This guide starts where the money you already earned stops. That one is about not getting into this situation. This one is about the invoice that is already thirty days late and a customer you would quite like to keep.

It is common. Around three in five small businesses now have at least one invoice thirty days or more overdue, and those waiting are owed an average of roughly $17,700. You are not being singled out, and you are not bad at this.

The clock nobody tells you about

Everything else in this article is about tone. This part is about time, and it is the part that costs people their money.

If you improved someone’s property, you likely have mechanics lien rights — a claim against the property itself, which is far stronger than being one more unsecured creditor. Those rights die on a deadline, and the deadline does not care that you have been reasonable.

• The clock usually runs from your last day of work, not from the invoice date and not from when it went overdue. Every polite week counts against it.
• Filing deadlines commonly fall between 60 and 180 days from last furnishing labour or materials, depending on the state. Some are much tighter than operators assume.
• Many states require a preliminary notice near the START of the job — California’s is a 20‑day notice, Florida’s a 45‑day Notice to Owner. Miss it and your lien rights are gone before the dispute ever begins, no matter how obviously you are owed the money.
• Look yours up now, not when you need it. Write the deadline on the job the day you finish. Ten seconds, once.

You will very likely never file one. That is fine — the point is to still be able to when you decide, rather than discovering in month five that the decision was made for you.

The ladder

Decide this once and follow it for everyone. The reason to have a schedule is that it removes the emotion: you are not being aggressive, you are on step three.

Ring them on day fourteen

Email is easy to ignore because ignoring it costs nothing and involves nobody. A phone call is a person, and most late invoices are resolved on that call.

Open with the assumption that something went wrong on their end, not that they are avoiding you:

Then stop talking. The silence does the work, and what comes back tells you which problem you actually have:

• “I completely forgot” — the most common answer by a distance. Take payment on the call. Do not offer to resend and hang up.
• “Cash is tight this month” — good news, honestly. Agree a date or split it in two, and write it down. A payment plan you know about beats silence.
• “Well, actually…” — this is not a payment problem, it is a complaint they never made. Get it fixed and you will usually be paid the same week.
• Nothing, repeatedly — that is your answer. Move up the ladder and stop wondering.

Keeping the customer

The fear of seeming pushy is what costs operators the most money, and it is misplaced. Asking to be paid for work you did is not rude. Being unclear about it is.

• Ask early, so you can ask gently. A nudge at day two is friendly. The same nudge at day ninety cannot be, because by then you are upset.
• Separate the work from the money. “Was everything alright with the job?” is a genuine question and it flushes out the real reason.
• Never chase in front of anyone. Not on a public review, not in front of their staff, not in a group chat.
• Put it in writing after every call. One line: what you agreed, and when. It is not distrust, it is the record that ends the argument later.
• Do not do more work for them until this one is settled. The single most expensive mistake in this whole article. Two unpaid invoices are not twice the problem, they are ten times it.
• Say what happens next, and then do it. A deadline you let slide teaches them the next one is soft too.

When to stop being reasonable

Being reasonable is right until it stops working, and there are clear signals for that:

• Two broken promises to pay. Not two missed emails — two specific promises, broken.
• A complaint that only appeared after the invoice did. Genuine complaints arrive during the work.
• You are being managed rather than answered — always a new reason, never a date.
• Your lien deadline is inside thirty days. This one is not a judgement call. Act before the date, because after it there is nothing to act with.

Writing it off is a real option

Sometimes the right answer is to stop. A small debt chased for six months costs more in hours, sleep and the jobs you did not quote than it will ever return.

If you write it off, do it properly: record it, close the customer so they cannot book again, note what you would do differently, and stop thinking about it. What you are buying is your attention back. Just make it a decision you took rather than one that happened to you.

What to stop doing

• Waiting until you are angry to chase. The message you send then is the one that loses the customer.
• Chasing by email only. Ring them on day fourteen.
• Letting your lien deadline pass while being patient. The single most expensive thing in this article.
• Taking the next job from someone who has not paid for the last one.
• Threatening something you will not do. One bluff and every future deadline is decoration.

Sources

Checked in August 2026. Lien law is state law and the deadlines vary a great deal — treat this as the question to go and ask, not as advice for your state.

• Mechanics lien deadlines, all 50 states and preliminary notice requirements — where the 60–180 day filing window and the early‑notice deadlines come from.
• More small businesses are carrying overdue invoices than last year — reporting on the Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Insights survey, and the source of the 59% and $17,700 figures above.
• A guide to overdue invoices — from a trade credit insurer, on escalation and when to stop.
• The ladder and the scripts are ours. The day counts are a starting point, not a rule — what matters is that you decided them before you needed them.