Getting paid
The invoice is not where you get paid. The quote is.
The short answer
Most late payment is friction, not refusal. It is decided when you write the quote — milestones they can see, a date, and how to pay. Ask at handover, while you are standing in front of the work.
The job finished three weeks ago. The invoice went out the same night. There has been nothing since, and you are going to see these people at the shop.
The instinct is to write a firmer email. That is working on the wrong end of it — by this point the thing that would have prevented this was written down six weeks ago, in a document you have already sent.
Most late payment is friction, not refusal
Worth getting this right before anything else, because it decides the tone of everything you do next. People who have no intention of paying exist and they are rare. What is common is an invoice sitting in a spam folder, or a bank transfer nobody has the details for, or a household where the person who pays is not the person you dealt with.
It is the same shape as a quote going quiet: silence is not a decision. And friction is fixable, usually with one message that removes it, which is a completely different job from persuading somebody to pay.
It was decided at the quote
One of the lines a quote needs is when money is due. What that line has to do is tie every payment to something the customer can walk outside and look at. Not a date, not a percentage on its own — a thing that has visibly happened.
| The line most quotes contain | What goes wrong with it | The version that gets paid |
|---|---|---|
| “Payment terms: 50 / 50” | Half of what, when? Usually read as half on day one, which is the one arrangement nobody is comfortable with. | “Nothing on the day we start. Half once the posts are set and you can walk the line. The rest when it is finished and cleared.” |
| “Payment on completion” | Whose completion? Yours is when the last panel goes on; theirs may include a gate that sticks. | “Completion means the fence is up, the gate swings and latches, and the site is clear. You will see all three.” |
| “Net 30” | Fine between businesses, meaningless to a household. Nobody knows what day that is. | “The invoice is dated the day we finish and is due seven days after. That will be the 21st.” |
| Nothing about how to pay | They meant to pay, then needed the bank details, then it was Thursday. | Bank details on the quote as well as the invoice, and a line saying which method you prefer. |
The asking is done at handover
Exactly like a review, and for the same reason. There is a short window when they are standing in front of the finished thing, pleased with it, and the money is the least awkward it is ever going to be. Every day after that it gets harder to raise.
It is one sentence and it is not a demand: “I will send the invoice tonight — it is due in seven days, and bank transfer is easiest, the details are on it.” Said out loud, once, in front of the work. Now the invoice is an expected thing rather than a surprise arriving in an inbox.
And make it possible to pay while you are still standing there. The whole argument of this article is that late money is friction, and the largest single piece of friction is the gap between deciding to pay and being sat at a laptop with the bank details. A link they can open on the phone closes that gap to about twenty seconds — a good number of people will pay in the driveway, before the invoice has technically been sent. The fee for taking it that way is small and it is competing against two weeks of your money sitting in somebody else’s account.
When it is genuinely late
By the time you are past two weeks with no reply at all, the friction explanation is thinner and it is worth being plain. Plain is not the same as threatening, and the difference matters more in a trade than almost anywhere, because your next six jobs come from people who know these people.
| How overdue | What actually helps | What to keep out of it |
|---|---|---|
| A day or two | A text offering to resend it. Assume it never arrived. | Any suggestion that they are avoiding it. They almost certainly are not. |
| A week | Call, in the daytime, friendly. “Just making sure it got to you — is there anything you need from me?” | A second email. If the first one did not work, more of it will not. |
| Two weeks | One short written note: what the work was, what is outstanding, the date it was due, and a date you would like it settled by. | Capitals, deadlines in bold, or anything that reads as a template. It stops sounding like the person who built the fence. |
| Longer, and no contact at all | Stop starting anything else for them, and take proper advice about what is available where you trade. | Turning up unannounced, saying anything about it publicly, or taking work back out. All three cost more than the invoice. |
Late money does not cost you a fee. It costs you the next job, because the materials for it are sitting in somebody else’s account. That is the real damage, and it is the reason the milestone in the middle of the job matters more than anything you write afterwards.
The one that pays for itself
If you change nothing else, change the middle payment. A stage payment tied to something visible — posts set, base laid, first fix done — does three things at once. It puts materials money in your account before you have spent all of it. It tells you early whether this person pays, while you can still stop. And it gives them a moment to be pleased with progress rather than only at the end.
It also removes the conversation nobody wants, which is asking for money up front from somebody who has not seen you do anything yet. You are not asking for trust — you are asking them to pay for a thing that is standing in their garden.
The deposit, and the difference that makes it fair
There is a line above that needs qualifying, because taken literally it can cost you badly. Nothing on the day we start is right when the materials are a few hundred. It is not right when you are ordering four thousand of timber and fittings for somebody you met two weeks ago, because then you are lending them the money and calling it a job.
The distinction is not the amount. It is what the money is for. Asking to be paid up front because you might not be paid later is asking for trust, and it is uncomfortable for exactly that reason — they cannot see anything yet. Asking for the cost of a specific order, named, before you place it, is not asking for trust at all. It is asking them to buy the materials for their own fence, which is what they were going to do anyway.
Write it that way and it stops being awkward: “There is 1,850 of timber and fittings in this. I order it the week before we start and I would ask for that part then — I will send you the order. Nothing else is due until the posts are set.” It names the figure, names what it buys, and leaves your own labour entirely at risk, which is the part you can afford to carry.
Keep the deposit to the materials figure and not a penny more, and never take one for a job that starts tomorrow — at that point it is just money in advance and it will read that way. The moment a deposit stops matching an order is the moment it becomes the thing customers have been warned about.
The short version
- Late payment is usually friction. Treat it as friction first.
- Tie every payment to something they can walk out and see.
- Never “50/50” without saying half of what, and when.
- Define completion in the quote, in their words, not yours.
- Say what is coming at handover, out loud, once.
- Invoice the same day, with a date rather than a number of days.
- Day after due: a text offering to resend. A week later: call.
- Keep every word of it sounding like the person who did the work.
- A deposit is for a named order, never for trust — and never more than the materials.
- Let them pay from the phone while you are still there.
None of this is about being firmer. Firmness is what people reach for when the arrangement was never clear enough to be firm about. Make the arrangement visible at the quote and most of this conversation stops happening.