Ask HN: How do you handle clients who don't pay on time? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you handle clients who don't pay on time?

39 pointsHustlr78650 comments

I run a supply role at a company during the day and I'm building a B2B tool on the side. The problem I keep running into — both at work and in my family's business — is that chasing overdue invoices is manual, awkward, and nobody has a good system for it.

Most small businesses I've talked to do one of three things: send the QB/Xero auto-reminder and hope for the best, send a WhatsApp message themselves when the reminder doesn't work, or just let it slide because the relationship feels more important than the cash.

The second one is interesting to me. WhatsApp works — it gets read, it gets replies — but it's completely manual and people do it inconsistently.

Curious what founders and operators here actually do. Are there tools that work? Have you found a workflow that doesn't feel like you're begging for your own money?

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I've worked in industries where customers don't like paying invoices.

Fortunately, the widget we sell is good enough they'll want to buy again within a few months. So our rule is pretty simple - we won't send another batch of widgets until they've paid the overdue invoice for the last batch.

And if they've dicked us around too much in the past - we send them a proforma invoice. They can pay before we dispatch.

> just let it slide because the relationship feels more important than the cash

What use is a 'relationship' with a customer that doesn't pay?

Sure, you might hope to parlay a good relationship into larger orders in the future. It's natural to have dollar signs cloud your vision when you're talking to someone at a well known multi-billion-dollar company. You hope this person ordering $500 of widgets for a prototype will place an order for $500,000 of widgets in due course.

But the truth is, for every person with the authority to place that huge order there are 100+ interns building one-off prototypes during 3 month summer internships. If your contact can't get a $500 invoice paid, then you're not talking to someone with the authority to spend $500,000.

> What use is a 'relationship' with a customer that doesn't pay?

The most important take-away you’ll learn in this thread, OP. Sometimes it’s a hard lesson to learn, but the sooner you learn it, the better.

In what industry do you work?

I often hear about this attitude of putting the customer first. Having excellent customer service. The one thing people forget though, customers pay. When you're not getting paid according to the terms, they're not a customer anymore, they're a thief.

If your customer is legitimately having a money issues or something else, and they are actually a customer, they will contact you and attempt to work something out. If they just ignore you, they are not a customer and should be treated as such.

> If your customer is legitimately having a money issues or something else, and they are actually a customer, they will contact you and attempt to work something out.

Depending on customer personality, they may or may not contact you. It's also possible that if they're having money issues that they are freaking out, frozen, and scared to reach out. Though I'm thinking more of very small businesses here where it's more of a personal thing than a corporate thing.

On your payment reminder notes, when it really is late, you can consider putting in some wording that hints at "we know sometimes small businesses can have financial issues" and genuinely suggest there are ways you can help. If it's a small friendly business in a scary time, they might be genuinely relieved that you show that you care... while simultaneously, if it's a business that isn't in financial trouble at all, and was just trying to stretch out their Net 30 to earn extra interest, they may be so outraged by the implication that they are "poor" they they will pay up quickly just to show they are not poor.

It won't help every case, and this only happened very very rarely to me (so I'd defer to the judgment of others). But depending on your customers, this could be a useful approach to have in your toolkit.

If there’s no way to tell between a good customer and a bad customer who does the wrong thing then the difference doesn’t matter

In the early days of my business, when we were more of a service company than a software company, I read this quote and it informed everything that we did:

>>> Nothing depreciates faster than the value of a service rendered. <<<

Always get paid in advance. We always had more customers than we could service, so we only worked on stuff that was already paid for. Customers became their own bill-collector when they were trained from contract signing that is how things work. Terms like "2/10 Net 30" will never make your life easier than simply getting paid first.

larger customers expect net-terms (e.g. net-30) and have monthly accounts-payable processes. No customer pays instantly.

my strategy is to raise prices, then offer a discount for customers who pay net-7 and even greater discount if they pay in advance.

fun story: I once got $400,000 from a famous venture capital firm who was buying a service from my company and they paid 6 months in advance for 5% discount. In other words, dilution free financing from a VC fund !!!

Anyone else feel like this post is AI generated? I've been seeing a lot of posts like this on reddit programming subs and now it's happening on HN too... The pattern is:

- some generic context, containing a bunch of em dashes of course, with a vague background that isn't tied to a specific incident

- a claim like "most ___ I've talked to about this" within the first few sentences.

- ends with a series of questions as though they're soliciting more input

I feel like these all must be coming from a single person who's trying to automate market research and sell the data or something

The discussion the post has created is still valuable even we don’t know the motivations behind the post. That was true before LLMs as well (people lie and exaggerate on the internet all the time).

Personally I give the benefit of the doubt to a post I suspect of being LLM if there isn’t an obvious harm (for example, the user shilling a product in the comments). There are still some benign reasons to use LLMs for posts like these.

Yep. Grammar and structure is too perfect. "Just let it slide" shows a disconnect. Also the title felt completely out of place to me for HN, I clicked it out of curiosity to see. Good advice given nonetheless.

My friend recommended to put a small percent late payment fee, stated in the contract and on each invoice.

Haven't really used it yet because we don't have a problem with late payments, but I do think it would work, because our B2B customers are usually very appreciative of saving small percentages when we offer it, and unlikely to just give up that money by being late.

it doesn’t work if they are insolvent, and it can also backfire if they see this clause as a way to get a cheap cash loan. you should still have the clause but i think if this as a tool for the collections attorney to use if the customer defaults.

You set the rate that is punitive.

It doesn’t work when solvency is an issue but you should know your customers and mitigate that risk accordingly

The rates aren't cheap. The standard late payments I've seen work out to approximately 19.5-20% APR.

Start doing it now, before ot becomes a problem!

My three rules:

- A delay of more than one month without justification = immediate suspension of service.

- If the service was suspended due to non-payment, next collaboration only continues with full prepayment for the next month.

- Transfer of intellectual property and copyrights only after final payment.

Companies pay the utilities because they'll cut off service at some point.

You gotta be a utility and have a service you can cut off.

This is a succint explanation of a phenomenon that looks a bit cut-throat. In your personal life if you stop paying stuff until it gets cutoff it's because you are having financial trouble, but maybe if your life had incentives for budget cuts and expenditure microoptimization, you'd constantly be asking yourself whether you need to pay Bill A and Bill B and having to explain to yourself that actually Bill B was for phone and that's important for family and even business.

You communicate clearly, politely to your primary customer contact. You explain that the commercial arrangement is you provide service, their side of the deal is the pay on time every time and you never need to chase them.

You explain kindly that this is the only work arrangement that works for you, and that your company policy is to stop providing service if there’s an outstanding bill.

You explain kindly and patiently that it’s not practical for you to work with companies that can’t pay the bills and you’ll end the relationship if there’s three times it happens.

Then you stick to your word absolutely. If you waver, fold, let them break the terms, then none of this was worth anything.

Be willing to drop customers who don’t pay on time.

You’ll find mostly they train up pretty good. The rest ? Don’t stay in an abusive relationship.

this does NOT need to be explained. They have accounts receivable too. They know how this works. Put the process in the contract and follow the process.

Is it a Saas? Either way, Call them. Yes call. Ask for accounts payable. Ask what the problem is, missing invoice, missing approval etc. Ask them how to fix this. Ask them for a payment date. This is what credit controllers do all day. Don't threaten, just ask.

If they are evasive, then state when you will be withdrawing the service.

Next month before it is due, call them, check they have the invoice on their ledger and ask the payment date. The squeaky hinge gets the oil. Eventually it gets easier to pay you than deal with your calls. Accounts payable people often have more discretion than they will ever let on about who gets paid when. They put the people who call higher up the list to save the aggravation

Escalations. Tell them that if you continue to receive late payment then you will have to withdraw credit and put them on advance payment.

Tell them you will have to 'take it further, which may include collection activities' or 'recoveryaction'. Deliberately broad.

Hold future work.

Write them a letter stating their account is in hold. Enclose a copy of the statement of account and invoices.

Next you will need to find a debt collection lawyer in your country. In the UK you fill out an online form and pay about £30 for a Letter before Action'... actually called something else now. Let the lawyer guide you from there.

Always send statements, always call.

That is how credit control is handled professionally. It is part of my job to manage this at several companies.

I'm not and have never been in your situation but consider this a summary of all anecdotes I've heard mixed with negotiation techniques.

The thing I would personally do is make sure the client has paid their invoice before providing the service. Essentially, this means paying for all previous missed invoices along with the next one. If you make people pay before giving the service, I think you avoid the case altogether.

Now, if you want to be harder: just ban them. Take them to Collections (or whatever the name is in the USA) and then never provide services to them ever again. This sounds really harsh and unfair but by not paying they also know how far they can go without giving you a dime. "Give them a hand and they take the arm."

upfront billing of professional services (“consulting”) is worse for a few reasons, (1) requires the customer to trust you more (they cannot withhold payment if you screw them or violate the contract) but generally the service provider is the riskier party (2) it causes service gaps (lost billable days) when the customer is late which is almost every month, (3) it requires you to define in advance exactly how many units will be billed and causes a service gap when you hit the retainer limit, (4) it gives the customer a natural ability to throttle billable hours which leads to unpredictable revenue. This all leads to higher bill rates, which is less palatable than a commitment to full time services contract. everyone involved wants predictable spend.

if this is an annual renewal payment for a saas, you need a process to follow which must include 60 and 30 day notices before the invoice, the rest varies greatly based on size - is this $1200/yr (credit card auto charge) or $120k (high touch sales rep)

It surely depends on what the OP is providing. If I was a consultant and the company stopped paying, I would obviously stop working for them on the next day. Otherwise, you could start charging weekly or daily instead of monthly. But then again, if they're not paying...

If I was providing a software or utility, the second you stop paying you are out. This actually happened to me in Japan because my mobile provider stopped sending paper invoices so I forgot to pay. I got cut off without any warning and as soon as I paid I got my access back.

Gosh, I would always get behind on my dental invoices, because they would have some issue with my insurance, and I would try to figure out why the insurance company thought my policy didn’t exist or something, but the insurance company itself was Byzantine and I could never figure out who to talk to (and this is probably why the issue occurred in the first place)…

The office would just send a reminder invoice every so often, and if it got really behind, they would have their front desk person call me.

This was annoying for both parties but did not seem particularly harmful. Both of us were solvent. The amounts were not large. They had a routine process for unpaid invoices. And I would be embarrassed to show up in 6 months without having paid for the last visit.

If you’re hurting for funds, I would suggest letting them know directly that you need your invoices to be paid on time. Sometimes bills get paid late out of a sense that it’s okay to pay them late, but you might get more prompt payment from the well-meaning if you express that you need something different. I personally would have prioritized re-calling and re-calling the dental insurance company more (read: unpaid labor on my part, requiring me to demonstrate greater effectiveness than the office’s own claims staff) if someone were actually needing the payment sooner.

Giving your customers the idea that you really need the money is terrible advice.

They will think you’re insolvent and start looking for alternatives.

It’s better to just be persistent about “reminders” and for saas set up a clear, well communicated cutoff time for unpaid accounts.

net 30 terms, invoice exactly on time NEVER late, “please find attached invoice N, also kindly following up on invoice N-1 which is now past due”, each invoice lists invoice history and payment status (red if overdue), solvent companies will respond, insolvent companies will ignore, send a polite second reminder at 1 week, all solvent companies will respond and remedy here, if no reply send notice of breach at 2 weeks, even insolvent companies will reply to this, they will lie and tell you payment is en route but it will get stuck over some technicality, follow breach process exactly, disengage services after cure period expires and hand it to collections. If your customer is not communicating with you about invoices THEY ARE NOT SOLVENT. If payments are slowing down and tardiness is increasing, they are not being forgetful, THEY ARE RUNNING OUT OF MONEY. They are fundraising behind the scenes and they are hoping for the best while transferring risk to you, or their customer is delinquent and they are aligning payments to transfer that risk to you. Most customers see themselves as good and honest, they are mostly not supervillains trying to screw their counterparties at every opportunity, but they are also taking on hidden business risks and they are underwriting that risk with assumptions like “this payment aligns with this source of cash and everything is balanced and proper”. The moment their assumptions are violated, the moment a risk appears that they don’t consider part of their risk model, or a hope/expectation did not pan out, they will experience anxiety and fear, they will tighten their control over their cashflow to try to establish agency and fortify themselves against the threat.

The relationship is NOT more important because THEY ARE NOT SOLVENT. Do not allow subcontractors to send their own invoices, you must do this yourself to ensure that all communication is exactly on time and never late. Lateness and inconsistency on your side erodes your ability to run a tight collections process, because if you are lackadaisical about payments then they can be too. When you lose control of collections it is not because of text vs email or language, it is because you don’t respect your own process and therefore they don’t respect it either. And when the water gets choppy, they will not think twice (they will not even think at all) about pushing on boundaries because you did not clearly establish them. They are facing a threat, their amygdala is in control, they may not even consciously realize they are doing it. But your process will make that boundary a bright red line, it will force them to make screwing you a conscious decision. And you will know exactly where you stand at all times.

For customers who repeatedly do this - put your prices up by 10%. Offer 10% discount for paying within net 15.

I don't have much advice here because ever situation is different and the sensitivies of asking is different with every organization. What's worked for me is being absolutely direct and honest in the situation and the urgency of needing pay. Often times the other side doesn't realize how much it affects you, and shattering that illusion is what's needed. In other words -- you kinda need to make them feel like an asshole for not paying you. Sometimes it doesn't work, though. At some point you will need to raise it as a legal issue and begin refusing work.

Good luck!

My experience is that most of these are slipups, completely unintended, and that a kind reminder is actually appreciated.

Cutomers are mid-sized companies (60-600 employees, give or take) all based in Europe FWIW.

I do Net 30, so I'd be out 2 months worth of services. IMHO I specialize in keeping things painless when people work with me so I'd rather be out 2 months of revenue than a customer encountering game changing pain because I was ultra-harsh. I haven't made enough money to switch to accrual accounting so this is okay. I'm sure a day will come when I regret it, but it's been fine so far.

What my company does is the following:

1. We schedule payment up front before we do work (retainer), but we do not force payment due to emergency or cash flow issues of companies.

2. After 2 weeks we start charging compounding interest on the payment.

3. If 2 months go by and we have not been paid, we stop all services, and the outstanding invoices continue to accrue interest till paid

Reminder of Mike Monteiro's famous 2011 talk, "Fuck You, Pay Me":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U

Which even Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) references:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gie-cdO__U

Include clear payment terms and penalty interest. For me, this looks like 30 payment window, reminders fortnightly there after, and a money claim lodged in the small claims court at 90 days. You’ll almost certainly get your money ahead of court appearance (assuming they haven’t gone bankrupt).

Incentive it!

Firms paying on time get discounts and other perks...make it a top headline or blurb in all your marketing...

Firms that follow their contract get preferential treatment.

FTFY

Just.....no. Don't give them an inch.

Switched to requiring 50% upfront for any new client work. Lost a couple of prospects but completely eliminated late payment issues. For smaller projects I just go full payment upfront now. The clients worth keeping never push back on it.

I require payment upfront before work starts. Simply make it clear you are not a bank and are not extending credit. If your invoices are small setting up a recurring credit card payment is an option with various payment platforms.

I find it useful to have goons on payroll that make these kinds of problems go away

50% up front.

Put a time-bomb in there for amount of days after completed work (if net30, 31 days). If switch isnt flipped, thing obviously and annoyingly disables itself for "NONPAYMENT".

In general, Front-end loading with a nonrefundable 60% deposit, up to 90% if settlement delay exceeds 30 days next deal, and 180% of expected normal rates if they still haven't caught upper managements attention by strike three.

Peppering your trademark in the API and code-base is good if things get nasty.

Sometimes, just feed grifters to the lawyer with the completed contract deliverables highlighted. If you are risking over 15% of annual revenue on any deal, your company will not survive on luck very long. Risk mitigation is the primary role of CEO. =3

"Mike Monteiro: F*ck You, Pay Me"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U

Jack up your price and offer a 5% discount if they you in full upfront before starting the work.

Check your local law. In some jurisdictions, you can charge interest, or penalties. You can be gentle about it - give fair warning, reminder that intrest is starting to accrue, etc. But customers don't generally want liabilities to increase, so will prefer to pay before extra costs are incurred.

Here is one company's experience (UK focused): https://www.revk.uk/2026/03/late-payments.html

It depends a lot on your relationship with the customer as well, I guess. Some may get butthurt about it, for others, your relationship is with a person in a different dept to the people organising the payments, you can send interest notices to the finance dept without worrying the person who wants your services.

I limit the risk and insist on payment upfront.

Is this market research?

Feels like AI generated market research. There must be a single company/person putting out these posts because I see a ton of posts like this following a similar structure

Not even, it’s the classic LLM SaaS spam that is swamping Reddit. The goal of the spam is to get a bunch of people on a credible website talking about a problem and then the OP will return to post a link to their product. Suddenly, all the powerful HN link juice flows from HN to their product. Every single entrepreneurial subreddit is covered in this garbage, so much so, there’s definitely some sort of e-book or course teaching people to do it.

Perhaps @dang can save us from this.

Such links should all be nofollow. Is there some other way to dejuice them?

A horse's head in their bed works quite well.

Seriously though, people aren't paying because they're not paying -- not because they somehow forgot. They're assholes. So treat them like assholes -- stop providing services the second their payment is late. Demand payment up front. Do not fall for their gaslighting. Feel free to use the word "gaslighting" with them.

In some cases you just have to treat non payment as part of the cost of doing business. E.g. if you are performing services for a startup, assume they will flame out at some point and your last couple months invoices will never be paid. Price accordingly.

IANAL but also if you're in the US note that when a customer enters bankruptcy any payments made to you during the last 90 days prior to their filing may be "clawed back" if judged to be paid unfairly vs other creditors. So even if you did get paid by a crashing startup, you might have to pay that money back.

Edit: you asked about workflow. This is what we do: the second an invoice is overdue, send an email to their AP people, copied to the business contact (whoever you deal with in providing services) noting that the payment is overdue and asking when they expect to remit payment. How terse you make this depends on history. If they reply with some nonsense about check runs and things being sent out on a Thursday, respond with a message clarifying when you expect payment based on what they said. If no reply within a day or two escalate -- send an email to the business contact requesting a zoom call to "discuss their payment situation". So far the process has been in service of showing them that you take payment on time seriously and are going to grind their gears until you get paid. Often this will work. If not then escalate further. Whatever lever you have to pull, threaten pulling it (stop service, they don't own the copyright to code you wrote for them unless paid, etc). If you have no lever, well that's bad.

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