Who owes you, how much, and how long has it been?
Chasing money you notice is not the same as tracking money you are owed. Add every unpaid invoice below and this sorts them by how long they have been outstanding, totals each aging bucket, and flags the promises that came and went. Underneath it is a follow-up sequence you can actually run. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is saved — this is one snapshot you build, read, and print.
What you are owed
A follow-up sequence you can actually run
The point of a sequence is that it happens whether or not you remember. Pick the day of the week you do it, put it in your calendar as a recurring block, and work the list above from the oldest down. Every step below is a decision you make once instead of a decision you make every time an invoice goes quiet.
Before the job Decide the terms and put them on the paperwork
Most collections problems are terms problems. If the invoice does not state when payment is due, there is no moment at which it becomes late, and every conversation afterwards is a negotiation instead of a follow-up.
- Write your payment terms on the estimate and on the invoice, in the same words.
- Say who to pay and how, with every method you accept, on the invoice itself.
- Agree the deposit and the progress payment points before work starts, not after. What you may collect upfront varies by state — check your state's deposit limit before you set it.
- Get the billing contact and their email at the point of sale. Chasing a homeowner is one problem; chasing a company with no named accounts-payable contact is a different and worse one.
Day the work is done Invoice immediately
The gap between finishing and invoicing is time you have added to every number on this page, and it is the cheapest time to remove. Invoice the day the work is complete, while the customer is still pleased with it.
- Attach or reference the signed estimate and any change orders, so nothing is a surprise.
- State the due date as an actual date, not a number of days.
- Confirm it arrived. An invoice in a spam folder ages exactly the same as one that was ignored.
A few days before it is due The friendly heads-up
This one is not a chase, and it should not read like one. It exists to catch the invoice that never arrived, the wrong contact, and the approval nobody started.
The day after it is due The first real follow-up
Same day, every time, no exceptions and no waiting to see. Making it automatic is what stops it feeling personal, both for you and for them.
- Send it in writing so there is a record, then note the date in your list.
- If it is a company, copy the person who hired you as well as accounts.
About a week later Pick up the phone
Email is easy to ignore and easy to send. A call gets you the actual reason, which is usually one of four things: they never got it, it is waiting on an approval, they have a query about the work, or they do not have the money right now. Each of those has a completely different answer, and you cannot pick the right one from silence.
- Ask for a specific date, not "soon". Write the date down and read it back to them.
- If there is a query about the work, separate it immediately: settle the disputed part and ask for the undisputed part now.
- Put the promised date in the list above. A promise is only useful if you notice when it passes.
- Follow the call with a short email confirming what was agreed. That email is the record.
The day a promise breaks Name it, once, plainly
A broken promise is a different situation from a late invoice, and treating it as another gentle reminder teaches the customer that the dates they give you do not matter.
- Stop discretionary work for that customer until it is resolved. Continuing to work is a decision, so make it consciously.
- Decide your own line in advance: the number of days, or the dollar amount, at which this stops being a follow-up and becomes something you get advice about.
At your own line Get advice before you act
Past a certain age or amount, an unpaid invoice stops being a bookkeeping problem. What options you have, what deadlines apply to them, and what any of it costs are all specific to where the work was done and to the contract you signed.
- Lien and preliminary-notice deadlines are state law and several of them start running from dates much earlier than you would expect — often from when you first furnished labor or materials, not from when you were not paid. Check the lien deadlines recorded for your state, with the official source beside them.
- Talk to a construction attorney licensed where the work was done before you rely on any of it. We publish no legal advice and this page is not it.
- Talk to your bookkeeper or CPA about how to treat what you are unlikely to collect.
Every week, same day Work the list
Fifteen minutes on a fixed day beats an hour of panic at the end of the month. Open this page, put the current list in, work from the oldest down, and update the last-contact date as you go. When nothing on it is old, the fifteen minutes cost you nothing.
What this page deliberately does not tell you
There is no target for how fast you should be paid, no "typical" collection period, and no benchmark of any kind on this page, because we have not verified such a figure and will not invent one. There is also no lien deadline, interest rate, late fee, or statement about what your state allows — that is state law, it is not held here, and the source-backed version lives in the deposit and lien checker. Everything above is arithmetic on the rows you typed and the date today.