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Get a weekly list of accounts falling behind
Every Monday, get a short list of customers who've missed or delayed payments, sorted by urgency, with a suggested next step for each.
When to use it
Every Monday morning
Step by step
Set up a payments tracker
Make a Google Sheet with columns for customer reference, amount due, due date, amount paid, date paid and notes. Update it from your accounting software's aged debtors export each Friday, using references instead of names.
Write your follow-up rules
Decide your own rules, for example 'reminder at 7 days, phone call at 30 days, manager review at 60 days', and keep them in a tab of the sheet.
Ask for the weekly list
Each Monday, paste the sheet into your AI assistant with this prompt. If your plan includes scheduled tasks in ChatGPT or Gemini in Sheets, you can use those; otherwise a recurring calendar reminder works.
Prompt to copyHere is our payments tracker as of [date] and our follow-up rules. Today is [date]. Give me: 1) A table of every account overdue or part-paid: Reference | Amount overdue | Days overdue | Last action | Next step under our rules. Sort by days overdue, then amount. 2) Accounts that have become overdue since last week. 3) Accounts where a payment plan payment was missed. 4) Total overdue in 0-30, 31-60, 61-90 and 90+ day bands. Only apply the rules I've given; don't suggest legal action.Review before acting
Check the list against your accounting software, because a payment may have arrived since the export. Agree anything over your threshold with your manager.
Book the follow-ups
Add each phone call or reminder to your calendar and note the action in the tracker so next week's list knows what happened.
What you get
Overdue total £8,420: 0-30 days £3,100 | 31-60 £2,870 | 61-90 £1,650 | 90+ £800. New this week: C-118 (£640, 9 days). Missed plan payment: C-072 (£150 due 1 Nov). Next steps: C-045, 62 days, £1,650, manager review.
Tips
- Keep customer names out of the sheet you share with AI; a reference is enough and is safer.
- Pair this with a polite reminder email template so the follow-ups take minutes.