an invoice follow-up bot that leaves reminders for review

the routine

choose your evidence source before starting: gmail for invoice conversations, stripe for invoices held there, or both. keep both connections read-only; reminder text stays in chat.

every monday at 9:45, review the invoice evidence in the accounts i named. use my work gmail threads, stripe invoices, or both, according to the access i gave you. put the result in this chat only.

for each apparently overdue invoice, show its identifier, customer, amount and currency, due date, evidence source and latest payment information available. look for recent replies about payment, disputes or a revised due date. if the status is unclear, put it under “check before chasing”. an email alone is not proof of nonpayment.

write a short reminder draft only for entries with a clear unpaid status and no unresolved dispute. leave recipient details for me to verify. do not send, create gmail drafts, change invoice status, charge, refund, transfer money or edit either app. never add fees or payment links yourself.

when

mondays at 9:45, after you have named the relevant accounts

needs

read-only gmail or stripe access, or both; the result and reminder drafts stay in chat

what comes back looks like this (an example, not a real inbox)

invoice review for sam, fictional customer records

ready for review: acme, invoice ac-104, £480, due 5 november. stripe shows it unpaid; no later payment reply found.
draft: hi priya, a quick check on invoice ac-104 for £480, due 5 november. could you let me know its payment status? thanks, sam.

check before chasing: jo at cedar studio says payment was made. nothing in the mail confirms we got it, so no reminder drafted.

verify recipient and live payment status before sending. no account changes or money movements.

decide which record you trust

gmail can fetch invoice threads and their attachments. stripe exposes a list-invoices action. neither means every payment your business receives is visible to the bot.⁴⁵ name the source that holds the invoices you want reviewed, and tell it where payments outside that source are recorded.

if you only connect gmail, treat the result as a correspondence review. a client may have paid by bank transfer without sending a reply. the gmail guide explains mail access, and the stripe guide covers that connection.

draft in chat to keep the apps read-only

a reminder written in chat does not need mail write access. read the wording beside its evidence, verify the recipient and check the current record before copying it into your email editor. save disputed items for a person who knows the account.

choose Ask every time for sending and do not grant a daily amount. one exception: a bot on Full access with no sending rule of its own may send up to 25 a day without asking, so give full-access bots Ask every time under sending. email sends and refunds then wait for Allow. some stripe payment steps do not ask. invoice edits are a different kind of change, so read-only access is the boundary here, rather than a promise that every edit will ask.³

what this cannot reconcile

missing records, partial payments and a changed due date can make a reminder wrong. ask the bot to name conflicting evidence instead of choosing whichever source looks newer. the routine does not settle disputes, calculate late fees or replace your accounting review.

for collecting expenses rather than chasing customers, use the weekly receipts sweep. on a local computer, an invoice run also waits while dusk bot is closed or the machine sleeps; check Automations if a monday review is missing.

the guard rails

• give the bot read-only invoice and mail access; keep reminder drafts in chat
• set sending to Ask every time so emails and refunds wait for Allow, and keep stripe read only: some stripe payment steps, like confirming a payment, don't ask.
• recheck live payment status before sending a draft, especially after a client replies
• hold disputed amounts, missing currencies and uncertain recipients for manual review
• do not let a reminder routine change invoices, add late fees or create payment links