Hot take: I stopped chasing late payers with calls and started sending one short email, and my average wait dropped from 38 days to 11 | Chasing Invoices - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals
Hot take: I stopped chasing late payers with calls and started sending one short email, and my average wait dropped from 38 days to 11
Last spring I had four unpaid bills sitting past 45 days, so I called each office twice a week and got a lot of "we'll look into it" and nothing else. Then I switched to a single plain email on day 7 that just says the amount owed, the invoice number, and a due date, with a late fee line at the bottom. Two of those four paid within 48 hours, and one sent a check from Denver the same afternoon. Has anyone else found that a boring written paper trail works better than being friendly on the phone?
Did you worry at first that an email would come off as too cold compared to a friendly call? I always felt like picking up the phone was the nicer thing to do, but hearing how fast those checks came in makes me wonder if I had it backwards. A plain written record with a date on it seems to light a fire that small talk never did.