A generic "send a reminder email" template does not survive contact with an Australian accounts receivable ledger. Most local B2B invoices carry 30-day terms measured from end of month rather than invoice date, GST has to appear as a separate line, and a reminder that feels routine to a Melbourne manufacturer can read as aggressive to a first-time Brisbane client. Claude can run the mechanical side of invoice chasing, but only once the workflow is rebuilt around how Australian businesses actually pay.
Why off-the-shelf reminder templates fail here
Most invoice-chasing playbooks are written for 30-days-from-invoice terms, which is common in the US but only one of several patterns used across Australian small business. A Sydney supplier billing a retail chain might see 30 EOM (end of month) terms that push the real due date out closer to 60 days from the work being done. A sole trader invoicing another small business might run 7 or 14-day terms with no formal contract behind them at all. A template that fires a single reminder on day 31 either chases too early on a 30 EOM account or lets a 14-day account go quiet for two extra weeks.
There is also a compliance layer that generic tools skip entirely. Every tax invoice over $82.50 needs the words "Tax Invoice", the supplier's ABN, and GST shown as its own amount, not folded into the total. Businesses with turnover above the Payment Times Reporting Scheme threshold have separate obligations around how quickly they pay small business suppliers, which changes how a reminder should be worded when the recipient is itself a large corporate. None of this is exotic, but it has to be encoded into the workflow rather than left to a writer's best guess.
What the adapted workflow does
The version we build for clients has Claude read the accounts receivable aging report, match each overdue invoice to its actual payment terms rather than a single default, and draft reminders in three tiers. It never sends anything on its own; every draft lands in a queue for the business owner or bookkeeper to approve, because a wrongly worded chase to a good customer costs more than the invoice is worth.
Tier one, 3 to 5 days past due: a short, friendly nudge assuming the payment simply slipped, no mention of consequences.
Tier two, 14 to 21 days past due: a firmer note referencing the original invoice number, ABN and due date, asking for a specific payment date.
Tier three, 30-plus days past due: a formal reminder that flags the next step, such as a call from the owner or referral to a collections process, always drafted for human sign-off before it goes out.
A disputed-invoice flag: if the customer has raised a query in earlier correspondence, Claude routes that account to a person instead of drafting an automatic chase.
The tone shifts with the customer relationship, not just the days overdue. A client of ours in Parramatta runs a trades supply business with roughly $45,000 in receivables overdue at any given time across 30 to 40 invoices. Long-standing trade accounts get a lighter touch even at 20 days overdue, because the relationship carries more weight than a rigid timer. New accounts with no payment history get the firmer tier earlier, since there is less trust built up to draw on.
Results and the guardrails that make it safe
For that Parramatta business, average days sales outstanding dropped from 52 to 34 days within a quarter of switching on tiered, terms-aware reminders, largely because invoices that used to sit forgotten for six weeks now got a same-week nudge. That is not a dramatic AI story, it is a scheduling problem solved properly, which is most of what good accounts receivable work actually is.
Because reminders reference customer names, ABNs and payment history, the workflow has to treat that data carefully under the Privacy Act 1988. Claude only sees the fields needed to draft the reminder, nothing gets stored outside the business's own Xero or accounting system, and every draft is reviewed before sending rather than dispatched automatically. For businesses that fall under the Payment Times Reporting Scheme as payers rather than recipients, the same terms-aware logic runs in reverse, flagging their own overdue supplier payments before the reporting deadline creates a problem.
The point of building it this way is that the workflow adapts to how the business actually gets paid rather than forcing the business to adapt to a generic template. A Brisbane consultancy on 14-day terms and a Sydney wholesaler on 30 EOM terms need different timers, different tone, and different escalation points, even though both are solving the same underlying problem of unpaid invoices sitting on the books longer than they should.
If your invoice chasing still runs on memory and a spreadsheet, the fastest place to start is mapping your actual payment terms by customer segment before touching any automation. Book a session at /contact and we will walk through what a terms-aware Claude workflow looks like for your accounts receivable ledger.
