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An overdue invoice, stage by stage: what to send, and when.

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A professional follow-up sequence has seven stages: a note before the due date, a note on it, a first message once the invoice is past due, a follow-up that asks for a date rather than for payment, a written confirmation when a date is promised, a factual message when that date passes, and — last — a handover to the business owner, because by then the question is commercial, not administrative.

Wording for each stage is below, ready to copy. It is deliberately courteous and deliberately unremarkable: the tone of a competent finance function, not of a collections agency.

Talk through your receivables The seven stages

The sequence

Seven stages. Each one has a different job.

Every stage below does one thing and stops. Stage four asks for a date, not for payment; stage five records the date rather than celebrating it; stage six treats a missed promise as an event rather than an insult. Copy any of them and edit freely — the shape matters more than the sentences.

These templates run entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, saved, or stored — reload the page and the fields are blank again. Nothing is sent to any customer from this page. It is not legal advice.

Fill these in and every template below updates as you type. Leave them blank and the templates keep their placeholders. Square brackets that remain — dates, day counts — are per-invoice and stay for you to complete.

Stage 1

Approaching the due date

About five working days before

The invoice was delivered to the right address, with the reference the customer’s system needs. This message is not a chase; it removes the administrative reasons a payment misses its date.

Subject: Invoice [INV-0000] — due [due date]

Hello [Customer name],

A short note that invoice [INV-0000] for [amount] falls due on [due date].

If you need a purchase order reference on it, a statement of the account, or the invoice sent to a different address for processing, tell me and I will send it today.

Thank you,
[Your name]
[Your business]

Stage 2

The due date

On the day

Nothing has been received and nothing has been queried. The purpose here is to convert silence into information — scheduled, or held up.

Subject: Invoice [INV-0000] — due today

Hello [Customer name],

Invoice [INV-0000] for [amount] is due today.

If it is already in a payment run, could you confirm the date it will be released? If something is holding it up, tell me what you need from us and I will get it to you.

Thank you,
[Your name]
[Your business]

Stage 3

First day overdue

The next working day

The invoice is past its date and the account shows no receipt. Check that first — a message chasing money that has already arrived costs more goodwill than staying quiet for a day.

Subject: Invoice [INV-0000] — now past its due date

Hello [Customer name],

Invoice [INV-0000] for [amount] was due on [due date] and we have not recorded a payment against it.

There are usually two explanations: it is in your payment run and I simply cannot see it yet, or something is holding it up. A one-line reply tells me which, and I will stop chasing the wrong thing.

Thank you,
[Your name]
[Your business]

Stage 4

Follow-up

About a week later, and at a steady interval after that

One message has gone unanswered. The objective now is a date — not payment today, not an apology. A date can be recorded, planned around, and checked.

Subject: Invoice [INV-0000] — asking for a payment date

Hello [Customer name],

Following up on invoice [INV-0000] for [amount], now [n] days past its due date.

Rather than keep checking in, could you give me the date you expect it to be paid? I will record that date and leave it with you until then.

If there is a question about the invoice itself — the amount, the work, the paperwork — say so instead and I will get it resolved.

Thank you,
[Your name]
[Your business]

Stage 5

A date is promised

Same day as the reply

A date has been given. Write it back. A promise that exists only in the customer’s reply is a promise nobody will check, and confirming it in writing also protects the customer from being chased twice.

Subject: Invoice [INV-0000] — noted for [promised date]

Hello [Customer name],

Thank you. I have recorded [promised date] as the payment date for invoice [INV-0000] ([amount]).

I will not follow up before then. If the date moves for any reason, let me know and we will note the new one.

Thank you,
[Your name]
[Your business]

Stage 6

The promised date passes

Within two working days of the promised date

The date has gone. This is a different event from ordinary lateness, and the message should reflect that without changing temperature. State the fact, ask for an accurate date, and offer the dispute route explicitly.

Subject: Invoice [INV-0000] — [promised date] has passed

Hello [Customer name],

Invoice [INV-0000] for [amount] was expected on [promised date] and has not reached us.

I would rather hold an accurate date than an optimistic one. Could you tell me what changed and what date I should record now?

If the position is that the invoice or the amount is in question, tell me that instead and I will treat it as a query to resolve rather than a late payment.

Thank you,
[Your name]
[Your business]

Stage 7

Handover to the business owner

When a second date has gone, or the account has stopped replying

This is not a message to the customer. Follow-up has done what follow-up can do; what remains is a commercial judgement about a customer relationship, and that belongs to the person who owns the business.

Subject: [Customer name] — invoice [INV-0000], a decision is needed

Position as at [date]:

- Invoice [INV-0000], [amount], issued [date], due [due date].
- Contacted on [dates]. Last reply received [date].
- Payment promised for [promised date]. That date passed without payment and without an explanation.
- Dispute or query raised by the customer: none recorded / [what was raised].
- Evidence held: the invoice, the record of what was delivered, and the full message trail.
- Other open invoices with this customer: [list or none].

This is now a commercial decision rather than a follow-up task. The options usually are: continue the same sequence unchanged; agree a written payment schedule; pause further work or supply for this customer; change the terms on which we trade with them; or take the matter outside the finance function entirely.

Prepared for your decision — nothing further will be sent to the customer until you decide.

[Your name]

The wording rules

Why none of it reads like a threat.

The wording follows five rules. They are not a matter of politeness; they exist because the alternative usually costs more than it collects. Most invoices are unpaid for administrative reasons, and a message written for the worst case reads badly to the ninety per cent it does not describe.

State facts, not characterisations. “Invoice 1042 was due on the 14th and we have not recorded a payment” is verifiable. “Your account is seriously delinquent” is an opinion, and one the reader can dispute instead of answering.
Ask for a date, not for money. A date is something a person in accounts payable can actually give you. Payment today usually is not in their gift, so asking for it invites silence.
Offer the dispute route in every message. Naming it makes a hidden objection surface, and an invoice queried on day thirty-two is far cheaper than one queried on day ninety.
Never use interest, penalties, credit standing or legal steps as leverage in a follow-up message. Whatever a contract may permit, a reminder is not the place to brandish it. It ends the conversation you are trying to have, and none of it is finance’s decision to make.
Keep the same tone at day sixty as at day five. Escalating language signals that the process has run out of ideas. Escalating ownership — moving the matter to the person who can take a commercial decision — is the real escalation, and it is stage seven.

None of this is legal wording and none of it is jurisdiction-specific. If a matter needs a formal notice or a legal step, that is a decision for the business owner and a qualified adviser of their choosing — At Par is not a collections agency and provides no legal debt recovery.

The uncomfortable part

The wording is not what makes follow-up work.

It would be convenient if collection were a writing problem. It is mostly an operations problem, and a business with excellent templates and no system will do worse than a business with plain ones and a rhythm.

Consistency beats craft. A plain message that always arrives on the same day of the week outperforms an elegant one sent when someone remembers.
Somebody has to own it. Templates do not send themselves, and “whoever notices” is not an owner.
The promised date has to live somewhere the next chase reads. Otherwise stage five is a courtesy and stage six never happens — where a promised payment date should be recorded is a small discipline with a large effect.
The invoice has to be right, and provably so. A follow-up sequence cannot rescue an invoice the customer cannot reconcile to what they agreed to buy.
Receipts have to be matched to invoices. The fastest way to lose the moral high ground at stage six is to chase an invoice that was paid in a lump sum three weeks earlier.

Whether those five things are true in your business is testable in about two minutes: the invoice follow-up health check asks nine questions and gives one of three answers.

Stage seven

The last stage is not a message to the customer.

Every sequence needs a defined end, or it becomes a loop that runs for a year. The end is not a harder message. It is a handover: the finance function states the position and hands the matter to the business owner as a commercial decision.

That decision is genuinely the owner’s, because every option available at that point changes the commercial relationship rather than the accounting one. Continue the sequence unchanged. Agree a written schedule. Pause further work or supply. Change the terms on which you trade with that customer. Or take it outside the finance function altogether. A finance function can prepare each of those; it should choose none of them.

What is handed over is a position, not a recommendation to escalate: the invoice, the dates, the contact history, what was promised and when, whether anything is disputed, the evidence held, and any other open invoices with the same customer. The owner decides on facts rather than on a summary of somebody’s frustration.

What should happen the moment a promised date passes, in the general case, is set out separately. How it plays out on a single invoice is one broken payment promise, and what it changes.

Where we fit

Where At Par fits — and the limits.

At Par runs this sequence as an operating process, so it does not depend on anyone remembering it. Each open invoice carries a state, an owner and a dated next action; promised dates are recorded against the invoice; a passed promise surfaces on its own; disputes are marked as disputes; and receipts are matched to the invoices they settle. That is receivables and invoice follow-up.

At Par is not a collections agency and provides no legal debt recovery. It never threatens, never charges interest or penalties on your behalf, and makes no concessions, discounts or write-offs — those are yours. Anything sent to a customer in your name remains subject to your authorisation. No follow-up process can be guaranteed to make customers pay sooner or to reduce days-sales-outstanding.

Where the boundary between a provider’s work and an owner’s authority ought to sit, on this and everything else, is set out in what an outsourced accounting provider should actually own.

Questions

Asked by whoever ends up sending these messages.

What should you write in an overdue invoice follow-up email? +

Four short parts: the invoice reference and amount, the date it was due, a plain statement that no payment has been recorded against it, and one specific request — the date the customer expects to pay. Close by offering the alternative route: if something about the invoice is in question, ask them to say so instead. Keep it under a hundred words, keep the tone identical to every earlier message, and leave out anything that reads as a warning.

How often should you follow up on an unpaid invoice? +

A workable rhythm is a note about five working days before the due date, one on the due date, one the working day after it passes, then a steady interval — weekly is common — until a payment date is agreed. Once a date is promised, stop until it arrives; chasing inside a promise you asked for wastes credibility. Regularity matters more than frequency: a predictable weekly message is easier to answer than an unpredictable daily one.

Should a payment reminder mention late-payment interest or penalties? +

Not as leverage in a routine reminder. Whatever a contract or local statute may allow, raising it in a follow-up message changes the exchange from an administrative one into a confrontational one, usually with the accounts clerk rather than the person who decides. Whether to invoke a contractual right is a commercial decision for the business owner, taken deliberately and normally with advice — not a sentence a finance function adds to a template.

Is it better to follow up an unpaid invoice by email, by phone or by message? +

Email should carry the record, whatever else is used. A phone call resolves ambiguity far faster and is worth making once a date has been missed, but it leaves no trace, so the agreement reached should be emailed back the same day. Messaging apps are effective where that is genuinely how a customer communicates, with the same discipline: whatever is agreed gets written into the record against the invoice.

What tone should an invoice reminder use? +

Neutral and unchanging. The reminder should read like a routine part of how the business operates rather than a reaction to something going wrong, because in most cases nothing has gone wrong — the invoice sat in a queue. A tone that escalates by day thirty leaves nowhere to go by day sixty, and it damages a relationship over what is often an administrative delay.

Should follow-up go to the accounts team or to the person who bought the work? +

Start with whoever processes payments, since that is where the invoice physically sits, and keep the buyer copied or informed rather than bypassed. If two rounds produce nothing, the buyer is the person who can find out why internally. Going to the buyer first tends to convert an administrative delay into a relationship conversation unnecessarily; never going to them at all leaves the sequence with nowhere to escalate.

Are payment reminder templates enough to get invoices paid? +

No, and treating them as the solution is the common mistake. Templates only remove the effort of composing a message. What determines whether an invoice gets paid on any given week is whether someone owns it, whether the message actually goes out on schedule, whether the promised date was recorded where the next chase can see it, and whether the invoice is correct and matches what was agreed. Wording is the last ten per cent.

If the sequence keeps stalling

Let us run it. Same tone, every week, without you.

Send us what is outstanding. We will come back with the state of each invoice — owner, next action, promised dates, anything disputed — and what we would run from here.

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Reviewed by an ACCA on the At Par team · Last updated 29 July 2026 · These templates are general professional wording, not legal advice and not a debt-recovery notice, and nothing you type into this page leaves your browser. See what we actually do.