Five fixed rules, one template, no awareness of replies or context. Unpaid layers on top of Xero with AI-written, escalating reminders that actually get read — and paid.
Unpaid sits on top of Xero. Setup takes under 10 minutes.
Xero's built-in invoice reminders are useful as a baseline. They're included in every Xero subscription, and they'll send something rather than nothing when an invoice is overdue. That's genuinely better than not following up at all.
But the architecture is intentionally simple: five time-based rules, one template, fired uniformly across every customer. No tone variation between a courteous day-3 nudge and a firm day-30 follow-up. No detection that a customer just replied disputing the invoice. No payment links beyond the standard invoice URL. No awareness of which customers always pay on time and shouldn't be chased at all.
Unpaid sits on top of Xero — Xero stays your source of truth for invoices, customers, and reconciliation. Unpaid takes over the reminder sequence with AI-composed emails that escalate appropriately, pause when customers reply, and include Australian risk and compliance tools Xero doesn't provide.
Whether it's the first nudge or the fifth, Xero sends the same email template with the customer name and invoice number swapped in. Clients spot the pattern after two reminders and start treating them as background noise. The fix isn't writing more templates — it's writing emails that don't feel like templates at all. Unpaid uses Claude AI to compose each email from scratch using the customer's history and the current escalation stage.
If a customer replies to a Xero reminder saying "we're disputing this invoice", Xero keeps sending the next scheduled reminder anyway. The same is true if a customer asks a question, promises payment for next Tuesday, or has already paid but the bank feed hasn't caught up yet. Manual intervention is the only solution. Unpaid's AI reads replies, classifies them (dispute, promise, question, acknowledgement), and pauses the sequence automatically.
The day-3 reminder reads the same as the day-30 reminder. In reality, the conversation needs to shift — a friendly nudge at day 3, a clearer follow-up at day 7, a firmer one at day 14, and a final-notice tone by day 30. Xero's single template can't express that arc. Unpaid's 5-stage escalation shifts the AI's composition instructions at each stage, so the tone progresses naturally without ever crossing into aggressive.
Xero's reminders fire on every overdue invoice based on the schedule. There's no concept of a trusted customer who always pays late by 2-3 days and doesn't need chasing, no detection of customers in active payment plans, no suppression of reminders for invoices currently in dispute. Workarounds exist (turning reminders off per invoice), but they require manual maintenance. Unpaid evaluates each customer's history and applies trust-level suppression automatically.
Xero's reminders include a link to the invoice. Once a customer clicks through, the path to payment depends on whatever payment service you've connected (Stripe, GoCardless, etc.). Unpaid's reminders include a direct one-click payment link and route customers through a self-service portal where they can view all open invoices, pay multiple at once, or promise a specific payment date — all without you doing anything.
For some businesses, the built-in feature is genuinely sufficient. It's worth being honest about who that is.
| Feature | Unpaid | Xero built-in |
|---|---|---|
| Price | A$29/mo | Free (included in Xero) |
| Reminder rules | 5-stage AI escalation | 5 fixed time-based rules |
| Email composition | AI-written each time | Single template |
| Tone variation by stage | ||
| Per-client opt-out | Manual workaround | |
| Pause on reply | ||
| Reply detection (dispute / promise / question) | ||
| Payment links in email | Invoice link only | |
| Customer self-service portal | ||
| Trusted-customer suppression | ||
| PTRS risk checking | ||
| ABN / GST verification | ||
| Security of Payment (SOPA) tools | ||
| Reminder analytics & insights |
Feature information based on Xero's public documentation and may change. Verify current details in your Xero settings.
This isn't a migration — Xero stays in place as your source of truth. Unpaid layers on top using Xero's OAuth API. The whole change takes under 10 minutes.
If you change your mind, switching back is just as simple — cancel Unpaid, re-enable Xero's built-in reminders, and you're back to where you started. Nothing in Xero changes.
Xero gives you five time-based rules — for example, 7 days before due, on the due date, 7 days after, 14 days after, 30 days after. Each rule fires the same email template, with just the customer name and invoice number inserted. There's no tone variation, no awareness of whether the client has just replied to you, no detection of disputes, and no escalation in language. Clients who receive these emails recognise the template after the second one and tune out — which means by the time you get to a genuinely overdue invoice, the email arrives as background noise rather than a meaningful nudge.
Unpaid sits on top of Xero. Xero remains the source of truth for invoices, customers, and payments. Unpaid reads your invoice data through Xero's OAuth API, runs the AI-written reminder sequences, captures replies, and writes nothing back to Xero except payment status updates when invoices are reconciled. You keep all your Xero workflows. The only thing that changes is who's sending the follow-up emails.
Yes. If both are running, customers receive duplicate emails — Xero's template version and Unpaid's AI-written version on the same day. Switch Xero's built-in reminders off (Business → Invoice settings → Invoice reminders → uncheck Email reminders) and Unpaid takes over the schedule. Most operators do this on day one of activating Unpaid.
Each reminder is composed at send time by Claude AI. The model reads the customer's payment history (have they paid late before? on time? never?), the invoice context (amount, project description, line items), and the current escalation stage (day 3 friendly nudge vs day 30 firm follow-up). It then writes a fresh email that sounds like you wrote it — different opening, different framing, different sign-off. Compared to Xero's template, the AI version reads as a personal note rather than an automated dunning letter, which is the difference between getting read and getting filed.
Xero's built-in reminders have no reply handling — replies just sit in your inbox until you manually deal with them. Unpaid reads the reply with AI and classifies it: dispute (pause reminders for 7 days and flag for your review), promise to pay (log the promise date, pause until then), question (pause for 3 days, flag for your reply), or general acknowledgement (no action). This means you don't accidentally escalate reminders against a customer who's already engaged in a conversation with you.
There's no universal number, but the underlying maths is straightforward. The Airwallex Australian small-business average is $2,408/month lost to late payments — roughly $29,000 a year. Industry research suggests AI-personalised reminders move 15-25% more invoices to paid status compared to template reminders. Even at the low end of that range, recovering 15% of $29,000 is $4,350 a year — versus the A$348/year Starter plan, that's roughly 12× return. Your specific numbers depend on your average invoice value, customer mix, and how aggressively you currently chase manually.
Connect Xero in 30 seconds. AI-written reminders. Smart reply handling. PTRS risk checking. You can run alongside Xero's built-in reminders for the first week if you want to compare outputs side-by-side.