Ageing a draft is a way to lie to yourself. The customer has not seen it. Watchtower therefore only evaluates sent unpaid invoices.
That single rule aligns the inbox with how cash actually behaves. Unsent finals do not belong in "overdue." Neither do invoices you are still arguing internally.
What counts as overdue in Sonic
Collections metrics — total overdue, customers in dunning, recovery rate, average days overdue — all inherit the same filter:
- Invoice status is sent.
- Invoice is unpaid (not paid, not void).
- Due date has passed (or invoice date, when terms are missing on freight).
Drafts, in-progress documents, and finalised-but-unsent invoices are invisible to Watchtower ageing. This matches how AR teams actually work: you do not chase someone for a PDF they never received.
| State | In Watchtower overdue? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | No | Not delivered |
| Final, unsent | No | Not delivered |
| Sent, unpaid, past due | Yes | This is the queue |
| Sent, paid | No | Sequence stops |
| Void | No | Not collectible |
How a cadence runs
An invoice passes its due date. Sonic finds the dunning configuration that applies to that customer — or shipper, in a shipment workspace — and schedules the first reminder. If payment still does not arrive, it advances to the next stage.
A typical cadence is boring on purpose:
- Courtesy nudge — sometimes before due date if you configure negative-day triggers.
- Clear reminder — amount, invoice number, payment link.
- Firmer follow-up — often when a human should review tone.
- Final notice — before suspension or handoff to legal.
Automatic email is optional and should stay off until billing contacts are real. Bouncing into nowhere for sixty days is worse than silence.
Stages pause when someone logs a promise to pay. They skip when a partial payment just arrived. They exit entirely when the invoice is paid in full.
Freight-specific behaviour
In a shipment workspace the account is a shipper, not a subscription customer. Freight invoices may have no payment terms on the document. Sonic backfills due date from invoice date for evaluation so Watchtower can still suggest a next step instead of leaving drafts in a pile with no due date and no suggestion.
Filters and risk tables say Shipper. There is no Schedules tab on shipper collections detail — freight invoices are not tied to a billing schedule.
Merge fields in dunning templates follow the workspace: shipper name, shipper contacts, carrier name, shipment numbers on grouped invoices.
Suggested next steps vs autopilot
Watchtower can propose the next collections action. Operators should treat suggestions as drafts:
- Approve when the tone fits the relationship.
- Edit when it does not.
- Send from a person when the account requires a person.
The agent is not the relationship. AI refresh on collections copy is a productivity aid, not a promise that automation replaces judgement on distressed accounts.
The failure mode is bank rec, not aggression
The most expensive collections mistake is not "AI too aggressive." It is chasing a wire that arrived last Tuesday because nobody matched the deposit.
Work bank reconciliation daily during close. Payment provider payouts arrive net of fees; one deposit may cover several invoices. Split rather than force-match to the largest open invoice.
Watch out for
- Verify billing contacts before enabling auto-send. A broken merge field in production is worse than no email.
- Match Net terms to the account. Net 60 customers on a Net 30 cadence get chased for invoices that are not late.
- Partial payment pauses the sequence. Do not assume the next stage fires on calendar time alone.
- Sent is the gate. If overdue looks empty but AR feels heavy, check whether invoices are still draft or unsent.
- Stripe/Razorpay paid ≠ matched. Card capture marks the invoice paid; bank rec still matters for payout reconciliation.