The How to series · Post 7
How to get invoices paid on time without the awkward phone call
For UK trade business owners with invoices sitting unpaid: what the chase costs, and how to run it on a rhythm without the call you keep putting off.
It's 4pm on a Tuesday. The job was signed off three weeks ago. The invoice is unpaid, and the customer is one you'll be quoting to again in the spring. So the call waits until tomorrow, then until next week, and the invoice rolls over with it.
That's the loop: chasing unpaid invoices. The call is put off because it's awkward. The invoice is unpaid because the call was put off. Meanwhile your money sits in someone else's account, and the cash flow does the waiting.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
Research commissioned by the Department for Business and Trade put numbers on it: businesses affected by late payment spend an average of 86 hours a year chasing, and are owed about £17,000 at any given time.
Your own version, as a sketch:
- 15 minutes a day chasing and re-sending, × 5 days = 1.25 hours a week
- × £40 an hour (what your hour earns on a job) = £50 a week
- × 46 working weeks = £2,300 a year of time you'd rather spend earning.
And that's the hours only. The £17,000 is the part that shows up in the bank account.
Score it: the three checks
- Hours. 4. An hour or more a week on the affected invoices, and it grows with the book.
- Repeat. 5. A chase is fully writable: day overdue, polite first line, invoice attached, a firmer line the week after.
- Risk-if-wrong. 4. A nudge that slips a day is a nudge sent a day later. Nothing breaks, and the log shows it went.
Verdict: three checks at 4 or more. Hand it over.
Try one thing this week (free)
Pick the three oldest unpaid invoices. For each, write down the day it was sent, the day it fell due, and the day you'll chase. Put those dates in the calendar now, with the first line of the message drafted. By Friday, send the first one. The chase you've scheduled is the call you don't have to improvise.
Where a person stays
The chase runs on a rhythm: drafted by the machine, approved by you before it sends. A week later, a firmer line, also approved. After that, you ring, with the whole record in front of you: dates sent, dates due, every nudge logged. Money stays a human conversation. The machine's job is to make sure you never have it unprepared.
FAQ
A polite reminder the day after due reads better than a call from a fed-up owner three weeks later, which is the alternative. The tone is approved before anything sends. The awkwardness was in the delay, not the ask.
If yours sends reminders, use it. The loop this post is about is the chasing that still depends on someone remembering to send. The rhythm, the approval and the log are the parts that fix that.
When the nudges stop working. After two approved chases with nothing back, it's a conversation: is there a dispute, are they in trouble, do the terms need sorting. The record in front of you is what makes the call short.
They're exactly why approval-first exists. The machine prepares the nudge. You decide whether to send it, soften it or ring instead. Nothing goes to a customer you want to keep without your tap.
That's yours under your terms, and it's a decision, not an automation. Draft the line, look at the relationship, approve it or hold it. The judgement stays with a person; the dates stay watched.