It is tempting to attribute late payment to difficult debtors. Some late payment is deliberate — larger businesses have been known to use extended payment terms as a form of short-term financing, paying later as a matter of policy rather than circumstance. The Small Business Protections Bill, now before Parliament, will address this directly — introducing a 60-day cap on payment terms for large firms paying smaller suppliers and making statutory interest mandatory if those terms are exceeded. This is covered in more detail here:
How Accounts Receivable Automation Changes Invoice Chasing for UK SMEs
A professional invoice chasing process has a defined structure. It is not a series of
ad hoc emails sent whenever someone gets round to it.
However, most late payment is not deliberate, but a result of process and structural failures on the creditor side rather than bad faith on the debtor side.
The Process Problem: Four Reasons Chasing Payment Fails
The instinct when invoices go unpaid is to chase harder. More calls, more emails, more pressure. However, harder chasing without a structured process behind it does not get invoices paid faster — it just creates friction — and consequences that go beyond the unpaid invoice, particularly when the person doing the chasing is responsible for managing the client relationship.
1. Invoice Reminders Go Out Late — or Not at All
When invoice chasing is manual, it depends on someone remembering to do it. In a busy finance function, invoice reminders sit behind everything else. The reminder that should have gone out on day 3 goes out on day 17, or does not go out at all, and every day of delay is a day your debtor is not being prompted to pay.
2. There is No Structured Escalation Process
A single reminder sent out and then silence for four weeks is not an invoice chasing system. It is a courtesy notice. Without a defined escalation sequence — increasing in firmness and frequency — there is no pressure on the debtor to act. The invoice sits unpaid not because the debtor cannot pay, but because nothing has happened to make payment feel urgent. Debtors who are never escalated learn quickly that paying your invoices can be deprioritised. The ones who do pay eventually do so on their own timeline, not yours.
3. Debtor Replies Fall Through The Gaps
A payment commitment received on a Monday and not acted on by Thursday is a missed opportunity. A dispute raised in an email that nobody reads for a week is a matter that ages unnecessarily. Manual inboxes do not run the invoice chasing process. An unanswered commitment or unresolved dispute does not pause the invoice — it ages it.
4. Inconsistency Signals That Late Payment is Acceptable
Debtors who are chased consistently, professionally, and promptly learn that outstanding invoices will be followed up. Debtors who receive occasional, apologetic reminders from the same person they speak to about work learn the opposite. Consistency is not just operationally important — it is a signal about how seriously your business takes its own cashflow. An inconsistent process teaches debtors that payment of your invoices can wait.
Each of these failures is avoidable. Together, they explain why consistent invoice chasing — not harder chasing — is the difference between getting paid on time and not.
The Structural Problem: The Wrong People Are Chasing Payment
Most guides on invoice chasing focus on the process — when to send reminders, how to escalate an unpaid invoice, what to say. Very few address the more fundamental problem: the wrong person is doing the chasing in the first place.
These are not finance people. They are people who win work, deliver it, and maintain the relationship that leads to the next contract. Asking them to chase unpaid invoices puts them in an impossible situation: prioritise the relationship or protect cash flow.
There is a direct cost to this that is easy to overlook. According to research by Sage, half of small business CEOs and COOs spend four hours every week dealing with payment issues. In firms where that responsibility falls on partners, account directors, or project managers, the cost is the same — but measured in billable hours and client relationships rather than management
Almost always, people choose the relationship. The reminder gets softened; the follow-up gets delayed; and the matter never escalates because nobody wants to push too hard. The debt may even get written off entirely to avoid an awkward conversation on a call that was supposed to be about something else entirely.
The structural fix is a clean separation. The person managing the client relationship should not be the person chasing the invoice. Invoice chasing belongs with the finance function — running consistently and professionally, with client-facing staff kept informed but never responsible for the routine.
In businesses with a dedicated finance team, this separation can be implemented manually. In many SMEs — where the finance function may be just one person, a part-time bookkeeper, or the business owner themselves — maintaining that separation requires a process that runs without constant manual effort.
That process — consistent, structured, automated — is covered in more detail in
How to Chase Invoices: What a Professional Process Looks Like
A professional invoice chasing process has a defined structure. It is not a series of ad hoc emails sent whenever someone gets round to it.
How Accounts Receivable Automation Changes Invoice Chasing for UK SMEs
A professional invoice chasing process has a defined structure. It is not a series of
ad hoc emails sent whenever someone gets round to it.
