Get Paid Faster: 3 Secrets to Dealing With Unpaid Invoices

 

Do you need to get paid faster?

If your business is like many other businesses, you probably deal with several clients who regularly pay late. Perhaps you’re getting frustrated with having to send multiple reminders to clients with overdue invoices before they finally pay you.

We get it—chasing down clients for payment is exhausting.

Should you dump these clients so you can get faster-paying ones? Maybe. But chances are, your business is still growing, and you need the cash flow those clients provide.

The answer, then, is learning how to get paid faster. When clients pay you more quickly, your business has more cash on hand for salaries, expenses, and investments. Plus, getting paid on time allows you to make more informed decisions and budgets. After all, how can you accurately make money decisions when you aren’t getting the cash you worked for?

With that in mind, we’re giving you three strategies to help you get paid faster.

1. Make sure the client signs a contract before you begin the project.

Contracts do more than simply make you look professional as a business. They provide a legal safeguard, ensuring that you and the client are on the same page regarding the scope of the project, timelines, and payment.

Making a client sign a contract before you begin the project helps them see that your business is serious and that payment is not an “I’ll get to it when I get to it” option. Contracts can keep those agreed-upon terms top of mind for clients, whereas more informal agreements can encourage a more relaxed approach to payment.

Plus, a contract allows you to take legal action if it comes to that—which it hopefully won’t.

2. Get paid faster by making the payment process as easy as possible.

Many growing businesses don’t have simple payment processes, making it inconvenient for the client to pay. This is a recipe for late payments.

You can get paid faster by making that process as simple as possible. Sign up for a service that allows clients to pay you via credit card or bank transfer. There are many safe tools that do this, such as PayPal and Stripe. Or, if you need a more comprehensive service, tools like Wave, FreshBooks, and QuickBooks Online give you accounting software to go along with your invoices and payment options.

When you go with an online tool, clients just need to click a button to pay you. And if they’re an ongoing client, these tools allow them to save their credit card information so you can automatically charge them for recurring projects.

3. Give incentives for quick payments.

Providing incentives for early payment is one of the most effective ways to get paid faster. After all, people love feeling like they’re saving money. And what better way to encourage that feeling than with a small discount?

There’s a lot of flexibility in this strategy. For example, you can give 5% off for clients who pay by cash or check before the due date. If that’s too much for you, consider offering a flat dollar amount off.

For this strategy to work, though, you need to make sure you advertise it. This doesn’t mean you have to create ads promoting this incentive (although you could). Instead, you simply need to make sure clients know about it before you seal the deal.

Include this early payment incentive in the language of your contract, tell your client about it over the phone, and put it on the invoice. If your company has a sales department, have your salespeople talk about the early payment incentive as they get close to finalizing the sale.

Ready to Get Paid Faster?

Try these 3 strategies and let us know how they work for you. It’s a great feeling when you can put those unpaid or overdue invoices into your Paid folder!

To keep better track of your invoicing process, use our self-inking rubber stamps, which are perfect for labeling invoices. We offer custom stamps as well as stock messages, such as Received, Past Due, and Paid.

Click here to browse our rubber stamps for your business!

Have you ever dealt with a client who kept paying you late? Tell us your experience in the comments below.