Day 30: One month late
A payment this late may feel like it is bordering on rude, but that doesn’t mean you should be. Keep calm and stay professional in your follow up.
If you have already spoken with the client, resend the invoice, along with any new charges to the original invoice, and reference the conversation you had and any concrete plans they had stated to send payment. In addition to email, send it via snail mail, which might get their attention.
You can also begin assessing late payment fees—but this is important—only if you had first explained it in your new client onboarding.
Hitting a customer with an unexpected late fee could cause more animosity than it’s worth. However, it’s perfectly fine to state your terms for late payments right up front and then be sure to itemise them on the next bill.
At this point, you may want to dial up your persistence. Be clear that you need to be paid and make sure you’re talking to the right person. If you are dealing with the accounting department, it might be time to get your client involved again as they have a vested interest in seeing you get paid in a timely fashion so the work can go on.
And that’s because this is an ideal time frame to cease current and future work. Politely let your client know via email that you will have to stop working on current projects until the bills are current.
Here is a 30-day past due invoice email template that you can simply copy, paste, edit and send to your customer: