Can I use Flow to send out payment reminders to customers with payment pending?

Topic summary

The discussion centers on automating payment reminders for unpaid orders in Shopify, specifically for customers using bank transfer or purchase order payment methods—not abandoned carts.

Initial Problem:
Users wanted to send automated payment reminders to customers with pending payments but found Shopify Flow could only send emails to staff, not customers.

Solution Evolution:

  • Early responses suggested third-party apps like Avada Email Marketing and Kindly Payment Reminder
  • Shopify later implemented native payment reminder functionality through Settings > Notifications > Payment Reminders
  • This feature requires setting payment terms with due dates on orders

Key Implementation Details:

  • For existing orders: Edit payment terms to add a due date
  • For draft orders: Select “payment due later” and add payment terms directly
  • Reminders automatically send on/after the due date when configured

Current Challenges:

  • Some users report reminders not sending despite proper setup
  • Request for separate accounts payable email field (currently reminders only go to customer email)
  • Users seeking pre-due-date reminders (e.g., 7 and 14 days before) may need Shopify Flow workarounds or third-party apps

One user successfully configured reminders using Flow, though specific implementation details weren’t shared.

Summarized with AI on October 23. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.

Hey,

I want to build a flow to send out payment reminders to customers for unpaid orders.

I came as far as to the point of finding the right trigger. However with the action I am stuck. I can only find the option to send internal mails to staff, not to customers. resending the order confirmation with 1-2 additional sentences would be great.

thank you

1 Like

Hi @adrianomano ,

You can send email automation for abandoned checkout or abandoned carts easily by our Email marketing Avada App quickly.

If you want to send it by Shopify, you can check the guide below :

The Shopify admin keeps the abandoned checkouts for 90 days. Every Monday, if abandoned checkouts last more than three months, your admin will automatically eliminate them.

Step 1: Go to Orders
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.

Step 2: Click Abandoned checkouts
Next, click Abandoned checkouts.

Follow the steps below to email a customer a link to their abandoned checkout automatically:

In your Shopify admin, go to the Settings section, then click Checkout.

Review Automatically send abandoned checkout emails from the Abandoned checkouts area.

Below Send to, select the customers to whom you want to send a checkout recovery email. They could be anyone or email subscribers who give up a checkout.

Below Send after, pick the number of hours that Shopify should wait before delivering the abandoned checkout email:

Tap on Save

I hope it helps you!

HI AvadaCommerce,

thanks for you reply.

Sorry for the confusion. But I am not talking about abandoned carts. But about people who bought using payment method “Bank-Transfer” and then remain unpaid orders.

thank you,

Adrian

Hi Adrianomano,

Currently, Flow can only send emails to internal/specific email addresses and not to Customers. However, the Flow and Payment Reminders team are working on how to better support payment reminder notifications through Flow, so check back for updates in a little while.

Hope that helps!

2 Likes

Hey @adrianomano ,

If you want to save time and especially not lose track of your unpaid orders, I would recommend our app Kindly the Payment Reminder. Among other things, it offers you a clear dashboard with all your pending orders, a report about the success of your payment reminders, and a variety of options to schedule payment reminders.

Our customers are very happy with us. But it’s best you try it out yourself - after all, there’s a free plan and a 15-day free trial for a reason. On top of that, I guarantee you to refund your money if you are not satisfied with Kindly’s service. Also, feel free to get in touch via our live help chat, we are always standing by to answer your questions in detail.

I hope I could be of help to you!

Have a wonderful day,

Raphael

1 Like

Hello

I have the same request.

Did you find a solution ?

THanks

Elise

The payment reminders solution is now live through Settings / Notifications / Payment Reminders

Dear Paul

I tried this but it doesn’t work…

Automatically email customers on or after the due date for unpaid orders.

What is the due date for a bank transfer?
I don’t know how to set it up…
I tried without due date but the email was never send…
Best regards
Elise

1 Like

Hi Elise,

You can add a due date on the order by adding payment terms to the order.

If the order already exists, click “edit” in the red box below and select the due date (you can also select a fixed date)

If you are creating the order from draft orders, you can click “payment due later” and add payment terms to the order directly.

“In a little while”… a year later and still no sign of this implementation in Shopify Flow.

1 Like

See below. The ability to send payment reminders through Flow was added quite awhile ago. Flow is not implementing a generic system to email customers outside of partners and Shopify Email, or specific actions to send a certain type of email (like Payment Reminders)

I am hoping you will add the ability to specify an accounts payable email field in the customer data so we can send payment reminders directly to accounts payable rather than the buyer. I can’t stress how important this is.

Nearly always, invoices need to go to both the buyer and the accounts payable emails.

1 Like

Hi! Sorry to comment on this after so long, but I am having an issue with the payment reminders not being sent. We make a lot of use of draft orders and we’d like to be able to send our customer’s an automatic email when the due date for payment passes, but all of the internal testing we’ve done hasn’t resulted in any emails being sent.

We’d ideally like for the following to happen:

Draft order is created
Customer is emailed the draft order invoice with payment being due within 7 days of the invoice being sent
If 7 days have passed then the customer receives an automatic Payment Reminder email notification

From everything I’ve found this should work by just setting the payment due date on the draft order and sending the invoice, without needing to toggle on the payment reminder. I’ve found where that payment reminder can be edited but no other settings beyond that.

Is there some other setting I’m missing or something else that needs to be enabled?

Haven’t tested this, but you might be able to do something like this

Hey @gigir ,

If you don‘t mind to spend some bucks you would get a great experience regarding your topic with our app Kindly.

You could easily set up your reminder plan to schedule reminders for open draft orders after 7 days from the invoice being sent. That‘s basic procedure.

What‘s maybe even more interesting to you is our latley published option to send SMS reminders with what we see a much higher conversion rate compared to email.

Finally, also not unimportant, to improve your reminders effectivness you can check your email performance in the analytics page.

Let me know what you think!

cheers,

raphael

1 Like

Heya! Thanks for the rec, but we found a way to do get it done through Flows.

That‘s great to hear!

1 Like

Do you mind sharing your flow? I think I’m trying to achieve the same thing. We place an order and set that payment is due in 30 days for schools that pay with a PO. I can remind them the payment is due on the due date, but I want to remind them 7 and 14 days before.

Yes, you can use Shopify Flow to send payment reminders to customers, but it is designed for a specific billing method. The “Send payment reminder” action works with orders that have official payment terms (like Net 30 or Due on receipt) set on them.

For regular pending payments, you’ll need a dedicated app from the Shopify App Store that specializes in abandoned cart and payment reminder emails.