VanlyThe Henderson invoice was due a fortnight ago. You sent it the evening you finished the job. The polite WhatsApp reply two days later said cheers, will sort it Friday. Since then, nothing. You are not the only tradesman in this exact position right now. Most one person trades have a quiet £800 or £1,400 sat on someone's read receipt. Here is the playbook to get it back without losing your weekend, your manners, or the customer.
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Stop the chase before it starts
Best chase is the one you never had to do. Three things up front beat any clever follow up later.
Send the invoice the same day you finish the job. Not Sunday. Not next week. Same day, before the customer has even thought about it. The longer the gap between the job and the invoice, the longer the customer feels they have to think about whether they want to pay. The pattern is consistent across UK trades: invoices sent within 24 hours of completion get paid roughly twice as fast as invoices sent a week later. If your invoicing always slips to Sunday, the hidden cost of doing invoices on a Sunday covers why and what to do about it.
Make the terms boring and clear. Payment due in 14 days. Bank transfer details on the invoice. Late fee policy in plain English at the bottom. Two short lines. Customers do not read small print, but the existence of the small print changes how seriously they treat the deadline.
Take a deposit on anything over £500. Standard practice for kitchens, bathrooms, and anything that needs you to buy parts up front. A 25 percent deposit is normal in the UK trades. If a customer will not pay a deposit, that is the customer who will not pay the final invoice. Walk before you start.
That covers prevention. Now the chase.
Day 1 to 7: the friendly nudge
The first message goes out the day after the invoice falls due. Not three days later. Not when you remember on Sunday. The day after.
Most late payment is forgetfulness, not malice. A polite, short message clears the ones who genuinely forgot, which is the majority. WhatsApp is fine here. Same channel they hired you on is the right channel.
Template, copy and paste:
Hi Sarah, hope you are well. Just a quick one to say invoice 247 from the 2nd was due yesterday. Total £840, bank details on the invoice. Let me know if you need anything resending and I will sort it. Thanks, John.
What this does well: it is short, names the invoice and amount, offers a way out if the invoice got lost, and signs off without an exclamation mark or a passive aggressive smile. It assumes the best. It also takes about 30 seconds to send.
What to avoid in the first nudge: chasing language, threats, statutory interest, capitals, or anything that reads like a debt collection letter. You are still inside the window where the customer is probably going to pay this week without a fuss. Do not poison the relationship for the sake of sounding firm.
About half of overdue invoices get paid inside 48 hours of the first polite nudge. If yours did, you are done. If not, keep going.
Day 14: the firm reminder
A week after the friendly nudge, the tone shifts. Still polite. No longer assuming forgetfulness.
This is also the right moment to put the legal framing into writing. Not because you are going to court tomorrow, but because the mention of statutory interest tends to move payment along by itself.
Template, copy and paste:
Hi Sarah, following up on invoice 247 (£840, due 1 May). Two weeks overdue now. Please can you let me know when this will be paid. Under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, statutory interest at 8 percent above the Bank of England base rate plus a fixed £40 charge applies to late payment of commercial invoices. Happy to waive this if it lands by Friday. Thanks, John.
Two things to note. First, the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 applies to business to business invoices, so if Sarah is a domestic customer, swap the wording for "late payment fee as per the terms on the invoice" and rely on whatever you put on the invoice itself. Second, offering to waive the interest if they pay this week gives the customer an off ramp, which is what you want. Most do not enjoy being chased and will use the off ramp.
For a deeper look at the statutory route, GOV.UK has the rules on charging interest and fixed compensation for late commercial payments.
If the customer goes quiet at this stage, that is a tell. People who are about to pay reply with a date. People who are not, do not reply at all.
Day 21+: the letter before action
Three weeks overdue, no real reply since the friendly nudge, no payment date offered. Time to send a letter before action.
This is the last step before court. It is also the step that gets most disputes paid, because the customer now understands you are serious enough to file. The trick is to write it like a tradesman, not like a solicitor's secretary. Short, calm, clear.
Template, copy and paste:
Dear Sarah,
This is a letter before action regarding invoice 247 for £840, issued on 2 April 2026 and now 21 days overdue. Despite previous reminders on 16 April and 23 April, the invoice remains unpaid.
Please pay the outstanding balance of £840 plus £40 fixed compensation and statutory interest within 7 days of the date of this letter. If payment is not received by 19 May 2026, I will issue a claim through Money Claim Online without further notice. You will then be liable for the court fee, interest, and reasonable recovery costs.
Bank details for payment: [your details]
Yours sincerely, John Smith Smith Plumbing [date]
Send it by email and by post. Royal Mail Signed For costs about £4 and gives you a delivery receipt the court will accept as evidence. Keep a copy of everything. The letter before action is not just a threat, it is the document the small claims court will ask to see when you file.
Around 70 percent of letters before action get the invoice paid without ever needing to go to court. That is the number worth remembering before you start dreading the legal step.
Going legal: Money Claim Online
If the letter before action gets ignored, the next step in England and Wales is Money Claim Online. It is a government website, not a solicitor's office. Filing a small claim under £10,000 takes about 30 minutes at the kitchen table.
What it costs:
| Claim amount | Court fee |
|---|---|
| Up to £300 | £35 |
| £300 to £500 | £50 |
| £500 to £1,000 | £70 |
| £1,000 to £1,500 | £80 |
| £1,500 to £3,000 | £115 |
| £3,000 to £5,000 | £205 |
| £5,000 to £10,000 | 5 percent of claim |
You add the court fee to your claim, so if the customer pays before the hearing, you get it back. You also add the statutory interest from the invoice date to the day of filing, plus the £40 fixed compensation, plus any reasonable recovery costs (postage, time, the £4 Signed For receipt).
Filing takes the case from a quiet dispute to a county court matter. About 80 percent of small claims for unpaid invoices are settled before they get to a hearing, because the moment a county court claim form lands on the customer's doormat, most people pay.
If they do not pay, the court issues a default judgement. If they still do not pay, the next step is enforcement: a bailiff, a charging order against their property, or an attachment of earnings if they are employed. That is rarer for small invoices because the cost starts to outweigh the debt, but the threat alone is usually enough to clear the £800 you came here to recover.
The full GOV.UK process is at Make a court claim for money if you want to read the official version before filing.
The 2026 rule changes worth knowing
There are two changes from the UK late payment reform package coming through in 2026 that matter to anyone billing other businesses.
A hard 60 day ceiling on B2B payment terms. Big companies can no longer push small suppliers onto 90 or 120 day terms. If you sub for a larger contractor and they tried to make you wait three months for your money, the new rules close that door. The cap applies to invoices issued from late 2026 onwards.
The Small Business Commissioner can now fine persistent late payers. Previously the Commissioner could investigate and name and shame. The new powers include actual penalties. For sub contractors who get burned regularly by the same big customer, the Commissioner is now a realistic enforcement route that costs you nothing to use and does not need a solicitor. The complaint form is on the Small Business Commissioner website.
Neither change helps you with a domestic customer who is dragging their feet on a £400 bathroom job. But for any tradesman who does commercial work, sub contracts to a main contractor, or supplies trade clients on credit terms, both rules are worth keeping in mind from now on.
The reason most tradies never chase at all
The honest version of this whole post. Most tradies do not get burned because they do not know how to chase. They get burned because chasing is on the list of things they will do "when they get a chance", and a chance never comes.
The job ends. The invoice goes out a week later. The customer goes quiet. The tradesman makes a mental note to chase, then a new job lands, then it is Friday again, then it is six weeks later and the £800 has joined a small pile of other £800s that are now, realistically, never coming back.
The fix is not motivation. The fix is having something else do the remembering. A spreadsheet works if you actually open it. A cheap CRM works if you log every invoice. An AI office manager that lives in your WhatsApp works because it does not need you to remember anything. Friday afternoon, message lands: "Three invoices overdue. Sarah at the Henderson place is 7 days late, want me to send the friendly nudge? David from the Mews job is 14 days, want me to send the firm reminder?" You reply yes. Done.
That is what Vanly is built to do, along with voice to invoice for tradesmen and the other four things AI actually does for a tradie business in 2026. A single £400 invoice rescued from the never coming back pile covers ten months of Vanly at £39 a month.
The principle works without software. Pick a slot, say Friday 3pm, and go through every invoice older than 7 days. Send the right template. Do that for a quarter and you will recover most of the missing money. Skip the slot and you will recover none of it.
FAQ
What interest can I legally charge a late paying customer in the UK?
For commercial debts (one business to another), the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 lets you charge statutory interest of 8 percent above the Bank of England base rate, plus fixed compensation of £40 to £100 per invoice depending on the size of the debt. You do not need this in your contract. It applies automatically once the payment is late. For domestic customers, you can only charge what you put on the invoice or in the original quote, so make sure your standard terms include a late fee.
What if the customer says the work was faulty?
Stop chasing for the moment and deal with the dispute first. If you ignore a quality complaint and rush to file at court, the customer can defend the claim and you will lose. Go and look at the job. Fix anything genuinely wrong. Get the customer to confirm in writing what is and is not in dispute. Once the work is resolved, the unpaid balance becomes a clean debt again, and you can chase from where you left off.
Should I name and shame on Checkatrade or social media?
Tempting, almost never wise. Most platforms will remove a review that is about a payment dispute rather than the quality of the work, and the customer can counter claim with a one star review of their own. The bigger risk is defamation. Stick to private chasing, then the formal legal route. Public shaming feels good for an evening and costs you for years.
What if the customer ghosts me completely?
Send the day 14 firm reminder and the day 21 letter before action even if there has been no reply. Silence is not a defence in court. Most ghosters reply the moment the letter before action lands, because the wording makes it clear you are serious enough to file.
Can I refuse to come back and finish a job until the customer pays?
Be careful. If you walked off halfway through and the work is incomplete, the customer can argue you breached the contract. Safer to finish the agreed work, hand over a clean invoice, and chase by the playbook above. The exception is if your written terms include a stage payment that has not been paid, in which case you have a contractual right to pause.
Does any of this work for cash jobs without a written quote?
Mostly yes. The letter before action still works, because UK contract law recognises verbal contracts and a paper trail of messages is admissible evidence. You will struggle with statutory interest if there is nothing in writing about terms, so lean on the fixed compensation and the court route. Better answer: stop doing cash jobs without at least a short WhatsApp confirmation of price and terms before you start.
The bottom line
Most overdue invoices get paid by the second polite nudge. Most of the rest get paid by the letter before action. A small handful go to Money Claim Online, and most of those get paid before the hearing. The £800 you are owed today is recoverable. It just is not going to recover itself.
The hardest part is not the legal step. The hardest part is remembering to send the day 7 nudge in the first place. If your week is too full to babysit a chase calendar, that is exactly what an AI office manager is for. Try Vanly free for 14 days. No card needed to start.