How to make Xero send reminders only to the person you invoiced

By default, Xero reminders always go to the primary contact plus anyone with “Include in emails” ticked on the customer record. There’s no setting that makes the reminder automatically go to the original invoice recipient. However, there is a manual workaround you can use in Xero. This page explains how Xero decides who gets a reminder, the manual workaround and its limitations, and how to build an automated system to make sure a reminder only goes to the person who received the invoice.

Can Xero send a reminder only to the person you invoiced?

Not automatically. When you send an invoice in Xero, you can pick the exact recipient from the “To” field. But when it comes to sending the invoice reminder, Xero ignores who the invoice went to and sends to all contacts instead.

That means that, by default, any invoice reminders you send will go to everyone listed on the customer record in Xero, with the ‘include in emails’ checkbox ticked - not just the person who received the original invoice.

How does Xero decide who gets a reminder?

Xero picks the recipients from the contact record at the moment the reminder runs. Two things decide who’s on that list:

• The primary contact. Always included.
• Anyone with “Include in emails” ticked. Every additional person on the customer with this box checked also gets the reminder.

Crucially, the address you typed into the “To” field when sending the invoice isn’t stored against that invoice for reminder purposes.

Xero confirmed this directly in response to a customer asking for the feature: reminders go to the contact record, and it’s currently not possible to change that.

What are the manual workarounds for sending reminders to the original recipient?

There are two manual workarounds that work:

1. Go to the customer record in Xero and leave only one email address with “Include in emails” ticked. This works if every invoice for the customer always goes to the same person and its the same one you need to chase.
2. Each time you click ‘approve and send’ for a new invoice, change the default recipient in the top left of the screen before sending the invoice. When the reminders are sent later, they will be sent to the default recipient - not the different one you chose.

Both of these workarounds help but they do introduce more manual work and therefore greater scope for human error.

How to make the reminder follow the invoice recipient with Trove

Trove connects to your Xero account and lets you assign an invoice to a specific contact. From then on, every reminder about that invoice goes to that contact only. No one else on the Xero customer is chased about it.

You can do this at three levels:

• As a default customer rule. Set the rule once and Trove applies it automatically to every invoice for that customer, so the reminder always follows the assigned recipient without you touching it.
• As a default account rule. If you always need every invoice reminder sent to the same person the invoice was sent to, you can set this up as an account rule in Trove.
• Per invoice. For one-offs, assign an individual invoice to a specific contact and only that person is chased (as shown below).

Here’s the flow for each:

1. In Trove, start by activating the ‘sub-customer’ policy in your settings.
2. Let Trove know how you want to assign the right contact for each invoice - at a customer, account, or invoice level.
3. Reminders for that invoice now go only to the correct contact. Everyone else on the Xero customer is left alone.

This handles the case Xero can’t: one customer, several recipients, each chased only about their own invoice.

“This app has saved us a huge amount of valuable time. We had always struggled with Xero’s automated email function, as we invoice multiple clients within the same organisation. This app has allowed us to assign email addresses to individual invoices, which has made the process far more efficient. I would highly recommend it to any organisation facing the same issue. Trove is easy to use and very forward thinking, actively taking on customer feedback and implementing changes to meet customer needs.”

Daisy Docherty, Head of Finance, GTR. Read full review

Try it on your own Xero account

Trove runs a free 30-day trial and takes about five minutes to connect to your Xero account. Start a free trial or book a demo to see how reminders follow the invoice recipient.

For the wider picture on who Xero reminders reach, see why Xero sends reminders to the wrong contact. If your need is to send reminders to a different address than the invoice (for example an AP inbox), see sending reminders to a different email than the invoice.