ChaseFlow — The AR Follow-Up Agent That Sends the Right Email Without Being Asked
Every overdue invoice needs three to five follow-up emails before it gets paid, and someone on your team is writing all of them manually. ChaseFlow is an autonomous AR follow-up agent that monitors your aging report and fires the right email at the right time without a human in the loop.
Difficulty
intermediate
Category
Business Automation
Market Demand
Very High
Revenue Score
8/10
Platform
AI Agent
Vibe Code Friendly
No
Hackathon Score
5/10
Validated by Real Pain
— sourced from real community discussions
AR Coordinators follow a predictable escalation email pattern for every overdue invoice that is entirely manual, repetitive, and automatable with existing scheduling and AI email tools.
What is it?
AR Coordinators report spending 40-50% of their day on repetitive follow-up emails that follow a predictable escalation pattern: friendly reminder at 7 days, firmer nudge at 21 days, escalation at 45 days, final notice at 60 days. This pattern is 100% automatable and nobody has built a $99/month self-serve version of it. ChaseFlow connects to QuickBooks or accepts a weekly CSV, sets escalation rules per customer tier, and fires personalized emails automatically on the configured schedule — stopping automatically when payment is marked received. The founder has zero touch after setup. Why 100% buildable right now: QuickBooks Webhooks now fire invoice status changes in real time, Resend handles transactional email at scale, and Claude writes collections emails indistinguishable from a human coordinator.
Why now?
Inngest's serverless job scheduling dropped the cost and complexity of building autonomous email agents to near-zero in 2025 — what required a full backend engineer and Redis queue 2 years ago is now a 200-line Inngest function any solo dev can ship in a weekend.
- ▸Autonomous escalation agent: configures once, fires follow-up emails on schedule without human trigger (Implementation: Inngest cron jobs per invoice + escalation state machine)
- ▸Claude-generated personalized emails per escalation stage matching customer relationship context
- ▸Auto-stop when QuickBooks marks invoice paid via webhook — never chases a settled invoice
- ▸Escalation rule builder: set custom day thresholds and tone per customer tier (VIP vs standard vs at-risk)
Target Audience
Small business owners and AR Coordinators at service businesses with 20-200 outstanding invoices per month — plumbers, agencies, staffing firms, freight brokers.
Example Use Case
Dave, owner of a 12-person agency with chronic late payers, connects QuickBooks, sets a 3-step escalation rule, and watches ChaseFlow send 34 follow-up emails over the next two weeks — recovering $62k without Dave writing a single email.
User Stories
- ▸As a small agency owner, I want overdue invoice follow-ups sent automatically on a schedule I set, so that I stop losing billable hours writing the same email every two weeks.
- ▸As an AR Coordinator, I want the chase emails to stop automatically when an invoice is paid, so that I never embarrass a client who already settled.
- ▸As a business owner, I want to review the first few automated emails before they go out, so that I can trust the tone before enabling full automation.
Done When
- ✓Auto-escalation: done when an invoice past 7 days triggers a stage-1 email send visible in email_log without any manual user action.
- ✓Auto-stop: done when a QuickBooks payment webhook arrives and the invoice disappears from the active chase queue within 30 seconds.
- ✓Review toggle: done when user sets approve-first mode and sees a pending email queue requiring one-click approval before send.
- ✓Escalation rule builder: done when user sets three day thresholds with tone labels and saves them, then sees those rules reflected on the invoice escalation state.
Is it worth building?
$99/month x 60 customers = $5,940 MRR at month 4. Assumes 4% conversion from cold outreach to small business owners with chronic late payment problems.
Unit Economics
CAC: $40 via Slack community cold DM (3 hours outreach per conversion). LTV: $1,188 (12 months at $99/month). Payback: 1 month. Gross margin: 84%.
Business Model
SaaS subscription
Monetization Path
14-day free trial, $49/month Starter (CSV, 50 invoices), $99/month Pro (QuickBooks sync, unlimited, custom escalation rules).
Revenue Timeline
First dollar: week 3 via beta cold outreach. $1k MRR: month 2. $5k MRR: month 5. $10k MRR: month 9.
Estimated Monthly Cost
Claude API: $30, Inngest: $25, Vercel: $20, Supabase: $25, Resend: $15. Total: ~$115/month at launch.
Profit Potential
$5k-$15k MRR by month 6 with cold outreach to agency owners and freelance communities.
Scalability
Add dispute detection, payment portal links, Slack digest, team escalation routing, white-label for accounting firms.
Success Metrics
Month 1: 10 beta users from agency Slack groups. Month 2: 5 paid. Month 3: 25 paid, $2,475 MRR.
Launch & Validation Plan
DM 20 agency owners in Slack communities (Agency Highway, Pantless Entrepreneurs) offering to set up ChaseFlow free for 30 days in exchange for a testimonial.
Customer Acquisition Strategy
First customer: post in Agency Highway Slack and r/agency asking who manually writes invoice follow-up emails — offer free setup call. Ongoing: cold email to QuickBooks ProAdvisors who can resell to their clients, content on LinkedIn targeting agency owners.
What's the competition?
Competition Level
Medium
Similar Products
Kolleno (too complex for SMB), YayPay (enterprise pricing), Chaser (UK-focused, limited AI) — none offer a $99/month self-serve autonomous email agent for US SMBs.
Competitive Advantage
Unlike generic email sequences, ChaseFlow reads your actual invoice data and auto-stops on payment — no false chases, no embarrassing emails to clients who already paid.
Regulatory Risks
CAN-SPAM compliance required for all outbound emails — include unsubscribe link and sender identification. GDPR for EU customer contact data. QuickBooks OAuth production review required.
What's the roadmap?
Feature Roadmap
V1 (launch): CSV sync, escalation rules, auto-email, review toggle, QuickBooks webhook stop. V2 (month 2-3): QuickBooks two-way sync, partial payment handling, weekly recovery digest. V3 (month 4+): white-label for accountants, dispute flag detection, payment portal link injection.
Milestone Plan
Phase 1 (Week 1-2): CSV ingest, Inngest escalation jobs, and Claude email generation working end-to-end. Phase 2 (Week 3): QuickBooks OAuth and webhook, Stripe billing, review toggle live. Phase 3 (Month 2): 10 paid customers, QuickBooks Marketplace application submitted.
How do you build it?
Tech Stack
Next.js 14, Claude API, Supabase, QuickBooks Webhooks, Resend, Inngest for job scheduling — build with Cursor for agent logic, v0 for settings UI
Suggested Frameworks
Inngest, Drizzle ORM, QuickBooks Node SDK
Time to Ship
3 weeks
Required Skills
Inngest job scheduling, QuickBooks Webhooks, Claude API, Resend email, Next.js.
Resources
Inngest docs, QuickBooks webhook docs, Resend docs, Anthropic Claude docs.
MVP Scope
app/page.tsx (dashboard with active invoice chase list), app/settings/page.tsx (escalation rule builder), app/api/sync/route.ts (CSV + QuickBooks ingest), app/api/webhook/qbo/route.ts (payment received handler), inngest/chaseJob.ts (escalation state machine), lib/claude.ts (email generation per stage), lib/db/schema.ts (invoices, escalation_rules, email_log), components/EscalationBuilder.tsx, seed.ts (15 demo invoices at various stages), .env.example
Core User Journey
Connect QuickBooks -> set escalation rule -> enable auto-chase -> watch dashboard as emails fire and invoices get paid -> receive weekly recovery summary.
Architecture Pattern
QuickBooks sync or CSV upload -> invoices stored in Postgres -> Inngest schedules escalation jobs per invoice -> job fires at threshold -> Claude generates email -> Resend delivers -> email_log updated -> QuickBooks webhook fires on payment -> Inngest job cancelled.
Data Model
User has many EscalationRules. Invoice has one EscalationState with current stage and next trigger date. Invoice has many EmailLogs. EscalationRule defines day thresholds and tone per stage.
Integration Points
QuickBooks API and Webhooks for invoice sync and payment events, Inngest for job scheduling, Claude API for email generation, Resend for email delivery, Stripe for subscriptions, Supabase for data storage.
V1 Scope Boundaries
V1 excludes: partial payment handling, payment portal link injection, multi-user team accounts, white-label, dispute detection.
Success Definition
A small business owner connects QuickBooks, sets one escalation rule, and receives zero complaints from customers about automated emails while recovering a previously stuck invoice — all without contacting the founder.
Challenges
QuickBooks Webhook production approval and the edge case where a partial payment requires a custom follow-up — handle partial payments as a known limitation in V1 to avoid scope explosion; the hardest non-technical problem is trust — small business owners are nervous about automated emails going to their best clients, so a review-before-send toggle is a must-have for adoption.
Avoid These Pitfalls
Do not auto-send without a review-before-send toggle in V1 — early adopters will not trust full automation until they have seen 10 emails go out correctly. Do not skip CAN-SPAM unsubscribe links — one complaint ends the product. Finding first 10 paying customers will take longer than building — budget 3x more time for Slack community outreach than development.
Security Requirements
Supabase Auth with Google OAuth. RLS on all invoice tables scoped to user. QuickBooks tokens encrypted at rest. CAN-SPAM compliant emails with unsubscribe. Rate limiting 60 req/min per user.
Infrastructure Plan
Vercel for Next.js, Supabase for Postgres and auth, Inngest cloud for job scheduling, GitHub Actions for CI, Sentry for errors — total ~$115/month at launch.
Performance Targets
Inngest job trigger latency under 2 minutes of scheduled time. Email generation and send under 5 seconds per invoice. Dashboard load under 1 second. 200 DAU target at month 3.
Go-Live Checklist
- ☐Security audit complete.
- ☐Payment flow tested end-to-end.
- ☐Error tracking (Sentry) live.
- ☐Monitoring dashboard configured.
- ☐Custom domain set up with SSL.
- ☐Privacy policy and terms published.
- ☐5+ beta users signed off.
- ☐Rollback plan documented.
- ☐Launch post drafted for Agency Highway Slack and r/agency.
First Run Experience
On first run: 15 seeded demo invoices appear at various escalation stages with sample emails already queued. User can immediately click Preview Email on any invoice to see Claude-generated draft. No manual config required: demo mode runs without QuickBooks connection using seed data.
How to build it, step by step
1. Define schema: invoices, escalation_rules, escalation_states, email_logs in lib/db/schema.ts. 2. Run npx create-next-app chaseflow --typescript --tailwind --app and install Inngest, Drizzle, Resend. 3. Build CSV ingest endpoint in app/api/sync/route.ts parsing standard invoice export format. 4. Build EscalationBuilder component in components/EscalationBuilder.tsx with day threshold inputs and tone selector. 5. Build Inngest chaseJob function in inngest/chaseJob.ts implementing stage state machine advancing on day thresholds. 6. Build Claude email generator in lib/claude.ts with stage-aware prompt (reminder vs firm vs escalation tone). 7. Build QuickBooks payment webhook handler in app/api/webhook/qbo/route.ts that cancels the Inngest job on payment received. 8. Add review-before-send toggle on dashboard so users approve first 5 emails manually before enabling full auto. 9. Add Stripe $99/month checkout in app/api/checkout/route.ts with post-payment QuickBooks connect redirect. 10. Verify: seed 15 demo invoices, enable auto-chase, manually trigger Inngest job, confirm email arrives with correct content and auto-stops after simulated payment webhook.
Generated
June 12, 2026
Model
claude-sonnet-4-6
Disclaimer: Ideas on this site are AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies. Revenue estimates, market demand figures, and financial projections are illustrative assumptions only — not financial advice. Do your own research before making any business or investment decisions. Technology availability, pricing, and market conditions change rapidly; always verify details independently.