Invoice Chase
Quick start
Pull the AR aging report, score each customer by payment history, draft a tone-matched reminder for each overdue invoice, and present them to the owner. Nothing sends until the owner says so.
User: "who owes me money"
→ Pull AR aging from QuickBooks
→ Cross-reference PayPal settlements (last 14 days)
→ Score each customer: good-payer / occasionally-late / repeat-late
→ Draft tone-matched reminders
→ Show summary table + drafts. Wait for "send these."Setup (first run only)
Ask the owner two questions before running for the first time:
- Mail connector: "Do you use Gmail or Apple Mail for drafts?" — store the answer; use it for all non-PayPal draft queuing.
- Stripe: "Do you use Stripe for invoicing? I can include Stripe invoices in the overdue sweep." — if yes, pull Stripe overdue invoices alongside QuickBooks.
Do not ask again on subsequent runs.
Workflow
- Pull overdue receivables. Query QuickBooks AR aging for all invoices more than 1 day past due. If Stripe is enabled (owner confirmed at setup), also pull Stripe overdue invoices.
- Cross-reference payment history. For each overdue customer, query PayPal for settled transactions using these parameters:
transaction_status: S(settled only — filters out pending and denied transactions that inflate result size and increase rate-limit risk)- Date window: last 7 days ending today (not 14 or 30 — wider windows are the primary cause of PayPal 429 rate limit errors)
If PayPal returns a 429 rate limit error:
- Retry once immediately with a 3-day window instead.
- If the retry also returns 429, skip the PayPal cross-reference entirely for this run. Flag all customers in the batch as "PayPal unavailable — verify manually" in the summary table. Proceed to scoring using QuickBooks history only. Do not silently drop the caveat.
If a customer shows a settled payment within the query window, flag as "possibly paid — verify" and exclude from the draft queue.
- Score each customer. Read reference/tone-matching.md for scoring logic. Result:
good-payer,occasionally-late, orrepeat-late.
- Draft reminder emails. One email per customer — consolidate multiple overdue invoices into one email. Match tone to score. See reference/examples/gentle-reminder.md and reference/examples/firm-reminder.md.
- Present drafts to owner. Show a summary table first:
| Customer | Amount Due | Days Late | Tone | Send via |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acme Corp | $1,200 | 18 days | Gentle | PayPal |
| Smith LLC | $450 | 47 days | Firm | Gmail draft |
Then show each draft email in full. Wait for owner to say "send these" or approve individually.
- Send or queue — only after approval.
- PayPal invoices: send the reminder via PayPal.
- Non-PayPal invoices: queue as a draft in the owner's configured mail app.
- Never send without explicit approval.
- Report what happened. List what was sent, what was queued as draft, and what was flagged (possibly paid, excluded).
Approval gates
- Never send or queue a draft without explicit owner approval. Present all drafts first; wait for the go-ahead.
- Never include a customer who paid in the last 14 days. Flag as "possibly paid — verify" instead.
- Never send to a customer not in the QuickBooks AR report (or Stripe, if enabled). No reminders from memory alone.
- One approval covers one batch. Adding a customer or changing a draft after approval starts a new round.
Reference
- reference/tone-matching.md — scoring logic, tone guidelines, subject line formulas
- reference/gotchas.md — known failure modes
- reference/examples/gentle-reminder.md — good-payer email example
- reference/examples/firm-reminder.md — repeat-late-payer email example
