applies one reminder schedule globally. You can turn reminders off for an individual customer by going into their contact settings, but you can’t do it automatically based on any rules or filters. There’s no way to say “customers on direct debit get this sequence, annual subscription customers get that one.” The only option is manual, one contact at a time.

The Xero Product Ideas forum has a well-voted thread on exactly this, with users asking for the ability to assign reminders per contact group. As of 2026, it hasn’t shipped.

Why a single reminder schedule causes problems

Different customers have different payment requirements. Here are a few examples.

A customer who hasn’t paid because they need a purchase order raised before they can process an invoice doesn’t need a reminder that says their invoice is overdue. They need an email 30 days before the invoice is even sent, giving their procurement team enough time to get the PO in place. An overdue reminder sent after the due date is useless to them - the process broke down weeks earlier.

A customer whose direct debit failed doesn’t need an aggressive collections tone. They need a clear, helpful explanation of what happened and what they can do about it. A standard overdue notice that ignores the context can damage a good relationship over what’s usually a straightforward banking issue.

A VIP client with a £50,000 annual contract probably shouldn’t be getting the same automated email as a new customer on a £200/month subscription. The tone, the timing, and who sends it all need to reflect the relationship.

A real example: nine segments, DSO halved in two months

A growing UK tech company serving more than 300 customers faced exactly this problem. Their customer base ranged from large enterprises with formal procurement processes to small businesses on direct debit and payment was being delayed for a completely different reason in each case. A blanket reminder schedule wasn’t just inefficient, it was actively unhelpful for many of the customers receiving it.

By early 2026, their average Days Sales Outstanding had reached 90 days. Within two months of building proper customer segmentation in Trove, it had fallen to 45. Overdue invoices dropped by more than 30% in the same period.

They built nine separate customer segments, each with a different reminder sequence. Annual subscription customers received their first communication 30 days before the invoice was even raised - enough time to get a purchase order in place. Direct debit customers whose payment had failed received a context-aware email explaining what had happened, rather than a generic overdue notice. Across all nine segments, the principle was the same: design the communication around the specific reason payment might be delayed, not around a generic chase.

How to set up per-customer reminders in Trove

Trove lets you filter customers and invoices by any data that already exists in Xero: customer name, invoice amount, currency, subscription type, or any other field at the customer or invoice level. You define the segments yourself, based on what makes sense for your business.

Each segment gets its own reminder sequence, with its own timing, tone and templates. A customer in one segment won’t receive reminders meant for another, and you can exclude specific customers from automation entirely if there’s a reason to handle them manually - an ongoing dispute, a payment arrangement you’ve agreed separately, or a relationship where you’d rather keep the communication personal.

The filter-based approach means the segmentation stays up to date automatically. If a customer moves from a monthly subscription to an annual one, they move into the right sequence without anyone having to update a contact record.

For teams managing a large or varied customer base, this is usually where the biggest time saving comes from not just automating reminders, but automating the right reminder to the right customer without any manual sorting.

Trove runs a free 30-day trial and takes about five minutes to connect to your Xero account. You can start a free trial here or book a demo if you’d like to see it first.