Stop chasing instalments: setting up automatic payment reminders

Most charter bookings are paid in instalments: a first payment and a balance. Keeping track of who owes what, and when to send the next reminder, is a job that usually lives in a spreadsheet and someone's memory.

Record payments as they arrive

Start with accurate balances. Every payment you record has an amount, a date and the bank account it arrived in, and the booking's balance and status update immediately. A booking can have any number of payments, so partial payments are fine. See Record a payment.

Agents who pay in advance or overpay can have that money recorded as partner credit and applied to bookings later. See Partner credit.

Decide who gets reminded

Every day, at the time you choose, Basenautic checks every unpaid instalment and can email:

• the client: the partner's email (direct bookings without a partner have no email to remind),
• the yacht owner: an unpaid-booking alert to the owner email(s) on the yacht.

Both are off by default. You switch them on under Settings → Notifications → Automatic reminders.

Choose the rhythm

What will not happen

• Paid instalments are never reminded.
• Each reminder is sent once; the next one only after the repeat interval.
• Switching reminders on never sends a backlog of old reminders: only the current step of each instalment is sent.

Make the email sound like you

Reminder texts come from editable email templates, and before sending a manual reminder you can change the subject and message. You can send from Basenautic's mail server or from your own. See Email templates and Email sender.

Check what was sent

Settings → Notifications → Sent reminders lists every reminder with its recipient and whether it was sent or failed, with the error shown. If one is missing, the usual reasons are covered in A reminder was not sent.