Emailing a document and chasing overdue invoices
Email an issued document under your own name, and know when an invoice is late.
Once a document is issued, Maliru can email it to your client as a PDF in your own design, from your trading name, with replies coming back to you. When an invoice goes past its due date, Maliru tells your commercial team — it never chases your client on its own.
Sending needs Manage commercial.
Sending one document
Open an issued invoice, application for payment, pro-forma, quote or credit note on Commercial › Invoices and choose Send. A draft cannot be sent: issue it first.
The Send dialog shows what is going — PDF attached, the amount and the due date — and asks for:
- Message template — fills in the subject and message from one of your templates; edit them as you like before sending, or choose No template.
- Subject.
- To — the address it went to last time, otherwise the client's Accounts email from their billing details.
- CC (optional) — up to five addresses, separated by commas.
- Message (optional).
Underneath, two lines tell you what you cannot see elsewhere:
- Who it comes from — Sent as Northgate Services, your trading name from Document settings. Without one it reads Sent as Maliru — add your trading name under Your business in Document settings to send under your own.
- Where replies go — the email under Your business in Document settings, or your own address when that is blank. With neither, the dialog says replies have nowhere to go.
Choose Send. The PDF is drawn in your document design, attached, and emailed. The document then says Sent to accounts@… on 12 Sep 2026, with a count if it has gone more than once, and its Activity records Emailed to …. The button becomes Send again.
If you correct a document after sending it, it says Changed since it was sent on … and the button becomes Send corrected copy. The corrected copy carries the new PDF, and its subject ends (corrected copy) so your client can tell it from the one they already hold. See Correcting an issued document in Raising an invoice from approved measures.
Message templates
Templates live under Document settings › Sending. Each one has a name, the document types it is offered for, a subject and a message, with fields in double braces filled in from the document:
| Field | Fills in |
|---|---|
{{number}} |
The document number, e.g. INV-0007 |
{{title}} |
The document title, e.g. Invoice |
{{total}} |
The amount payable |
{{due_date}} |
The due date |
{{issue_date}} |
The issue date |
{{client}} |
The client's name |
{{contact}} |
The billing contact, or the client when none is named |
{{business}} |
Your trading name |
{{reference}} |
The client's reference or PO |
A new workspace starts with Invoice with thanks, Quote and Payment reminder. Default per document type decides which one the Send dialog starts on, and which one a batch uses.
Sending a batch
On the Invoices tab choose Select, tick the documents and choose Send on the bar. Maliru sends only issued documents with an email address on file, and says how many it left out and why.
Because emailing a client cannot be undone, the confirmation lists every document and the address it is going to, and names the template each will go with. Each client receives their own document; the result reads Sent 11 of 12 if one fails.
When an invoice goes overdue
An issued or part-paid invoice or application whose due date has passed shows Overdue in red, on the register and on the document.
Maliru tells everyone with Manage commercial in one notice per check: INV-0041 is 12 days overdue when one invoice is late, or 3 invoices are overdue, naming the oldest, when several are. Each invoice is chased no more than once a week while it stays unpaid. The document's Activity records Went overdue. The dashboard card Invoices overdue counts them, and you can build an alert rule on An invoice is overdue to have it emailed or pushed to whoever should chase it.
Maliru does not email your client about it. Chasing is a conversation you control: open the invoice, choose Send again, pick the Payment reminder template, and send. Quotes, pro-formas and credit notes are never flagged: none of them is money the client owes. A credit note settles the invoice it credits.
When the money arrives, record it: see Marking paid, voiding, reopening and crediting an invoice.