Late Payment Predictor

Last updated: 2026-05-29 Available on Pro and Team

Duefy's Late Payment Predictor uses AI to give each of your active invoices an at-a-glance score of how likely the customer is to pay after the due date. You'll see it as a small badge next to the status on the invoice list:

Active ⚠ Likely late 72%

There are three colour buckets — amber for moderate risk, orange for high, red for very high. Invoices the model thinks will probably be paid on time don't get a badge at all (anything below 40% is treated as "nothing to warn about").

How the score is calculated

Behind the scenes, for every active invoice we send a small bundle of features to Claude (Anthropic's AI model):

The invoice itself — amount, currency, due date, how many days are left until it's due
Up to the last 10 invoices for this same client — were they paid? how late? what amounts?
Duefy's existing client risk score (if it has been calculated yet for this client) — a precomputed grade A–F summarising the client's overall pay history

Claude produces a 0–100 risk number and a one-line explanation. We store both on the invoice so the badge appears instantly the next time you load the list — no waiting on the AI.

When the prediction is updated

Automatically, once per hour, Duefy picks up to 50 active invoices that don't yet have a prediction or whose prediction is older than 7 days, and refreshes them.
You can also force a refresh through the API endpoint POST /ai/predictLate/ with invoice_id=<id> — useful if you've just paid down a partial balance or marked a client as known-risk and want the prediction to catch up immediately.

What the score is NOT

Not a guarantee. It's a guess, calibrated against historic patterns. A 70% Likely-late prediction means we think they probably will be late — not that they definitely will.
Not a credit score. Duefy doesn't pull credit reports or do any external lookup. The signal comes entirely from how this client has historically interacted with your invoicing.
Not a reason to stop sending reminders. The reminders still go out on the configured schedule; the badge is purely informational so you know which invoices may need a personal follow-up earlier.

Acting on a high-risk badge

A few things that tend to work when an invoice flips high-risk:

Reach out personally before the next automated reminder fires
Confirm the client received the invoice and has no billing-info issues (wrong PO, missing tax line, etc.)
Consider switching that client to an installment-friendly plan, or asking for a partial payment up front on the next engagement

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