Payment reminders for small businesses: how to get paid without nagging (2026)

Why invoices sit unpaid

The person who does not pay on time is rarely a crook. The invoice arrived in a week with twenty other emails, it had to be approved by someone on holiday, or the payment simply did not go through. The last one happened to me in September: a customer tried to pay my invoice and was told the recipient could not be found. The account number was correct. The customer’s bank just could not look it up, and my invoice had no bankgiro as an alternative. No reminder in the world would have solved that, only a phone call and a bankgiro on the next invoice.

That says something about how reminders should be written. The first one should assume the customer wants to pay and make it easy: amount, due date, exactly how to pay. Anger has no place until the third time, and even then it should be matter-of-fact.

Three reminders, three tones

I use the same ladder whether it is me or an agent writing. Day seven, fourteen and twenty-one after the due date, one tone per step, and always with the invoice number, the exact amount and a way to pay right away, ideally a Swish link or a bankgiro.

1. Friendly, day 7. "Hi Anna, I see invoice 14 for 8,750 kronor fell due on 12 September. It has probably just been lost, so here are the details again. Let me know if anything looks wrong." No fee, no interest, no threat.
2. Firm, day 14. The same details, but now with the due date in the first sentence, a clear last day to pay and one line about what happens otherwise: a reminder fee if it has been agreed, and late interest from the due date.
3. Final, day 21. Short. The amount including what you are entitled to add, a date, and that the matter goes to debt collection if payment has not arrived by then. Only write it if you actually intend to do it. An empty warning teaches the customer that the next one is empty too.

What the law lets you charge, and what it requires of you

The amounts are fixed in the Swedish act on compensation for debt-collection costs, and their conditions are missed more often than the amounts. This is what applies in Sweden in autumn 2026:

• Reminder fee, 60 kronor. Only if it was agreed no later than when the debt arose, in practice when it is in the terms the customer accepted. If it is not there, you may not charge it. My own terms lacked that line until I checked this summer.
• Debt-collection demand, 180 kronor. Requires no prior agreement, but the demand must be written the way the debt-collection act prescribes. Send it yourself or through a collection agency.
• Late-payment compensation, 450 kronor. Only when the customer is a business or a public body, never against private individuals. The 60 and 180 kronor are deducted from it, so you do not get everything at once.
• Late interest. Under the Swedish interest act, the Riksbank reference rate plus eight percentage points. The reference rate is 2.00 percent for the second half of 2026, so 10 percent a year, and it changes at year and half-year turns. Without an agreed due date, interest only runs from thirty days after the invoice.
• The Enforcement Authority. An order to pay costs 300 kronor in application fee, and you may claim the fee plus up to 380 kronor for your own work from the customer. It is the last step, not the third.

Two more things about the invoice itself. Between businesses, thirty days is the longest payment term you can be made to accept under the interest act; a shorter term is fine, but then it must be agreed and not just printed on the invoice. And put a bankgiro or Swish on the invoice even if you have an ordinary account. The bankgiro is what your customers’ accounting systems look for.

When an agent writes the reminders

The tedious part of reminders is not writing them, it is remembering them. The unpaid invoice sits in the books while you are standing on a roof. So I built an agent that keeps the list: it sees which invoices have passed their due date, how many days have gone by and how many times the customer has already been reminded, and writes one draft per invoice in the right tone. Friendly the first time, firm the second, final warning the third. The draft is signed with your first name and sounds like you, not like a collection agency.

Four rules sit in the agent itself, not in an instruction one hopes is followed. It never sends anything: every batch lands in an approval queue where you read and press send, one at a time or all at once. It mentions debt collection only if you yourself have switched escalation on. It never calculates interest on its own, it only includes interest that is already in the invoice data. And it copies amounts and invoice numbers exactly, because an invented amount in a payment reminder is the worst thing an agent can do in your name. The same gate in the code I require of every agent that writes to the outside world.

Why this is what I do

The reminder is the last link in a chain that starts with the quote and runs through the job to the invoice, and it is the same principle all the way: automation takes what is routine, you take the decisions. If you want the bookkeeping to keep up with the chain, what a firm can take off your plate is in the guide for accounting firms. With me the reminder agent is an add-on to the site, and what the different tiers include is listed openly under services. You can read who is behind it under about me.