Up to five reminders, the same wording for every customer, and no awareness of replies. 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 design is intentionally simple: up to five reminders, each sent a set number of days before or after the due date, with the same wording going to every customer. You can make the later reminders firmer by rewriting each one's template, but a client of ten years gets the same email as a first-time late payer. 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 don't need a reminder 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 checks Xero doesn't provide.
Xero lets you edit the template for each reminder, so a day-30 email can read differently from a day-3 one. But each reminder's wording is the same for every customer, with details like the name and invoice number swapped in. A client of ten years who is two days late gets exactly the email a chronic late payer gets. Unpaid uses Claude AI to compose each email 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 sends the next scheduled reminder anyway unless you stop reminders for that invoice yourself. 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. Unpaid's AI reads replies, classifies them (dispute, promise, question, acknowledgement), and pauses the sequence automatically.
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. In Xero you get there by rewriting each reminder's template yourself, and the defaults stay generic until you do. Unpaid's 5-stage escalation shifts the AI's composition instructions at each stage, so the tone progresses without you writing the templates.
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. Xero lets you stop reminders for a particular customer or invoice, but you have to remember to do it, and undo it. 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 | Up to 5 time-based reminders |
| Email composition | Written for each customer | One template per reminder, same for every customer |
| Tone variation by stage | If you edit each reminder | |
| Per-client opt-out | ||
| Pause on reply | Manual (stop per invoice) | |
| 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 | ||
| 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 lets you set up to five reminders, each sent a set number of days before or after the due date, and each with its own email template. But every customer gets the same wording at each stage, and Xero doesn't react to replies: if a customer disputes an invoice or promises to pay, the next reminder still goes unless you stop reminders for that invoice yourself. Unless the default templates are rewritten, customers receive the same generic emails every time, which are easy to tune out.
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 (in Xero, go to Sales → Invoices → Invoice Reminders and clear "Email customers when an invoice is") and Unpaid takes over the schedule. If Xero's reminders are still on when you connect, Unpaid warns you.
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.