Sending an invoice and chasing an unpaid one
Mail a finalized invoice from your own mailbox, draft a payment reminder when it goes late, and read what was sent to whom.
Steerd can send a finalized invoice by email from your own mailbox, and it can draft a payment reminder once that invoice is overdue. Both are manual: you review the text and press send.
What you need first
- A connected mailbox that can send. Steerd sends over your own SMTP or Gmail account, so the mail comes from your address and lands in your own Sent folder. See Connecting a mailbox. Microsoft 365 is not supported yet.
- A plan that includes the mailbox. Sending uses the same entitlement as the inbox.
- The right permissions. Sending needs both invoice and mailbox permissions, because it puts text you wrote into the world over your team's own address. Reading the history needs neither.
If any of those is missing, the dialog says which one and links to the setting that fixes it. The download is always there either way.
Sending the invoice
Right after you issue an invoice, Steerd asks what you want to do next: download the PDF, or send it. Both stay available on the invoice for as long as it exists, so the prompt is a shortcut and never the only route.
The composer opens on a finished draft.
- Recipients are prefilled from the client. Steerd uses the invoice recipients stored on the client first, then the electronic address on the billing address if that address is an email address, then the client's primary contact. If it finds nothing, the field is simply empty and you type an address.
- The text is the bundled cover mail with the invoice number, the date and the amount already filled in. Edit it as much as you like; what you see is what goes out.
- The attachments are the documents this invoice actually has. The invoice PDF always goes. A timesheet goes if you attached one. For an XRechnung the XML goes too and cannot be turned off, because for that kind of invoice the XML is the invoice and the PDF is only a readable copy.
You can tick remember these recipients to store the addresses on the client, so the next invoice for them starts prefilled.
Chasing an unpaid invoice
Once an invoice is open and its due date has passed, the invoice offers Send reminder. There are five levels, from a friendly nudge to a final notice:
| Level | What it sounds like |
|---|---|
| Payment reminder | Friendly. Assumes it was an oversight. |
| Formal payment reminder | Neutral and factual. States how long it has been late. |
| First notice | A demand, with a new deadline. |
| Second notice | The same demand, shorter. |
| Final notice | A last deadline, and that you reserve further steps. |
The ladder is a tone, not a procedure. German law does not require three notices before a client is in default, and you are free to start anywhere on it. Steerd proposes the next level up from the highest one you have already sent, and you can override that.
Every reminder sets a new deadline, seven days out by default, and repeats the invoice as an attachment.
What the reminders deliberately do not say
The bundled text never claims interest, never names a fee, and never threatens a specific legal step. That is on purpose: those are assertions about what somebody owes you, and getting one wrong is worse than not making it. Add them yourself if you want them, in your own words.
Steerd also never says a previous reminder was sent, since you may start at any level.
Editing the text
Settings, Invoicing, Emails and reminders holds the text for all six messages in both German and English. Each has a subject and a body, and you can put placeholders in either:
{CLIENT_NAME} {INVOICE_NUMBER} {INVOICE_DATE} {DUE_DATE} {TOTAL} {OVERDUE_FOR}
{NEW_DEADLINE} {ISSUER_NAME}
{OVERDUE_FOR} becomes a phrase like "5 days", written to follow the word "for" in English and
"seit" in German. The two overdue placeholders are not available on the cover mail, since a fresh
invoice is not late.
Reset to default removes your version rather than copying today's text into it, so a wording we improve later reaches you.
Which language a message uses is decided by the invoice, not by your interface language: a German invoice is chased in German.
What was sent, and to whom
Every invoice carries a history: when it was issued, when it was sent and to which addresses, every reminder and its level, and when it was marked paid. It is readable by anyone who can read the invoice, and it is kept as long as the invoice is.
A send shows one of four things:
- Sent to the addresses the server accepted.
- Sending to, when the message is out and nothing has confirmed it yet.
- Could not be sent, with the addresses that were attempted.
- Attempted, when the record of the delivery itself is gone. That happens if the mailbox it was sent from has since been disconnected. The history survives; the delivery receipt does not, and Steerd will not claim a delivery it can no longer confirm.
What this still does not do
- Nothing is sent on a schedule. No reminder goes out unless you send it.
- Nothing tracks whether the mail arrived. There is no read receipt, and a bounce lands in your own mailbox rather than in Steerd.
- No interest and no late fee is calculated.
- A reminder is an email, not a document. There is no Mahnung PDF.