Accounts Receivable Automation That Gets You Paid Faster

Auto-Create Invoices When Orders Ship

The moment a shipment is confirmed in ShipStation, Ship Bob, or your fulfillment platform, an invoice is automatically generated in your accounting system with the correct line items, quantities, prices, tax calculations, and customer billing information. No one needs to remember to create the invoice. No one needs to copy data from the shipping confirmation to the accounting system. The invoice is created instantly and accurately, cutting the lag between delivery and invoicing from days to seconds. This alone can reduce your DSO by 5 to 10 days because you are starting the payment clock the moment the product leaves your warehouse instead of whenever your team gets around to creating the invoice.

Auto-Send Payment Reminders on a Schedule

Once an invoice is sent, the automation monitors its status. If payment has not been received by a configurable threshold, say 3 days before the due date, a polite reminder is sent automatically. If the due date passes without payment, a firmer follow-up is sent at day 7, day 14, and day 30, each with escalating language and urgency. These are not generic template emails. They are personalized messages that reference the specific invoice number, amount, and due date. The automation handles the entire follow-up sequence without your team sending a single email. Most businesses we work with see a 30 to 50 percent reduction in overdue invoices within the first month of implementing automated reminders, simply because the reminders actually go out on time, every time.

Auto-Match Payments to Invoices

When a payment arrives via ACH, credit card, check, or bank transfer, the automation matches it to the corresponding open invoice based on amount, customer reference, or invoice number. The invoice is marked as paid, the payment is recorded in your accounting system, and the customer's account balance is updated, all without a human opening QuickBooks and clicking through the reconciliation screen. For businesses that process dozens or hundreds of payments per week, this eliminates hours of manual matching work and ensures your books are always current. For partial payments, the automation applies the payment to the correct invoice and flags the remaining balance for follow-up.

Auto-Escalate Overdue Accounts

When an account reaches a defined overdue threshold, say 60 or 90 days past due, the automation escalates the issue. This can mean notifying your accounts receivable manager via Slack or email, creating a task in your project management system for manual outreach, adjusting the customer's credit terms for future orders, or routing the account to a collections process. The key is that escalation happens automatically based on rules you define, not based on whether someone remembered to check the aging report this week. Nothing falls through the cracks because the system never forgets.

1. Automated Invoice Creation

The manual process: An order ships. Someone checks the shipping confirmation, opens QuickBooks, looks up the customer record, creates a new invoice, enters each line item with the correct product, quantity, and price, applies the correct tax rate, adds the appropriate payment terms, and sends the invoice. For a business shipping 50 orders per day, this alone consumes 2 to 3 hours of daily labor. Invoices are delayed because the person responsible is busy with other tasks, and delayed invoices mean delayed payments.

The automated process: The moment ShipStation or your fulfillment platform confirms a shipment, a Make.com workflow triggers. It pulls the order details, matches the customer to the correct QuickBooks record, creates the invoice with every line item pre-populated, applies your tax rules and payment terms, and emails the invoice to the customer with a professional, branded template. The entire process takes seconds and happens for every single order without exception. No invoices sit in draft. No invoices are forgotten. Your billing is always current.

2. Automated Payment Reminders

The manual process: Someone runs an aging report in QuickBooks once a week or once a month. They scan through the list of overdue invoices, draft individual reminder emails or call customers one by one, and manually track which customers have been contacted and which have not. This is tedious, inconsistent, and often deprioritized in favor of more urgent tasks. The result is that many overdue invoices never receive a single follow-up until they are 60 or 90 days past due, by which point the customer may have forgotten the invoice entirely.

The automated process: The automation monitors every open invoice in real time. Three days before the due date, a friendly payment reminder is sent. On the due date, a second notice goes out. At 7 days overdue, a firmer reminder is sent. At 14 days, the language escalates. At 30 days, the automation notifies your AR manager and optionally pauses new orders for the account until payment is received. Every message is personalized with the invoice number, amount, and a direct payment link. The sequence runs automatically for every invoice, every time, with zero human effort.

3. Automated Payment Matching

The manual process: A payment comes in via bank transfer, credit card, or check. Someone opens the bank feed in QuickBooks, identifies the payment, searches for the corresponding invoice, verifies the amount matches, and records the payment. For partial payments, they need to allocate the correct amount to the correct invoice and track the remaining balance. For businesses processing 100 or more payments per week, this reconciliation work can consume an entire day every week.

The automated process: When a payment is recorded in your payment processor, bank, or accounting system, the automation matches it to the correct open invoice based on customer name, amount, reference number, or a combination of identifiers. The invoice is marked as paid, the customer's account is updated, and a payment confirmation is sent to the customer. Discrepancies, such as short payments, overpayments, or unmatched deposits, are flagged and routed to a human reviewer with all the context needed to resolve the issue quickly. The automation handles the 95 percent of payments that match cleanly and only involves your team for the 5 percent that need judgment.

4. Automated Aging Reports and Dashboards

The manual process: At the end of the month, someone exports data from QuickBooks, builds a spreadsheet-based aging report, categorizes receivables by 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, and 90-plus day buckets, calculates totals and percentages, and distributes the report to management. By the time the report is assembled and reviewed, the data is already several days old, and any actions taken are reactive rather than proactive.

The automated process: A real-time AR dashboard is populated directly from your accounting system via API. Current receivables, overdue amounts, DSO calculations, and customer-level detail are always up to date. Weekly summary reports are automatically generated and delivered to your inbox or Slack channel on a schedule you define. Threshold alerts notify you the moment total overdue receivables exceed a dollar amount you set, or when a specific customer's balance crosses a risk threshold. You move from monthly reporting to continuous monitoring without any additional labor.

5. Automated Collections Escalation

The manual process: When an invoice reaches 60 or 90 days overdue, the AR team has to decide what to do. Options include making a phone call, sending a formal demand letter, adjusting the customer's credit terms, or referring the account to collections. In practice, many of these decisions are made inconsistently because they require human judgment, human initiative, and human follow-through. Some overdue accounts receive aggressive pursuit. Others are quietly written off because nobody had time to deal with them.

The automated process: Escalation rules are defined once and applied consistently to every account. At 60 days overdue, the automation creates a task for your AR manager with the full account history. At 75 days, it sends a formal payment demand letter from a pre-approved template. At 90 days, it flags the account for credit hold, preventing new orders from being fulfilled until the balance is settled. At 120 days, it packages the account details for referral to your collections partner. Every step is logged, every action is documented, and every account receives the same consistent treatment regardless of who on your team happens to be available that week.