Guides

A chasing sequence that works without souring the relationship

What to do on day 0, day 3, the due date and thirty days after — and why the first email should go before the invoice is late.

Late payment is usually not refusal. It is an invoice that never reached the right inbox, a missing PO reference, or a payment run that happens on the 25th and you missed it by a day. Almost all of that is solved by process rather than pressure.

Before you send

• Ask, at the start of the engagement, who receives invoices and whether a PO is required. One question, asked once, removes the most common cause of delay.
• Ask when their payment run happens. Invoicing two days before it beats invoicing two days after by a month.

The sequence

• Day 0 — send to the named contact and the accounts inbox together. Put the invoice number and the total in the subject line.
• Day 3 — a one-line delivery check: “Just confirming this reached you and nothing else is needed from me.” This is not chasing; it is verifying delivery while it is still early.
• Due date + 1 — short, factual, friendly, invoice attached again. Most people never send this, and most invoices are paid on it.
• Due date + 14 — escalate by copying your original contact rather than only accounts. State the statutory interest position if you have one.
• Due date + 30 — formal notice, and stop new work. Continuing to deliver into an unpaid balance is the decision that turns a slow payer into a bad debt.

Make it trivially easy to pay

Every field they have to look up is a delay. Full bank details on the invoice, the reference to quote, the exact amount, the currency. If you take card or a payment link, put it on the document — the fee is usually cheaper than the fourth email.

Worth knowing

• None of this substitutes for a written agreement. It is what makes a written agreement rarely necessary.