£26 billion is owed to UK businesses right now, and chasing it is unpaid work
The job is finished, the invoice is sent, and now you have a second job nobody pays you for.
Late payment is normally discussed as a cash flow issue. For a small service business it is also a time issue, and the time cost is the one nobody budgets for.
spent chasing late payments, on average, by each affected business. UK businesses are owed an estimated £26 billion in late payments at any one time, averaging £17,000 per business affected, and 14,000 businesses close each year as a result.
London Economics for the Department for Business and Trade and the Office of the Small Business Commissioner, Late payments research, July 2025. Survey of 1,455 businesses by YouGov and IFF Research, January to February 2025.Eighty six hours is better than two working weeks. Unpaid, on evenings, doing the least enjoyable job in the business.
Prevention, which does most of the work
- Agree the payment terms before the job, out loud and in writing. "Payment on the day" or "within seven days" in the quote itself. Most late payment is not refusal, it is vagueness.
- Invoice the same day you finish. An invoice that arrives a fortnight later tells the customer this is not urgent for you either.
- Put your bank details on the invoice itself, with the invoice number as the reference. Every extra step between reading the invoice and paying it is a day's delay.
- Number your invoices properly. It sounds like admin. It is what lets you say "invoice 0148, sent on the 3rd" instead of "that job in March".
- For bigger jobs, take a deposit. A customer who has paid something has already decided you get paid.
Chasing, in order
Have a sequence and follow it, so you are not inventing a response while annoyed.
- Day after due: a friendly message. Assume it was missed, because usually it was.
- Day seven: resend the invoice with the bank details repeated, and ask them to confirm a date.
- Day fourteen: a phone call. Not a message. Calls get resolved, messages get postponed.
- Day thirty: a formal letter stating the amount, the original due date, and your intention to claim interest.
On that last point, for business to business work in the UK you are legally entitled to claim statutory interest and a fixed recovery charge on late commercial payments. You do not have to use it, but saying you are aware of it changes the tone of the conversation.
Knowing exactly who owes what, without going and looking, is the difference between chasing on a schedule and chasing when you suddenly remember.
The thing that makes all of it easier
One place where every invoice is either paid or unpaid, and the unpaid ones add up to a number you can see. Whether that is software, a spreadsheet or a notebook matters much less than whether the number exists at all.
The 86 hours does not come from writing chase messages. It comes from working out who to send them to.