The dunning procedure in Iteras runs fully automatically and can be configured according to the publisher’s preferences. The configuration options are located under the publication settings, in the section called “Due invoices.”
The first decision is whether you want to react to missed payments at all. This can be toggled on or off at the top of the settings.
Reacting means sending a reminder or a dunning notice. In practice, Iteras does not distinguish between these types—you can think of reminders as three letters/emails/electronic notices being sent, where you largely decide the wording. Some publishers choose to phrase the reminder as an invitation to renew the next subscription period, rather than as a notice of unpaid invoices. That’s entirely up to the publisher. What is consistent, however, is that the reminder is an invoice with some additional reminder text.
Deadlines and number of reminders
Next, you need to decide how much time should pass between each reminder (according to Danish law, the minimum is 10 days). This is controlled partly by the payment deadline, which indicates how long one has to pay an invoice or reminder. In addition, Iteras has a field called "Extra days past due" which is an additional number of days beyond the due date before the system sends a reminder. For example, if the payment deadline is 8 days and the extra grace period is 5 days, there will be 8 + 5 = 13 days between the invoice and the first reminder, and also between each subsequent reminder.
The extra grace period is mainly to ensure that all payments made via FI payment slips are registered before sending reminders—there can be a few days’ delay between the payment being received by the bank and it being automatically registered in Iteras, since the bank must notify Betalingsservice, which in turn notifies Iteras. Secondarily, the extra grace period can be used if you want to be more lenient with reminders—for example, waiting an extra 5–10 days after the payment deadline before sending one.
The publisher also controls how many reminders are sent (maximum of 3), and what fee should be added to each reminder (the fee can also be set to DKK 0). You can also create custom texts for reminders 1, 2, and 3—for example, increasing the firmness of the message over time.
Auto-suspension
If a subscriber does not pay their bill, the publisher’s willingness to provide magazines or access to digital content naturally decreases. Therefore, it's possible to suspend the subscriber automatically, and you can choose in Iteras when that suspension should occur. One end of the spectrum is suspending the subscriber only after the full reminder sequence is completed and no payment has been made. In this case, the subscriber gets the status “Collection” (though this does not mean they are automatically sent to a debt collection agency!). The other end of the spectrum is suspending the subscriber after just the first reminder.
Credit limit and credit time limit
Some publishers prefer not to send reminders for small amounts. For this reason, Iteras allows you to set a credit limit. The credit limit means that the reminder procedure is only triggered when the subscriber’s unpaid balance reaches or exceeds that amount. When that happens, the system sends a single reminder covering all outstanding unpaid invoices. This is especially useful if, for example, you invoice subscribers for one magazine issue at a time. Without a credit limit, multiple reminder processes could be running simultaneously (one for each unpaid invoice), potentially overwhelming the subscriber with many different reminders. With a credit limit, unpaid invoices are instead grouped together once the threshold is reached.
In such a case, a subscriber might forget a single small invoice but otherwise keep up with payments—so their total debt never exceeds the credit limit. For this reason, you can also set a credit time limit, so that, for example, no debt may be older than 6 months. If this condition is violated, the reminder process is triggered even if the credit limit hasn’t been reached.
You also need to define precisely when the credit limit is considered reached. For example: If the credit limit is DKK 250, and a subscriber owes DKK 225, and then a magazine issue costing DKK 50 is added (bringing the total to DKK 275)—will the subscriber receive that issue, which caused the limit to be exceeded? Yes, they will. But after that, the reminder procedure is triggered. If suspension is set to happen on the first reminder, no further issues will be delivered.
How are reminders sent?
As a rule, reminders are sent in the same way as the original invoice.
However, if invoicing is done by email, only the first reminder is sent via email. The second and third are sent as printed invoices to ensure they reach subscribers who may have missed the email or had it caught by a spam filter.
The other exception is for "print-yourself" invoices, where reminders are printed and sent as FI payment slips (BS FI-indbetalingskort).