Cutting Your Payment Cycle by 30%

Slow payment is usually treated as a customer problem. Most of the delay is actually created inside the business, and that part is fixable without a difficult conversation.

Invoice the day the work is done

An invoice raised a fortnight after delivery has already spent a fortnight of its payment terms. Same-day invoicing, with the correct purchase order number and the details the customer's accounts team needs, removes the most common cause of a query and the delay that follows it.

Reminders before the due date, not after

A polite note a week before payment is due gets the invoice into the customer's payment run. Chasing after the due date means waiting for the next run, which is usually another month. The cadence matters more than the wording.

Credit rules applied consistently

Agree limits and terms per customer, and enforce them on new orders. Businesses that keep supplying a customer who is ninety days overdue are financing them, usually without deciding to.

Work the ageing report weekly

Sort by value and age, and call the top ten. Most of the outstanding balance sits in a handful of invoices, and spreading effort evenly across a long list is why the total never moves.

Make payment easy: a payment link on the invoice removes several days of friction on its own.