New in MailerBit: Clients and Payment Tracking

An invoice sent is not an invoice paid

For many small businesses, the first of the month looks the same. The invoices go out, each client gets their own amount, and the sending part is done. Then the real work starts: who has actually paid?

To answer that, you open the bank statement, then the spreadsheet where you tick off payments, then your inbox to check whether the email with the invoice even reached the client. Did Mr Novak's invoice bounce because of a typo in his address? Did someone already send a reminder to the company that paid half? Nobody knows for sure, so the reminder either goes out late or goes to someone who has already paid.

So far, MailerBit has taken care of the sending: recurring, individual emails where every client gets their own data, from your own domain. Today we're adding what comes after the send: Clients and Payment tracking. You can now see, in one place, what you sent to each client, whether it arrived and whether it has been paid.

Clients: one card for every customer

Each client now has a card with the information you need when you talk to them about money:

• Person or company, with company name, tax ID (Polish NIP numbers are validated), address and your own notes.
• Several groups, each with its own fields. One client can be in “Accounting” with a VAT amount and in “Payroll” with a headcount, without keeping two copies of the same person.
• CSV import and export. Possible duplicates, such as the same email address with a different name, are reported to you. They are never merged silently.
• One decision applies everywhere. If a client unsubscribes or their address hard-bounces, that applies to the client in every group, not just the one the email came from.

The full history on the client card

The timeline on each card shows every email the client received, from recurring sends and one-off emails alike, and what happened to it: delivered, opened or bounced, and whether the client unsubscribed. Your own notes go on the same timeline (“Called, will pay on Friday”), together with every payment event. When a client says they never got the invoice, you can check in seconds instead of searching through sent folders.

Payments attached to the emails you send

Add a payment or send the invoice right away

A payment has a title, a document number, an amount, a currency, an issue date, a due date and, optionally, a PDF such as the invoice itself. Click Send invoice and the client gets an email from your template with the PDF attached. If you already emailed the invoice, you can simply assign the payment to that email instead.

Let your recurring sends create payments

If you already send monthly fee or invoice notices with MailerBit, a recurring send can now create a payment for every email automatically. Point it to the field that holds the amount and to the due date field, or set the due date to “N days after sending”. Every month, each client gets their own email and their payment is tracked from that moment.

Paid, partly paid, overdue

• Mark as paid with one click, or select several payments and mark them all at once.
• Record partial payments by cash, bank transfer or card. The remaining amount stays open.
• Undo a payment you recorded by mistake, or cancel a payment that is no longer due.
• Overdue and partially paid statuses are shown automatically, so you don't have to work them out yourself.

See what happened to every invoice

Next to each payment you can see the state of the communication: invoice email sent, delivered, opened or bounced, which reminders were sent, and how many days the payment is overdue. If an invoice never reached the client, you get an alert, which beats finding out three weeks later when you call about the overdue amount.

The payments list: what to collect and what to do next

All payments come together in one list, with totals per currency:

• To collect, overdue and paid this month, at a glance.
• Ageing of open amounts: not yet due, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 and over 90 days overdue.
• Average days to pay, so you can see how quickly your clients usually settle.
• A to-do list with the things that need a person: invoices that bounced, invoices not opened after 3 days and overdue payments that haven't had a reminder yet.
• CSV export, for example for your accountant or your own spreadsheet.

Automatic payment reminders, if you want them

Reminders are optional and switched off by default. When you turn them on, they work like this:

• Up to 5 steps relative to the due date, for example 3 days before, on the day, and 7 and 14 days after. Each step has its own template.
• Sent at the hour you choose, in your time zone.
• At most one reminder per payment per day.
• They stop as soon as the payment is marked as paid.
• Never sent to clients who unsubscribed, and never sent retroactively for steps whose date has already passed.
• An optional “thank you, payment received” confirmation once the payment is settled.

You don't have to start from a blank page. Ready-made invoice, reminder and confirmation templates are available in English, Polish and Spanish. Merge tags such as {{payment_amount_due}}, {{payment_due_date}} and {{payment_days_overdue}} fill in each client's own figures, with amounts and dates formatted for your country. If you want to fine-tune the wording and the schedule, our guide to payment reminders that actually get paid covers what every reminder should contain.

A month with MailerBit: an example

Here is how a month could look for a language school whose students pay their fee by the 10th. It's an illustration of the workflow, not a customer story.

1. The 1st. A recurring send emails every student or parent their fee notice with their own amount. MailerBit creates a payment for each email, due on the 10th.
2. The 4th. The to-do list shows one invoice that bounced because of a typo in the address and a few that haven't been opened after 3 days. You fix the address on the client card, send the invoice again and call the others.
3. The 7th. The first reminder goes out, but only to those who haven't paid yet.
4. The 10th. As transfers come in, you select the paid fees and mark them all at once. One family paid half in cash, so you record a partial payment; the reminders continue only for the rest.
5. The 17th. The 7-days-after reminder goes out. A parent replies that they'll pay on Friday, and you add a note to their client card.
6. End of the month. The payments list shows what is still overdue and for how long. You export it to CSV and you're ready for next month.

An accounting office would follow the same pattern with monthly statements: each client gets their VAT amount and the office fee, and the office sees which statements arrived and which fees are still open. Our articles on tuition reminders for language schools and monthly client statements for accounting offices go into more detail on the emails themselves.

What MailerBit does not do

To be clear about where MailerBit fits:

• It doesn't issue invoices. It doesn't replace your invoicing or accounting software. You issue the invoice as you always have; MailerBit delivers it, tracks it and follows up.
• It doesn't take payments. There are no payment links and no payment gateway, and MailerBit doesn't read your bank account. You mark a payment as paid, one at a time or several at once.

Your money still goes straight from your client to your account, and your invoices still come from the system you already trust. MailerBit takes care of the part in between: making sure the right email reaches the right person, and that nobody forgets to follow up.

How to get started

1. Add your clients by hand or import them from a CSV file.
2. Add payments: send an invoice from a client card, or let a recurring send create a payment for every email.
3. Turn on automatic reminders if you want them, choose the steps and the hour, and pick the ready-made templates or write your own.

The Payment Tracking feature page sums up everything in one place. If you prepare per-client data in a spreadsheet, see also how custom fields turn one template into hundreds of individual emails and our guide to rent notices for property managers.

Want to see it first? The interactive demo includes sample clients and payments, with no account and no card. Ready to use it with your own clients? Start your 7-day free MailerBit trial.