Chasing an invoice - please help me not be a CF!

[Fivemoreminutes1]

I’m a private tutor and invoice pupils every half term. Most pay very quickly, but there’s one parent who hasn’t yet paid. How long after issuing an invoice can I issue a reminder without seeming too cheeky?

I think a week would be reasonable.

After the terms are up - eg if it’s payment in 10 days, 30 days.

If you don’t have terms then after a week, but a lot of people will think they have 30 days of you haven’t said otherwise

I have 'to be paid within 14 days' on mine. I suggest you put something similar on yours.

If there is nothing on the outstanding one about a deadline then yes a week is fine.

Send a brief and blunt but polite email along the lines of.

Dear x
I see you have yet to pay my most recent invoice. Please pay within x amount of time.

Thanks etc

If there is no joy after that then get more strongy worded. E.g. loss of you service, pass on to your legal team or whatever.

I have a statement on all my invoices about dates to be paid and the date the contract will be reviewed if not paid.

This is why quickbooks or something similar is good because you can set it up to send reminders from 3 days before/after/whatever due date - and it tells the client “this is an automatically generated reminder, if you have paid in the last 24 hours please disregard etc etc”. So you can hide behind your “automatically sent” thing and you don’t seem too rude.

You aren’t the cheeky one OP.

You need to stop thinking it’s ‘cheeky’ to expect to be paid promptly for your work for a start.

What do your T&Cs say? Chase up as per those.

It's not cheeky to ask for money you're owed. It's cheeky to owe money and not pay it.

Of course it’s ok to remind them, tbh if they are proving to be bad payers,
I would bill each session rather than build it up till the next half term, you have delivered the service and should be paid promptly.

I bill my classes monthly (for dance). Invoice due on the 1st, reminder sent after a week, late charge applied if more than 2 weeks late (with leeway if I know a family are struggling). The worst payers are usually the ones who can easily afford the lessons, they just don’t regard my time/job as important.

Thanks for your advice. I’m going to remind after a week and from now on I’ll put payment terms on my invoices.

Yes, get your payment terms and Ts&Cs on there. It’ll save you so much hassle.

and also agree, it’s not cheeky to chase money!

I use an online tutor for ds and I have to pay for each lesson in advance. This seems fair to me. I'd consider whether invoicing in arrears at the end of each half term is the best option for you. Has this parent paid invoices on time in the past and so is likely to have forgotten? Or is it a new parent? You may need to consider whether you continue to tutor the child next half term, but there isn't a long lead time between the invoice being issued and the payment becoming late to make that decision.

Def put payment terms on invoices. I used to pay tutor at the session, and think this is perfectly fair.

if you billed last week for the first half of term, they may be away for a week and not have got to it, how late are they?

The tutor we use reminds us after a week (I only know this as one time we forgot in the summer holidays and I was mortified!) but speaking to the woman who runs it, it's a really big problem with people just not paying. I don't know how people sleep at night!

My sons tutor reminded me recently and I was mortified that I had forgotten, I thought I'd paid them and just wasn't in my radar so very grateful to be chased.

It's half term, so maybe they're on holiday. I don't have access to online banking when we're away as I don't want it on my phone.

Most of my pupils parents pay promptly but I have one who’s consistently late. He ignored my reminders in January and in the end I informed him lessons were suspended until he paid. He paid 10 minutes later!