A good payment reminder schedule has three stages keyed to the due date: a friendly reminder a few days before, a clear reminder on the day, and a short follow-up after it, stopping the moment the customer pays. Call only in daytime hours, keep attempts low, and say who you are, when the payment is due and how to pay. In Edesy Collect, run each stage as its own campaign.
Run your reminder stages: Open Edesy Collect, add the debtors due on a date and start the first campaign.
A schedule you can start with
| Stage | When | Calls | Tone | Message focus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early reminder | 3 days before due (D-3) | 1 | Friendly | "Your payment is due on DATE" |
| Final reminder | 1 day before (D-1) | 1 | Friendly | Same, plus how to pay |
| Due day | Due date (D0) | Up to 2 | Clear | "Due today", how to pay, "ignore if paid" |
| Short follow-up | 1 to 3 days after (D+1 to D+3) | Up to 2 a day | Firm, polite | "Payment not yet received", how to pay |
| Later follow-up | After D+3 | Hand to your team | Firm, polite | A person calls to understand why |
Adjust for your business. A subscription might only need D-1 and D0. A loan EMI may need every stage. Whatever you choose, write it down and apply it the same way to every customer.
Rules that keep it reasonable
| Rule | Suggested |
|---|---|
| Calls per debtor per day | 1 before the due date; at most 2 or 3 on and after it |
| Gap between calls on the same day | At least 60 minutes |
| Calling hours | Daytime; for regulated lending, end by 19:00 |
| Stop on payment | Always, the same day the payment lands |
| Stop on request | If a customer asks not to be called, or disputes the amount |
| Hand-off | After the last automated stage, a person takes over |
Edesy Collect has guardrails built in: campaign calling hours default to 09:00 to 20:00 IST and are kept inside 09:00 to 21:00, and attempt settings are capped at 3 per debtor per day with a minimum 60-minute gap. Those are ceilings, not targets. For regulated lenders, your own contact-hour rules may be stricter. See calling hours rules for collection calls.
How to run the stages in Edesy Collect
Edesy Collect doesn't build a before/on/after ladder for you. You get the same result by running one campaign per stage:
- Group debtors by due date. For example, everyone due on 5 November.
- D-3 campaign. Three days before, create a campaign with the "early reminder" message and add that group's debtors.
- D0 campaign. On the due date, create a campaign with the due-day message and add only the debtors who haven't paid yet.
- Follow-up campaign. A day or two after, the same for those still unpaid.
- Report payments once. Have your server call the payment webhook when money arrives, so a contact who pays is stopped in whichever campaign they're in.
Debtors are added as lines of phone,name,due_date,amount, pasted in the portal or sent through the API.
The due date and amount are stored with each contact for your records. Each campaign plays one message to
everyone in it (rendered once by TTS and cached), which is another reason to group by due date: the date
can then be part of the message.
Calling hours are set through the API (/v1/collect/campaigns). See the Collect docs.
What to say at each stage
Keep every message under a minute and write it for the whole batch. Examples for a batch due on 5 November:
Before due date (friendly): "Namaste. Yeh XYZ Finance ki taraf se ek yaad-dihani hai. Aapki kisht 5 November ko due hai. Agar aap bhugtaan kar chuke hain, toh is call ko nazarandaaz karein. Dhanyavaad."
On the due date (clear): "Hello, this is XYZ Finance. Your payment is due today, 5 November. You can pay using the link we sent you or at any branch. If you have already paid, thank you, and please ignore this call."
After the due date (firm, polite): "Hello, this is XYZ Finance. We haven't yet received your payment that was due on 5 November. Please pay at the earliest, or call us back on this number if you need help."
Never threaten, never mention consequences you won't actually apply, and never discuss the debt with anyone except the customer.
Stop the calls that shouldn't happen
The worst reminder call is to someone who already paid. Ways to stop them:
| Method | How |
|---|---|
| Payment webhook | Your server posts to POST /v1/collect/webhooks/payment when a payment lands. For Razorpay, forward the event from your own Razorpay handler |
| API | POST /v1/collect/contacts/:id/paid, /promised or /stop |
| Next stage's list | Only add debtors who are still unpaid to the D0 and follow-up campaigns |
When a customer promises a payment date, mark them promised through the API so the calls stop. Read promise-to-pay tracking for the follow-up.
Caller IDs across several stages
A schedule calls the same people several times. Use a small pool of numbers (2 to 4 is the recommended range) with rotation so one number isn't overused, and flag any number that gets marked as spam. See caller ID rotation for payment reminders.
What it costs
| Plan (monthly, plus 18% GST) | Included calls | After that |
|---|---|---|
| Starter: Rs 1,499 | About 1,000 | Rs 0.90 per connected call |
| Growth: Rs 3,499 | About 4,000 | Rs 0.75 per connected call |
| Scale: Rs 10,499 | About 16,000 | Rs 0.60 per connected call |
One number is included; extra caller IDs are about Rs 500 a month. Unanswered calls are free. KYC is required. To size a plan, multiply your debtors by the number of stages most of them will reach, and remember that people who pay early drop out of later stages. See payment reminder call pricing.
Measure and adjust
Track, per stage:
- Share of debtors who paid before the next stage.
- Answer rate by time of day and by caller ID.
- Debtors who reached the last stage without paying; those need a person, not more calls.
If most payments come after the D0 call, test dropping D-3. If the follow-up rarely changes anything, hand those accounts to a person sooner.
Related: EMI reminder IVR calls with press-1 callback and triggering reminder calls from your app. More on the product: payment reminder calls.