Most owners we speak to don’t avoid chasing because they’re lazy. They avoid it because the customer who owes them £30,000 is also the customer they want the next order from. So the invoice drifts to 20, 30, 40 days overdue, and the reminder, when it finally goes, sounds annoyed. This guide sets out how to chase late payments in a way customers expect and respect: a fixed routine, plain wording, and a few things to set up before the invoice is even sent.

Why not chasing costs more than chasing

Silence doesn’t protect the relationship. It teaches the customer’s accounts team that your invoices can wait. An accounts team working through a pile of invoices deals first with the ones someone is asking about. If you never call, you are at the back of the queue by design, not by accident.

Here is what that queue costs. Take a made-up business, Example Survey Services Ltd, with £2.4m of annual sales. Each day of sales is worth £2.4m ÷ 365 = about £6,575.

• If its customers pay, on average, 18 days after the due date, about £118,000 is sitting with them (18 × £6,575).
• At 8 days late, that falls to about £52,600 (8 × £6,575).
• The difference, about £65,750, is cash the business would hold instead of its customers, with the same customers and the same work.

That is the prize for a steady routine. None of it needs a single difficult conversation, if the routine starts before the invoice is late. Our guide to how much cash late payers are holding shows how to work out your own figure.

Set it up before the invoice goes out

The politest chase is the one you never need to make. Most invoices that end up overdue were stuck from the day they were sent: wrong contact, no purchase order number, or a figure the customer doesn’t recognise. Fix these at the quote stage.

• Get the purchase order number and the name of the person who approves invoices when the customer accepts the quote. Put both on the job sheet.
• Write the payment terms on the quote, in plain words: “Payment due 30 days from the invoice date.” Our article on payment terms wording has clauses you can adapt. If nothing is agreed, GOV.UK guidance says the customer must pay within 30 days of getting your invoice or the goods or service.
• Make the invoice easy to match. Quote reference, PO number, job address and a short description that the person approving it will recognise.
• Ask one question when you send it: “Is there anything that would stop this being paid on the due date?” It brings queries to the surface before the due date, not after it.

A routine to chase late payments without the awkwardness

Customers rarely resent a routine. They resent being chased by someone who sounds surprised or upset. A fixed timetable takes the emotion out, because every customer gets the same steps on the same days. Here is the routine we suggest for a business on 30-day terms:

1. 3 days before the due date: a friendly heads-up email. “Just a note that invoice 1042 for £8,400 is due on Friday. Could you confirm it’s on this week’s payment run?”
2. The day after the due date: a phone call. Not an email. Ask whether it has been approved and when it will be paid. Write down the date they give you.
3. 7 days overdue: an email confirming the call. “Thanks for your help on Tuesday. You mentioned it would be paid on the 14th. I’ll look out for it.”
4. 14 days overdue: a call to the person who placed the order. They want your next job done well, and they can usually unblock their own accounts team faster than you can.
5. 21 days overdue: owner to owner. A short, calm call from you to their director. “I’d like to keep working with you. Can we agree a date for invoice 1042?”
6. After that: decide, don’t drift. Agree a written payment plan, or pause new work until the account is up to date if your terms allow it. Before taking any formal step, speak to a solicitor about your options.

Put every step in your diary or your accounting software on the day you raise the invoice, so it happens whether or not anyone remembers. Xero and QuickBooks both have automatic invoice reminders that can send the emails for you; the phone calls should stay with a person.

Wording that keeps it friendly

Three rules for every chase message:

• Be specific. Invoice number, amount, due date. “Just checking in on the account” invites a vague reply.
• Ask a question that needs a date. “When is it scheduled to be paid?” gets you further than “Please pay at your earliest convenience.”
• Assume a process problem, not bad faith. “Has it reached the right person?” lets the customer fix it without losing face.

Separate the query from the money

A common reason an invoice stalls is a query on one line. A £12,000 invoice can sit for six weeks over a £600 variation nobody agreed in writing. When a query comes up:

• Ask the customer to pay the undisputed part now and hold back only the amount in question.
• Send the evidence for the disputed line (the email approving the extra visit, the signed timesheet) the same day.
• Set a date to settle it, and put it in the diary like any other chase.

Then fix the cause, so the next job has written approval for extra work before it starts.

Who should chase, and who shouldn’t

In many engineering and technical firms, chasing falls to whoever has a spare moment, or to the engineer who did the work. Neither works well. The engineer doesn’t want to spoil a good site relationship, and spare moments never come.

Give one named person the job, with an hour in the diary each week to work through the overdue list. Keep the owner for the 21-day call. Customers notice when a director rings, and it works best when it doesn’t happen often.

When a good customer starts paying later

Watch for a customer whose payments drift: 5 days late, then 12, then 25. It can mean their own cash is tight, a new person in their accounts team, or a change in how they approve invoices. Call early and ask, in a helpful way. For their next job, consider a deposit at order and stage payments at agreed milestones, so less of your money is at risk at any one time. If you’re unsure about credit risk on a large customer, your accountant can help you review it.

What to do this week

• Run an aged debtors report and list every invoice more than 7 days overdue.
• Call the top five by value. Ask for a payment date and write it down.
• Choose one person to own chasing, and book their weekly hour.
• Write your three chase emails (before due, 7 days, 14 days) once, and save them as templates.
• Add the PO number and invoice approver to your quote acceptance form.

Our free Late Payment Kit includes chase email templates you can adapt. If you’d like to see how we review the whole route from quote to cash, here is how it works.

See what your late payers are holding

Our free leak calculator takes four numbers and shows roughly how much cash late payment and slow invoicing are holding in your business. It takes about two minutes. If the figure is bigger than you’d like, book a free 30-minute call and we’ll look at where to start.