Documentation

What Ted Reminders Does

Ted Reminders is an invoice tracking tool built for small service businesses. You create invoices for your customers, and Ted automatically sends email reminders when those invoices go overdue — so you spend less time chasing payments and more time doing actual work.

Sign Up

Register with your business name, email address, and a password. Ted uses your business name in reminder emails sent to your customers.

Invite-Only Beta

Ted Reminders is currently invite-only. To get access, request an invite on the home page. You'll receive an email with a registration link — use that link to create your account via a one-time token.

Creating an Invoice

Each invoice captures the following:

• Customer name & email — required; used to send reminders
• Phone — optional; for future SMS reminders
• Amount — total amount owed
• Due date — when payment is expected
• Notes — job description or any details included in reminder emails

Invoice Statuses

• pendingDue date hasn't passed yet — no reminders sent.
• overduePast the due date — Ted will send automated reminders.
• paidPayment recorded — reminders stop immediately.

Invoices move from pending to overdue automatically once their due date passes.

Recording a Deposit

If a customer makes a partial payment, you can record a deposit on the invoice. Deposit amounts are tracked separately from the total — useful for showing a customer what they've paid vs. what's still owed.

Marking an Invoice Paid

When a customer pays in full, mark the invoice as paid and record the payment method (e.g. cash, check, Venmo). Automated reminders stop immediately once an invoice is marked paid.

Editing and Deleting

You can edit any invoice to update the amount, due date, notes, or customer details. Deleting an invoice removes it permanently along with its reminder history.

How It Works

Every day at 8am, Ted checks all overdue invoices and sends a reminder email to any customer who is due for one. "Due for one" means enough time has passed since the last reminder (based on your interval setting) and the invoice hasn't hit the reminder cap yet.

Email Reminders

Reminder emails are sent via AWS SES and include:

• The balance due
• Job notes from the invoice
• Your custom payment instructions

SMS Reminders

SMS reminders via Twilio are coming soon. When available, they'll follow the same interval and cap rules as email reminders.

Reminder Cadence

Ted won't send back-to-back reminders. A reminder is only sent when at least X days have passed since the last one (configurable in your profile). This prevents overwhelming your customers while keeping the pressure on.

Reminder Cap

Ted stops sending reminders automatically once an invoice has received the configured maximum number of reminders. At that point, it's up to you to follow up directly or write off the invoice.

Saving Repeat Customers

Add a customer to your contacts to make future invoices faster. Contacts store name, email, and phone number.

Auto-Suggest

When creating a new invoice, Ted suggests matching contacts as you type the customer name — select one to pre-fill their details automatically.

Remind every X days

reminder_interval_days · default: 3

The minimum number of days that must pass between reminders for the same invoice. For example, with a 3-day interval, a customer will receive at most one reminder every 3 days.

Stop after X reminders

max_reminders · default: 3

The total number of reminders Ted will send per invoice before stopping automatically. Once this cap is reached, no further automated reminders are sent for that invoice.

Update Business Name and Email

You can change your business name and email address from the Profile page. Your business name appears in reminder emails sent to your customers.