What do you do when a client doesn’t pay?
Send four short messages over four weeks, starting the day before it’s due. Every hour you spend chasing is an hour you could have billed, so under about $500 the chase costs you more than the invoice is worth.
Very few unpaid invoices in a practice of one were refused. The one on your mind probably landed on a busy Tuesday, got glanced at on a phone in a checkout line and sank under forty newer emails. The client still likes you. They forgot.
That’s why the first message goes out the day before the invoice is due.
The four weeks
Send one message at each point below, and only one.
- The day before it is due
Remind them before anybody is late
Nothing has gone wrong yet, so this one costs nothing to send.
- Three days late
Assume it was missed, because it usually was
Keep any tone out of it. Nothing has happened yet that's worth being annoyed about.
- Two weeks late
Say what happens next, once
Name a consequence you'll follow through on. Don't name one you won't.
- A month late
The last message before it becomes a decision
It states the amount, the deadline and what follows, in words you'd be content for a third party to read later.
- After the final notice
Decide with the arithmetic, not the anger
The question now is whether pursuing it costs you more than it recovers, and that depends on the amount.
What chasing costs you
Every hour you spend chasing is an hour nobody pays you for. Spend one on the phone over a $180 invoice and you’ve given up an hour you could have billed at $134. By the second hour, the chase has cost you more than the invoice will bring back.
So pick your ceiling today, on a calm afternoon, and hold to it on the day you’re annoyed.
Send the four messages and then stop.
At a rate of $134 an hour, four hours of chasing has already cost you more than the invoice. Write it off, keep the record, and don't work with them again.
One formal demand letter, then small claims if you mean it.
A filing fee is usually $50 to $150 and no lawyer is needed, but budget most of a day. Only file if you'd turn up on the date.
A lawyer's letter first. It costs a few hundred and often ends it.
At this size the letter alone often recovers it, and you can still go further if it doesn't.
Small claims limits, filing fees and what counts as a formal demand vary by state and by country. This is what the arithmetic looks like, not legal advice.
When the silence means something
A client who goes quiet after a session that didn’t land, or after work they never said a word about, has a problem with something other than the invoice. Four reminders won’t tell you what it is.
Watch the timing. When the unpaid invoice sits next to a canceled session or an email they never answered, you’re looking at a disagreement. Skip the reminder and ask them what happened.
The other sign is a client who argues about the amount. They didn’t understand what they agreed to, and the fix for that belongs in your agreement.
Questions people ask
How long should you wait before chasing an invoice?
Three days after the due date. By then most late invoices are an email nobody has opened yet. Wait two weeks and the first message becomes a bigger deal than it ever needed to be.
Should you charge a late fee?
Only if it was in the terms they accepted before the work, and only if you mean to charge it. A late fee that first appears on day thirty is an opening offer, and the client will haggle with it.
Do you stop working for a client who hasn’t paid?
Yes, and tell them once. Every session you deliver while an invoice ages teaches the client that the due date is decoration. Stopping after one unpaid session is a lot easier than stopping after four.
Is it worth taking a client to small claims court?
Rarely under $500, and often over $2,000. Filing usually costs $50 to $150, you don’t need a lawyer, and you should plan on losing most of a day to it.
How do you avoid it happening again?
Take payment at booking for anything short. Ask for half up front on anything large. Put the same due date on everything, and have terms the client accepted before they owed you a cent.
If you’d rather never send these yourself
Short work is paid at booking, and everything else carries a due date. The day an invoice is late you get one Today item, and the reminder goes out in your name on the interval you set. It stops after three.