How to set up Karbon client requests and automatic reminders

In a lot of small firms, one person owns “chasing.” They keep a list of who still owes bank statements, send polite emails on Mondays, and lose a few hours a week to it. Karbon can do most of that job. This guide builds client requests into a monthly work template, sets them to send on their own, picks a reminder schedule, and uses automators so the work item shows “Waiting on Client” until the client answers. At the end, the only clients a human chases are the ones who ignored five reminders.

What you need

The right Karbon plan. This matters more than anything else here. Karbon’s pricing page lists client requests and the client portal on every plan, but automatic client reminders and tasklist automators only on Business and Enterprise, not Team.
- Team: $59/user/month billed annually, $79 monthly.
- Business: $89/user/month billed annually, $99 monthly.
- Enterprise: custom.
Permission to edit work templates and firm settings.
Clients set up as contacts with email addresses. Karbon for Clients, the portal, works through a secure magic link sent with each request. Karbon also offers a mobile app for clients and an option to require two-factor authentication.

Step by step

1. Set when emails go out

Karbon’s help center says you can choose the time of day client request emails and reminders auto-send, under Settings > Karbon for Clients > Auto-Sending. Set it to something your clients actually read. Early morning, around 8:00 a.m. where most of your clients are, lands before their day gets busy.

2. Write the request list once, in the template

Open the work template for your recurring job (say, “Monthly bookkeeping”) and add client requests to it, not to each work item. Write one request per item so clients can tick them off one at a time. Example for a monthly bookkeeping client:

Bank statement for any account not connected to the feed. “PDF statement for [account] for last month.”
Payroll register. “If you run payroll outside our system, export last month’s payroll summary.”
Loan statements. “Latest statement for each loan, so we can split interest and principal.”
Receipts over $75 we couldn’t match. “We’ll add the list here when we reconcile.”
Anything unusual. “Did you buy equipment, take on a loan, or add an owner this month? Yes/no, with a note.”

Keep each instruction to one or two lines. Clients read the first line on their phone and decide whether to deal with it now.

3. Set the requests to send automatically

In the template, set sending rules relative to the work start date, the same way due dates work. Karbon’s help center gives the example: if a monthly work item starts on April 1 and you schedule requests for April 2, Karbon sends them one day after each future start date (May 2, and so on).

Two things to know:

If a sending rule lands in the past (for example, you create the work item late), Karbon sends the requests within about 10 minutes of the work being created.
If you’d rather send manually from each work item, don’t schedule any sending rule.

A rhythm that works for most monthly clients: work starts on the 1st, requests send on the 2nd, client due date on the 9th.

4. Pick a reminder schedule

Karbon offers three reminder styles for client requests:

Gentle: sends 7 days before the due date, on the due date, then every day after it’s overdue. Gentle reminders need a due date. Without one, they don’t run.
Urgent: sends every day.
Custom: you set the frequency.

Karbon caps reminders at 5 per client request. After the fifth, they stop.

For month-end documents, I’d start with Gentle and a real due date. For a short-notice request (“we need this to file Friday”), use Urgent. If clients complain about daily emails once they’re late, switch to Custom every 2 or 3 days. Because of the 5-reminder cap, a 3-day custom schedule covers about two weeks.

5. Use automators so status tracks itself

Karbon calls these tasklist automators: “if this, then that” rules on sections of a work template. Karbon’s own recipe article describes two that pair well with client requests:

When a client task is sent, update the work item status to Waiting on Client.
When the client tasks are completed, move the status back to In Progress (or move your first internal task from waiting to Ready to Start).

Now your work list shows, without anyone updating it, which clients are holding things up. Filter by Waiting on Client every Monday and you have your chase list.

You can go one step further: Karbon’s recipe for sending client tasks has an automator that updates the status to a custom “Send Client Tasks” status when all tasks in an internal section are complete. That’s useful when the request depends on your prep work, like the “receipts we couldn’t match” list that only exists after reconciliation.

6. Plan for the client who ignores all five reminders

The 5-reminder cap is sensible, but it means silence eventually goes quiet on your side too. Add an internal task to the template, due 3 days after the client due date: “Call client if requests still open.” Assign it to whoever owns the relationship. Example script:

“Hi Sam, quick one. We’re still missing your September statements for the Amex card and the equipment loan. If you can upload them today, we’ll have your books closed by Friday.”

Common mistakes

Building this on the Team plan. Requests will send, but automatic reminders and automators won’t. Check your plan first.
Gentle reminders with no due date. They won’t send. Set the due date in the template.
One giant request with ten items. Clients do the easy two and leave it. Split it up.
Editing requests on each work item instead of the template. Next month you’ll be back to the old wording.
Forgetting the 5-reminder cap. Have a human follow-up task ready for when the reminders run out.

When it’s worth getting help

If you’re on Business already, you can set this up yourself in a morning per template. Where it gets fiddly is the second layer: requests that depend on reconciliation, conditional sections for clients with payroll or loans, and reporting on who’s late across the firm. If you want help with that, see my Karbon page, or run the accounting cost calculator to see if it pays for itself.