Chase an unpaid invoice NETTERMS

What “net 30” actually counts from

Net 30 means thirty days from the invoice date. Not thirty days from the end of the month it was issued in, not thirty working days, and not thirty days from whenever the client got round to entering it in their system, unless the contract you signed says one of those things, in which case it says so in writing and that is the number to put in.

For Net 30 EOM, 2/10 net 30 and the exact due date of an invoice, see what Net 30 means.

This matters because the two sides usually disagree about the date rather than about the debt. A client on “end of month following” terms genuinely believes an invoice dated 3 June is due on 31 July, and they are right if that is what was agreed. Getting the due date from the terms, rather than from memory, is what lets you write a firm message without it being wrong.

Dates here are handled as plain calendar dates in UTC, so the answer does not move depending on what timezone you or your browser happen to be in. A one-day error in how overdue an invoice is changes which stage you are at, and the stage is the whole point.

Why the stages escalate on a clock and not on a mood

Six stages, fixed by how many days past the due date you are: a courtesy note in the week before, a same-day reminder, a friendly reminder in the first week, a firm follow-up from one week, a final notice from two weeks, and a formal demand from thirty days.

The value of a schedule is that it takes the decision away from you at the moment you are least able to make it well. People who chase by feel send nothing for six weeks out of embarrassment and then send something intemperate, which is the worst of both: the client has learned that the deadline was soft, and now has a reason to talk about your tone instead of their invoice. A client who receives a short, unbothered note the day after the due date learns something different, and usually pays.

Each draft is written for its stage. The early ones assume the invoice was mislaid, because it usually was. The later ones state the facts, the dates, and what happens next, and stop asking. Nothing you type is sent anywhere: the draft appears on this page for you to copy into your own mail client, so you send it from your own address with your own signature on it.

Interest, and what this tool deliberately does not decide

If you set an annual rate, the figure shown is simple interest on the outstanding amount, accrued daily from the due date. That is the arithmetic and nothing more: it does not know your jurisdiction and it does not apply a statutory rate on your behalf.

There usually is one. In the UK, the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 gives a business a statutory right to interest at eight percentage points above the Bank of England base rate on a late commercial debt, together with fixed compensation for the cost of recovery. Across the EU, the Late Payment Directive sets a comparable floor. Both depend on a reference rate that changes, and both have conditions. Look up the current figure and the conditions before you put a number in a demand letter, because a wrong one is the easiest thing in the world for a client to argue with.

These drafts are drafting help, not legal advice. For the step before this one, QUOTE turns an accepted estimate into the invoice and INVOICES bills without handing your client list to a service. For the step after, REDLINE shows what changed between the contract you sent and the one that came back, LEDGER keeps the cash book that shows what is outstanding, and LOCKBOX holds the finished work until the money has actually arrived, which is the only one of these that stops the problem happening again.