The person who runs the office already has a tool. Odoo, WinBooks, Billit, sometimes still a workbook. They still copy-paste.
Invoices go out. Peppol has handled that, since January 2026, between Belgian VAT-registered firms. I wrote a first piece on invoicing from Excel. Tuesday morning, the real mess is the other end: chasing payment.
A folder in Outlook, “to chase”. A spreadsheet next to it, the due dates. A polite mail on Wednesday. A colder one on Friday. The transfer lands, nobody ticks the box. So you chase someone who already paid. It happens.
People ask me for RPA. UiPath. A robot that clicks through windows. For a fifteen-person firm, that is too heavy. You do not have a three-month project. You have the next ten hours, and one loop to kill.
The z80 site has a line in English. I am leaving it as it stands:
“If you have to do something twice, then automate it.” — Sebastien Schmets
Twice, here, is the same overdue list in the software and in Outlook. Or the supplier PDF you retype even though the structured file already arrived.
Automating invoice reminders
Peppol sends the invoice. It does not collect the money.
Chasing payment is a calendar. And it is the law of 2 August 2002. Between businesses, if the contract is silent, thirty calendar days from the day after receipt. You can agree longer, not beyond sixty, except sectors the King authorises. From the day after the due date, interest runs by operation of law, with no formal notice. Plus a €40 lump sum for recovery costs. The rate is the ECB main refinancing rate plus eight points, rounded up to the next half-point. I am not copying this semester’s percentage: the FPS Finance HTML page served me a captcha.
That does not mean you paste the €40 into the first mail. Plenty of people send a polite reminder first and keep the lump sum for later. The law gives a right. You hold the calendar. And you stop the moment it is paid.
In Odoo that feature is follow-up levels. Accounting, configuration. A mail a few days before the due date — you can set a negative number of days, so before the date. Another shortly after. A firmer one later. There is an Automatic tick-box, if you want it. Reconcile the bank first. Otherwise you chase invoices that are already paid. Chatter keeps the trail. You do not need Studio for this.
WinBooks, Billit, Exact: I am not going to invent their menus. Open whatever the tool already knows how to send. Often it is sitting there, unused.
If the flow stays inside the tool, stop there. A Monday recap for the bookkeeper, an activity, a mail template. That is a setting, not a project.
Odoo’s Custom plan starts to matter when you leave the standard path. Studio, for slightly odd rules — an activity three days after a status, a field that flips. The external API, if another piece of software comes in to read or write Odoo. I rechecked the pricing page on 1 September 2026: Standard is all apps, Online only; Custom is Studio, multi-company, external API. No euro figures here, they vary by country. Install Studio on a Standard database and it upsells to Custom, their docs say so. SMS and posted letters from Odoo eat IAP credits. The reminder email does not.
When the flow actually leaves the tool — a recap into a mailbox that is not in the ERP, a bank file, a ping somewhere — a small n8n instance is enough. Self-host it, Community edition, on a server in the EEA, or on a machine you already have. Their cloud is a different decision. Calling into Odoo from outside (JSON-RPC, XML-RPC) needs the Custom plan. If Odoo is the one pushing out, their FAQ says that is not “External API”.
The clicking robot comes last. A fifteen-person SME rarely needs an RPA programme for reminders. The software already has a screen; use it. If it will not send the mail, glue. If there are still clicks after that, we talk.
Supplier bills
The other loop is inbound. In 2026, between Belgian VAT-registered firms, the real automation is Peppol on the way in. An XML, fields, a draft vendor bill. Not a scan. Odoo documents this: incoming Peppol documents are checked several times a day.
An XML file does not burn an OCR credit. Odoo’s OCR exists, for PDFs and photos. It is IAP, one credit per document. I am not selling that. If the supplier is in scope of the mandate, ask them for Peppol.
The next ten hours
Pick one loop. One. Customer reminders, or supplier bills, or the Monday recap. Not all three.
Write the calendar on a sheet. Who sends, when, what gets attached. Above all: stop when it is paid.
Turn on what the tool already has. In Odoo, follow-up levels. Elsewhere, the same kind of module, if it exists.
Test on five files. Not the whole list. Check whether a customer who already paid got the mail. If they did, fix the reconciliation before you automate.
If it is still stuck after a week, info@z80.be, +32 494 111 041, www.z80.be — we look at the loop, not at an RPA project.