Receivables past due

This Watch reads your invoices and your payments and raises the invoices that are past their terms with nothing against them. It is one of the three Watches raising points in your Inbox today. In Settings → Workspace → Watches it sits under Financial as FI-1.

The FI-1 Watch open in its detail panel, showing the grace-after-terms presets, the custom value field and the default net terms field.

What it watches for

A customer invoice with no matching payment, past its terms plus whatever grace period you allow.

The due date comes from the invoice record itself wherever the invoice carries one. Where it does not, Scout adds your default net terms to the issue date and treats the result as a triage estimate — and the point says so in its own title, rather than presenting a guess as a fact.

Why it matters

Collections in a small shop are not a process, they are a memory. The invoices that get chased are the big ones and the recent ones; the four-figure invoice from six weeks ago gets chased when somebody happens to look at the aging report. Money that takes ninety days to arrive costs you the use of it, and money that takes a year usually does not arrive.

This Watch books as Collected on the Found ledger — and it is the one Watch where the number in Found is simply the payment that landed.

What it needs connected

Required: your accounting system — QuickBooks Online. The invoices and the payments both come from there.
Helpful: a mailbox, a CRM. The mailbox is what lets Scout see the conversation around the invoice.

What the point looks like

A point is one item Scout raises with the proof behind it. Here is one from the demo workspace:

Send Tessa the INV-1042 reminder — it works within 2 days — Suds & Fluff Grooming · 1 day past due

INV-1042 passed its terms yesterday with no matching payment. Suds & Fluff have paid within two days of a reminder on their last three invoices.

Evidence: the invoice in QuickBooks Online with its terms and due date · the absence of a matching payment · this account's payment history.

Prepared by Scout: a short collection reminder you can copy and send.

The settings that tune it

Grace after terms: None, 3 days or 7 days, or a custom value from 0 to 30 entered under Custom value. The default is None. This is how long after the due date Scout waits before raising the invoice — a week of grace suits shops whose customers pay by check, none suits shops that want the reminder out on day one.

Default net terms (days): a number field, default 30, accepting 0 to 365. It is used only for invoices that arrive without a due date on them, and only as a triage estimate. It never overrides a due date the invoice actually carries.

When it arrives

It is here. This is a second-wave Watch by catalogue order, but it was already built, so it is on and working. Its row in Settings shows an accuracy figure rather than Coming soon.

Good to know

A payment matches an invoice by invoice number and customer, not by "was there a payment recently" — so a payment made months ago cannot hide an invoice that is still open.
When the payment posts, the point closes itself and Scout writes a receipt saying the evidence resolved it. Nobody chases an invoice that has been paid.
Scout never sends the reminder and never touches your accounting records. It writes the reminder; you send it.
Because accounting is required, this Watch shows under the Needs attention filter in Settings until QuickBooks Online is connected.
A dated promise to pay is meant to defer the point until that date passes. That deferral is not available today.
A job that was never invoiced at all is FI-2, not this Watch.