Invoices that get paid without chasing

Small studios tend to assume late payment is a client behaviour problem. Some of it is. Much more of it is that the invoice did not contain what the accounts payable process needed, so it sat in a queue waiting for someone to work it out.

Find out how they pay before you invoice

At the start of an engagement, ask three questions: who receives invoices, is a purchase order number required, and what is the payment run schedule. For client work billed from recorded hours, online timesheets can keep the supporting record attached to the period being invoiced.

Two minutes, and it eliminates the most common causes of a thirty-day invoice taking seventy. An invoice missing a required PO number is not late — it has been rejected, usually silently.

What the invoice has to contain

• The reference the client needs: PO number, project code, whatever their system requires.
• Line items a non-specialist can understand, mapped to what was agreed.
• The date, the due date as a date rather than a period, and the total.
• Payment details, on the invoice, including everything needed for an international transfer.
• Your tax details as required in your jurisdiction.

'Payment due in 30 days' requires the reader to calculate. A stated date does not, and stated dates get paid closer to time. For UK businesses, GOV.UK guidance on invoicing and payment is a useful reference for the formal payment framework.

Invoice immediately

The single largest controllable factor in when you get paid is when you invoice. A studio invoicing monthly in arrears, a week after month end, has already added five weeks before the clock starts.

Invoice at the milestone, on the day. For ongoing work, invoice on a fixed date and hold it. The administrative habit is worth more to cash flow than any change in terms.

Send it to a person as well as the system

Invoices sent only to an accounts inbox disappear into a process with no advocate. A short note to your actual contact — invoice sent today for the March work, anything you need from me — costs nothing and gives the invoice someone who cares whether it moves. For UK payment disputes, GOV.UK guidance on late commercial payments sets out the statutory framework for late commercial payments.

Make paying easy

Every additional step between the client deciding to pay and the money moving is a delay. Bank details on the invoice, a payment link where practical, and the correct currency and method for their jurisdiction.

For international clients in particular, an invoice requiring an expensive or awkward transfer will be deprioritised in favour of one that will not.

Have a chase sequence, and start it early

A written sequence, applied without emotion: a reminder the day after the due date, a call at seven days, a firmer note at fourteen referencing the terms, and a decision point at thirty.

Consistency matters more than firmness. Clients learn how a supplier behaves, and one that chases predictably from day one is paid earlier than one that stays quiet for six weeks and then escalates.