Articles

Getting paid without chasing

25 August 2026 · 6 min read · Gnarly by Nature Pty Ltd

Everyone who has run a trade business has had the Sunday night where they go through the invoices working out who owes what and how uncomfortable the phone call is going to be.

Chasing is a symptom. By the time you are chasing, the mistake has already happened, and it happened somewhere earlier in the job.

Invoice the day you finish

The single biggest cause of slow payment is slow invoicing. A job finished on the 3rd and invoiced on the 24th does not get paid three weeks later than one invoiced on the 3rd. It gets paid much later than that, because it has missed a payment run, and because your urgency has visibly been low.

It also gets queried more. The longer between the work and the bill, the hazier everybody's memory of what was agreed, and the more likely somebody disputes a line.

If you take one thing from this: same day, or next morning. It is worth more than any amount of chasing technique.

Take a deposit on anything with materials in it

If you are buying materials, you are lending your customer money. On a job with $4,000 of materials and a six week build, you are carrying four grand of somebody else's costs, unsecured, for free.

A deposit is not about cash flow, though it helps. It is a filter. A customer who will not pay a deposit on a job with real materials in it is telling you something about how the final invoice is going to go, and it is cheaper to learn that before you have ordered.

Progress claims on anything long

Any job running more than a couple of weeks should be paying you as it goes. Set the stages when you quote, not later: deposit, a claim at a visible milestone, and the balance on completion. Tie them to something the customer can see, so there is nothing to argue about.

Longer or larger jobs may fall under security of payment legislation in your state, which sets out formal rights around progress claims and how quickly they must be responded to. It differs between states and it is worth knowing what applies to you before you need it.

Put the terms where they cannot be missed

Payment terms on the quote, on the invoice, and said out loud when the job is accepted. Not in eight point type at the bottom. If your terms are seven days, the customer should have heard that from you before you started.

Shorter is better and less negotiable than people fear. Thirty days is a convention from a world of posted cheques, not a law.

Write down what changes, when it changes

Most invoice disputes are not about the original job. They are about the extras. Somebody asked for something while you were there, you did it, and the invoice is $900 more than the quote with no explanation attached.

The fix costs about thirty seconds: when it is agreed, record it, and tell them what it costs before you do it. Not a formal document. A message that says what was asked for and what it adds, so there is a record with a date on it.

An extra agreed verbally on site and invoiced silently at the end is the single most common reason a good customer turns into a bad debt.

When you do have to chase

• Early and friendly beats late and firm. A short message three days after terms is not aggressive, and it works far more often than a serious letter at sixty days.
• Make it easy to pay. Bank details on the invoice, and a way to pay that does not involve them finding a chequebook.
• Do not do more work for someone who has not paid for the last lot. This is the hardest rule to keep and the one that separates the businesses that survive a bad customer from the ones that do not.
• Know when to stop. There is a point where the time you are spending is worth more than the debt. Recognising it early is a skill.

Security of payment law, debt recovery and contract terms vary by state. Nothing here is legal advice, and for a debt worth real money it is worth getting some.

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