Who still owes you? Keeping track of unpaid and unsent orders

Selling online means two promises: the customer pays you, and you send the goods. Small sellers often keep both promises in their heads. That works until the week gets busy.

Two questions, every day

At the start of each day, two questions are worth asking:

1. Who has ordered but not paid?
2. Who has paid but not been sent their order?

The second one matters more. A customer who has paid and is waiting will message you, write a review, or stop buying. A customer who has not paid yet is a smaller problem and often only needs a reminder.

Keep the answer in one place

You can only answer those questions quickly if every order has two marks: paid and sent. In a notebook, that is two ticks beside each line. In an app, it is two switches on each order. What matters is that the marks are made when things happen, so the list is true.

When the list is true, the morning check takes a minute. Open it, look at the unsent ones, pack them. Then look at the unpaid ones.

Asking for payment politely

Most late payments are forgetfulness, not refusal. A short, friendly message works better than a stern one. Say who it is for, what the order was, the amount, and how to pay. Do not accuse. Something like:

Hello Aisyah, a reminder for your order of two scarves, RM 60 in total. You can transfer to the account below. Thank you!

Writing this out by hand for every customer is slow, so many sellers do not send reminders at all. If the message is written for you from the order, you will send more of them.

Do not chase the same person too often

One reminder after a day or two is polite. A second, a few days after, is reasonable. After that, decide if the order is worth keeping open. Having the date of the order in front of you makes that decision easier.

How Rekod helps

Rekod is our free order app for small online sellers. Every order has a paid mark and a sent mark. The list shows what is unpaid and what is unsent, and you can open WhatsApp with the order already written out for the customer. It works in Malay and English, keeps your orders on your own phone, and works without internet after the first time you open it.

It is a list of your orders, not an accounting system. It does not check payments for you, so you still look at your bank to see whether the money arrived, and then tick the order.

Where to start

Tomorrow morning, before anything else, write down who has paid but not been sent. Send those first. Then do the same each day.