Chasing late payments without losing the customer (templates included)

Published July 2026 · 7 min read

Late payment is rarely malice. It’s usually disorganisation — your invoice is at the bottom of someone’s inbox. Which means the fix is rarely conflict; it’s polite, persistent visibility. Here’s a ladder that keeps you paid and keeps the relationship.

First: make invoices hard to pay late

• Invoice immediately — the day the job finishes, not Sunday night a fortnight later. From SubReady you can message “Invoice John £600 for decking, due in 14 days” on WhatsApp and it’s created and ready to send (how).
• Short, explicit terms. “Payment within 14 days” beats “on receipt”, which means nothing to anyone.
• Bank details on the invoice. Every extra step is a delay.
• Know who owes you. Ask SubReady “who owes me money?” and get the live list — overdue invoices are flagged, and payment reminders do the routine chasing for you.

The escalation ladder

Day 1 overdue — the friendly nudge

Assume cock-up, not conspiracy:

Day 7 — the firm follow-up

The “tell me now” line matters: it removes the silent excuse and often shakes loose the real issue.

Day 14 — the formal notice

For business-to-business debts the Act allows interest at 8% over the Bank of England base rate plus fixed compensation. You may never add it — naming it is usually enough.

Beyond — decide, don’t drift

Options: a letter before action, the small claims track (Money Claim Online for most trade-sized debts), or writing it off and never working for them again. Any of these beats month four of hopeful waiting. For sums that matter, a solicitor’s letter is cheap relative to the debt.

Site-world specifics

• Retentions (3–5% held back on contracts) are still your money with a release date — diarise and chase them like any invoice.
• “Pay when paid” excuses from contractors have limited legal force in construction — your contract is with them, not their client.
• Part payments: take them, record them, keep chasing the balance. SubReady records part payments and keeps the invoice part-paid rather than lost (recording payments).

Tone: the part people get wrong

Two failure modes lose money. The first is silence — waiting months because chasing feels awkward, by which point the debtor’s priorities have moved on and so has their cash. The second is going nuclear on day three — which wins the battle and loses the customer, the referrals, and sometimes the balance itself. The ladder above works because each rung is proportionate: friendly while cock-up is likely, firm once it isn’t, formal only when firmness failed. Keep every message civil enough to read aloud in a small claims hearing — because that is occasionally where messages end up, and calm correspondence next to a clean paper trail is exactly what wins there.

Should I stop work on other jobs for them?

If a customer owes you meaningfully overdue money, pausing further work is legitimate and often the fastest route to payment — say it plainly and without heat: “happy to book the next phase in once invoice [number] is settled.”

Keep the paper trail automatic

Every chase is stronger when your records are clean: invoice sent on X, reminder on Y, part payment on Z. SubReady keeps invoice statuses (sent, overdue, part-paid, paid) with PDF stamps to match, and your bank statement uploads confirm what actually arrived (matching explained). When you tell it “got paid £600 from John”, the books update in seconds.

Does chasing actually work?

Overwhelmingly, yes — most overdue trade invoices are paid after the first or second polite reminder, because most late payment really is disorganisation. The debts that turn bad are usually the ones nobody chased for months. A fixed routine — nudge at day one, follow up at day seven, formal at fourteen — costs you three short messages per invoice and removes the emotional decision each time. Put the dates in your calendar when you send the invoice, or let SubReady’s reminders carry the routine for you.

Invoice fast, chase calmly on a schedule, escalate once, and let the software remember everything. Try it free for 14 days — details here.