Dear customer why aren’t you paying my invoice?
Hi Friends , this week I will be focussing on CASH and how you can collect it more quickly from your customers.
The first question to ask if you have not received payment is quite simply WHY?
In my looong experience working with small business, I have found that it is only a small minority of customers who actually refuse to pay or who are in financial difficulty and can’t pay. Overwhelmingly, the main reason I see for slow payments is usually administrative and can usually be resolved fairly easily. So, before you call the man with the big boots to go and collect cash from your customers I suggest you check the following things :
- Has your customer actually received the invoice ?
Did you hit send, was the email address correct , is it sitting in their email junk?
- Have you completed your end of the bargain?
Have you provided the services that are being invoiced. Is there any reason for the customer to be disgruntled or are they waiting for you to do anything before they pay? If so, sort that out, and then they will pay.
- Are they waiting on any other information?
Do they require a purchase order to be added to the invoice? Has the invoice been made out to the correct legal entity? Is the invoice sitting on someone’s dusty desk waiting to be approved for payment? If it is, gently push it along so that it lands with the person who can actually pay you. Making friends with your customer’s accounts team is always handy.
I guarantee that if you resolve all of these issues with your customers you will only be left with a few troublesome clients who you will need to negotiate with. My next post will talk about how to tackle these difficult debts.
Friends, if you need help to work through any of these administrative invoicing issues you know who to call