Chasing money is the worst hour of the week: it is awkward, it is unpaid, and it puts you on the wrong footing with someone you would like to work for again. Most of it can be designed out. Nearly every fix is on the invoice itself, or in the day you send it.
Send it the same day
The single biggest lever is not the wording of the reminder, it is the gap between finishing the work and sending the bill. An invoice that lands while the drive is still visibly clean gets paid off the back of a job well done. One that lands eleven days later arrives as an interruption, into a week the customer has already spent.
Same day, from the van, is a habit worth building — and if the job finished at six, the evening still counts. A fortnight's delay in issuing is a fortnight added to every payment term you have, and it is the part you control completely.
Six things to fix on the invoice
1. A date, not a duration
"Payment within 14 days" makes the customer do arithmetic. "Due Friday 22 August" is a thing that can be diarised. Put the due date near the total, in the same size as the total.
2. The bank details where they can be seen
Account name, sort code and account number, on the invoice, not in the covering message and not "as before". Every extra step between reading the invoice and making the transfer is a chance for it to become tomorrow's job.
3. A payment reference you chose
Give the invoice a reference and ask them to use it. Without one, a bank statement is a column of first names and you are reconciling by memory. With one, matching payments to invoices takes a couple of minutes a week.
4. The work, in the customer's words
"Labour and materials" invites a question, and a question delays a payment. Bill the job the way you described it in the quote — same wording, same order — so the invoice can be read against the quote without anyone having to think.
5. Your name on it, not your software's
The invoice is a piece of your business turning up in someone's inbox. Your logo, your phone number, your email. A document that looks like it came from a template farm gets treated like one.
6. Terms that fit the customer
Householders will usually pay on the day or within a few days, and a 30-day term simply invites them to take 30 days. Commercial customers, letting agents and builders run on their own cycles — ask up front what theirs is, and who the invoice needs to be addressed to. "Send it to accounts by the 25th and it goes in the month-end run" is worth knowing before you send it to the site manager instead.
Deposits are for materials, not for suspicion
On a job with real up-front cost — sand, sealant, a hire — asking for a deposit is normal and nobody blinks if you say what it is for. Framed as covering the materials, it reads as organised. Framed as "in case you do not pay", it reads as an accusation.
When it does go late: a ladder, not a row
Chasing works when it is early, unemotional and consistent. Each step assumes the last one was simply missed, because it usually was.
| When | What you send | Tone |
|---|---|---|
| Due date + 2 days | The invoice again, attached, with one line: "Just checking this reached you — happy to re-send if not." | Assume it went to junk. |
| + 7 days | A short message naming the amount and the reference, asking when it is likely to be paid. | A question, not a demand. |
| + 14 days | A phone call. Ask if there is a problem with the work or the paperwork. | Curious. Half of these end with "our system had the wrong email". |
| + 30 days | A written final reminder: amount, dates, what happens next, and a date to pay by. | Formal, still civil. This is the one you may need later. |
Keep every step in writing where you can find it again. If a debt ever does need to go further — a letter before action, the small claims track, a debt recovery service — what matters is a clear record of the work agreed, the invoice sent, and the reminders that followed.
Interest and charges, briefly
When the customer is another business, UK law gives you a statutory right to claim interest and a fixed recovery charge on a commercial debt that is paid late, whether or not your terms mention it. When the customer is a householder, you can only charge interest if your terms said so before the work started — so if you want that right, put it in the quote.
In practice, most small businesses use interest as a lever rather than an income: mentioning that a debt is now accruing it moves more invoices than actually invoicing for £8.14. This is general information rather than legal advice — for a debt worth arguing over, take proper advice.
The habit underneath all of it
Once a week, look at one list: everything unpaid, oldest first, with the number of days overdue next to it. Ten minutes. Anything at two days gets a re-send, anything at fourteen gets a call. Debts do not get harder to collect because customers change their minds — they get harder because everyone, including you, forgets the detail.
The short version
- Invoice the same day. It is the part of the delay that is entirely yours.
- Put a due date, bank details and a payment reference where they cannot be missed.
- Bill in the same words you quoted in.
- Ask commercial customers how their payment run works before you send anything.
- Chase on a ladder, in writing, starting two days after the due date.
- Ten minutes a week on an overdue list beats an afternoon of phone calls a quarter.
An invoice from the van, and a list of who has not paid
Services CRM builds the invoice from the job you just finished — your logo, your bank details, your reference — and keeps the unpaid ones in one place with the days overdue counted for you.
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