Chasing a late invoice

Before the sequence, one thing worth knowing because it changes the tone of everything that follows: the most common reason an invoice is unpaid is administrative. Wrong address, missing purchase order number, sitting in the inbox of somebody on leave, queued behind a payment run that already closed. Treating the first chase as a dispute makes an awkward conversation out of a filing problem.

The sequence, at a glance:

1. Day 1 past due: confirm it arrived.
2. Day 7: find out where it is stuck.
3. Day 14: telephone.
4. Day 30: escalate to your contact, as a problem to solve.
5. Day 45 and beyond: a formal reminder.

Day 1 past due — confirm it arrived

Send a short, neutral email. Not a demand, a check: the invoice was due yesterday, here it is again attached, can you confirm it is in the system. Attach the invoice rather than referring to it, because if the original went astray you have just fixed the problem in one message.

Send it to accounts payable and copy your contact. If you only have the contact, ask in this email for the right address — you will need it for every invoice after this one anyway.

Day 7 — find out where it is stuck

Now ask a specific question rather than repeating the first email. The most useful one:"Is there anything outstanding at your end — a PO number or an approval — that I can supply?"

This works because it gives the recipient something easy to answer. "Your invoice is late" has no reply that is not either an apology or a defence. "Is anything missing" has a reply that solves it, and very often the reply is that something is indeed missing and nobody thought to tell you.

If you get no response to two emails, that is your signal that email is not the channel. Not that they are ignoring you — that your messages are going somewhere nobody reads.

Day 14 — telephone

This is the step people skip and the one that most often works. A call to accounts payable, politely asking for the status of invoice 2026-041, gets you a definite answer in two minutes: it is scheduled for the run on the 25th, or it was rejected for a missing PO, or they have no record of it at all. Each of those tells you exactly what to do next, and no amount of emailing was going to produce any of them.

Write down what you are told, including the name of the person who told you. Then send a one-line email confirming it. That email is not a threat; it is a record, and it is what makes the next conversation short if the date passes.

Day 30 — escalate to your contact, as a problem to solve

Go back to the person who commissioned the work, not to accounts. They have influence you do not, and they usually have no idea this is happening.

Keep it factual and keep it short: the invoice, the due date, the dates you chased, what accounts told you. What you are asking for is help getting it unstuck, which is a thing a colleague does. What you are not doing is complaining about their company, which is a thing that makes them defensive and slow.

Day 45 and beyond — a formal reminder

A written notice that the invoice is overdue, stating the amount, the original due date, how long it has been outstanding, and what happens next. If your agreed terms include interest or a late fee, this is where you say you intend to apply it — the late payment interest calculator works out what the debt is worth now, day by day, and the late payment fee calculator does the same for a flat or monthly charge.

Only charge what was in the terms before the work started. A fee invented at this point is a fee with nothing behind it, and raising one weakens a position that was otherwise strong.

What comes after this — formal demands, statutory interest, small claims, collection — depends on where you are and on what you agreed, and it is past what a general page should pretend to answer. That is the point to ask somebody who knows your jurisdiction. Almost nothing gets that far.

Things that make chasing shorter

• Get the accounts payable address before you invoice, not after it is late. This removes the most common failure entirely.
• Ask whether a purchase order is needed. In organisations that use them, an invoice without one is not late — it is invisible, and it will stay invisible.
• Put the due date on as a date. "Net 30" has to be converted by somebody with no reason to round in your favour.
• Invoice the day the work is done. Every day you delay is a day added to the front of their cycle, not the back.
• Keep one line of record per invoice — sent, chased, called, promised. Ten seconds each, and it is the whole of your case if you ever need one.