How to send payment reminders on WhatsApp

Takkada can chase your customers for you. You set how often a customer should be reminded about an unpaid bill, choose who is in and who is out, and the reminders go out on WhatsApp from your business's number. You can also send one straight away without waiting for the schedule.

Before you start

• You need permission to use reminders on this business. Without it the screens are not yours to open.
• Changing the schedule and the defaults is admin work; sending is not.
• Every WhatsApp message uses a message credit. When credits run out, sending stops.
• A customer with no mobile number saved cannot be reminded. Fix the number on the party first.
• A send result is not a delivery receipt. See the last section — this is the single most misread thing on these screens.

Set the schedule

1. Open "Smart Reminders" from Settings.
2. Turn on the main switch — "Automatically send payment follow-ups for this business". While it is off, the screen says "Automatic payment follow-ups are off" and nothing goes out by itself.
3. Set "Bills fall due after" — the number of days you normally give a customer. This is used as the due date when an invoice does not carry one of its own, and it anchors everything else. It must be at least 1, and reminders cannot be turned on without it.
4. Under "Your reminder schedule", pick how often to chase. The presets run from a daily nudge to a light weekly touch. Choose Custom and set "Remind every" so many days — anything from 1 to 90 — if none of them fits.
5. Tap "Save Settings".

Two extras sit under the schedule:

• "Attach ledger statement" sends each party's statement with the automatic reminder, so they can see the bills you mean.
• "Only remind on or after the due date" holds the automatic reminders back until a bill is actually due. It changes automatic sending only; anything you send by hand is unaffected.

Choose who gets reminded

1. Open "Who gets reminders".
2. The screen tells you what the default is for new parties — reminded, or not reminded — and you make exceptions to it.
3. Turn individual parties on or off, or use "Enable All" and "Disable All" for the whole list.
4. "Manage reminders by group" does the same for every party in a ledger group at once.
5. "Reset All to Company Defaults" clears your exceptions and puts everyone back on the business default.
6. Tap "Save All" in the bar that appears along the bottom counting your unsaved changes. "Discard" beside it throws them away instead. A saved change reads back as "Party reminders saved", and it applies to the business, not to you.

A party marked "No mobile number" cannot receive anything. Add the number on that row, or from the party's own page, before expecting a reminder to go.

If reminders are switched off for the business, this screen says so and offers to take you back: "Turn on Smart Reminders to choose which parties get reminded."

Send a reminder right now

1. Open "Send reminders now" — described on the settings screen as "Chase selected customers straight away".
2. The list shows customers who currently owe overdue money. Search if it is long.
3. Select the customers you want to chase. Rows that cannot be sent explain themselves: "No mobile number saved", "Reminders off" for a party you have excluded, and "Reminded today" for one already chased today.
4. Tap "Send now".
5. The messages are queued and go out from your business number shortly.

If nobody is overdue you get "No overdue parties" rather than an empty list.

Credits

WhatsApp messages are paid for in credits. When they run out:

• The settings screen shows "Smart Reminders paused" and "Smart Reminders are disabled until credits are added."
• The send-now screen says "Reminders cannot be sent until credits are added."

Nothing is lost. Your schedule, your party choices and your history stay exactly as they were, and sending resumes when credits are added. Reminders that were already queued are not silently discarded.

Read the history — and what it does not tell you

Open "Reminder History" to see what has gone out. It shows recent activity, "Total Sent" and a "Success Rate", and you can filter by date and search by party.

Each entry carries a state, and the difference between them matters:

• "Sent" — Takkada handed the message to WhatsApp and WhatsApp accepted it.
• "Failed" — WhatsApp refused it.
• "Pending" — it is on its way and has not been answered for yet.
• "Not tracked" — you shared this one yourself, from your own phone. Nothing ever comes back about it.

"Sent" is not the same as delivered, and it is certainly not the same as read. It means the message was accepted for sending. Whether the customer's phone received it, and whether they looked at it, is not something Takkada is told. Treat the history as a record of what you did, not as proof of what your customer saw. If a payment matters, phone them.

When it does not look right

The main switch will not turn on. Set "Bills fall due after" to at least 1 first. The screen refuses until that is done, because without it there is no due date to schedule from.

A customer is not being reminded. Check three things, in order: are they turned on under "Who gets reminders"; do they have a mobile number; and is anything actually overdue for them.

Nothing has gone out at all. Check whether the business switch is on, and whether credits have run out. Both stop everything, and both say so on the screen.

Reminders started going out later than expected. "Only remind on or after the due date" is on, so nothing goes before a bill is due.

The history shows Sent but the customer says they got nothing. Sent means accepted for sending. Check the mobile number on the party record — a wrong but valid number accepts perfectly well and reaches somebody else.

An entry says Not tracked. That message was shared from your own phone rather than sent by Takkada, so there is no result to report.