"My customer says they never received the invoice." It's the most common support question in any AR workflow. This article gives you a structured way to confirm whether the email actually went out, and if it didn't, what the likely reason is. Most cases resolve in under 5 minutes once you know where to look.
Step 1: Check the Invoice Timeline
Open the invoice and scroll to the Timeline. You're looking for two types of entries:
-
Reminder sent entries —
"[Reminder Type]" reminder was sent. Each one corresponds to one outbound email. - Open / click / bounce telemetry — comes from our email provider (Mailjet) and tells you what happened after the send.
| Timeline state | What's happening |
|---|---|
| Sends present, opens/clicks present | Customer received it and opened it. Sometimes customers genuinely forget — gentle reminder works. |
| Sends present, no opens, no bounces | Likely landed in spam or junk. See Email Deliverability Troubleshooting. Have the customer search for "Biller Genie" or your business name in their spam folder. |
| Sends present, hard bounce | The email address is bad. Fix the customer's email on their record. See Email Conflicts. |
| Sends present, soft bounce | Mailbox full, server temporarily unavailable, or similar. Biller Genie will retry on the next reminder cycle. If it persists, treat like hard bounce. |
| NO sends at all (no reminder entries) | The email never went out. Continue to Step 2. |
Step 2: If the email never went out, check these in order
1. Does the customer have an email address on file?
Open the customer record. If the primary Email field is blank, the customer is on the Email Conflicts report. Add the email; the next scheduled reminder will go out.
2. Is the customer Active?
Inactive customers don't receive reminders, statements, or receipts (unless your account has Send Messages to Inactive Customers enabled in Control Panel > Settings). Reactivate the customer or check that setting.
3. Is the invoice opted out of reminders?
Look at the invoice detail. If there's an "Excluded from reminders" indicator, the invoice was opted out at some point. The Timeline will show a This invoice will be excluded from all reminders entry. Click Opt In to resume reminders on this invoice.
4. Are reminders disabled for this customer?
Some customers have reminders turned off at the customer level — maybe a per-customer override for a VIP, or a "do not contact" arrangement. Check the customer's Reminders tab — if every channel is toggled off, the customer never gets reminders regardless of what's happening at the invoice level.
5. Is this customer billed with their parent?
If the customer has Bill With Parent turned on, their reminders are governed by the parent customer's settings — not their own. Look at the parent's Reminders configuration and confirm reminders are flowing through the parent.
6. Is the invoice in a "reminders skip" window?
Reminders fire on a schedule (X days before/after due date, on a cadence) configured under Add-Ons > Reminders. If the invoice's due date is far in the future and no upcoming-payment reminder is configured, you simply won't see a send yet. Check the Reminders cadence to see when the next send is scheduled.
7. Is the invoice still pending / not yet synced?
Brand-new invoices created in your accounting software typically take a few minutes to sync into Biller Genie. Once they sync, the first scheduled reminder follows the cadence — there's no immediate "you have a new invoice!" email unless your Invoice Messenger settings are configured to fire on creation.
Forcing an invoice email to send right now
If you want to send an invoice email immediately — without waiting for the next scheduled reminder — use Send Reminder Now from the invoice detail page. This is an ad-hoc send that:
- Goes to the customer's primary email and any CC Emails on file.
- Lets you optionally override the recipient or add an additional ad-hoc CC.
- Lets you attach an extra file (up to 5MB; pdf, doc, docx, txt, xls, xlsx, jpg, png).
- Logs to the Timeline like any other reminder.
See How to Send an Invoice Manually.
Still stuck?
If you've checked all of the above and reminders still aren't sending, contact support@billergenie.com with:
- The invoice number and customer name
- The recipient email address you're expecting it to go to
- An approximate date/time the reminder should have sent
Our team can pull the Mailjet delivery log to confirm whether the email was attempted, delivered, bounced, or blocked.