Invoice for 4,200 went out on net 30, we're now at day 45. My contact replies within a day, is always friendly, and says accounts has it and it's in the system. I've asked twice for a payment date and got no date either time. Work is finished and delivered. What's the actual next step that isn't either nagging the same person or going nuclear?
Send a short written note, not a chase, that states the invoice number, the amount, the original due date, and asks them to confirm a payment date in writing. Polite, specific, no adjectives. The point isn't guilt, it's that a request for a date is much harder to answer with 'it's in the system' and it creates a paper trail you'll want if this drags to 90 days.
Adding: send it from a fresh email thread with the invoice attached again. Long chase threads get skimmed, and AP often can't see the attachment buried eight replies down.
45 days isn't unusual for a company of any size, so I'd keep the temperature low for now. What I would do immediately is stop any work in progress for them, not as a threat, just as a policy. It's easier to hold that line before you've delivered the next thing.
One thing that has worked for me embarrassingly often: phone them. An actual call to AP at 10am, friendly, thirty seconds. Email chasing sits in a queue, a person on the phone opens the record while you're talking.
For next time: 50% up front, and put a late fee clause in the contract even if you never charge it. I've invoked mine twice in six years and both times the mere mention of it moved the payment forward two weeks. The clause is a lever, not a revenue stream.
Check what's enforceable where you are before you pick a number. Some places cap it or have a statutory rate that's actually better than whatever you'd have invented.
I have a deposit clause but no late fee. Adding one to the template today.
@pivot_pete · 2mo ago · 3 replies
Stop talking to your contact about it and start talking to accounts payable directly. Ask your contact for the AP email and the internal reference number for your invoice, framed as a logistics question rather than a complaint: 'can you send me the AP contact so I stop bothering you about this'. Nine times out of ten you'll find the invoice was never entered, or it was entered against a PO that doesn't exist, and your contact genuinely doesn't know because they've just been forwarding it. Once you're talking to the person who runs the payment run, you get a date instead of a reassurance.
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@pivot_pete · 2mo ago
Classic. Ask them now what the PO process is for the next job so it never happens again, while they feel slightly guilty.
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@cadence_cam · 2mo ago
Got the AP address, and the invoice was sitting in a queue waiting for a PO number nobody had told me I needed. Payment run is next Thursday.
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