What to do when a client refuses to pay

First work out which of three things you are dealing with: the client has no money right now, the client disputes the work, or the client has decided not to pay. A payment plan fixes the first, evidence fixes the second, and only formal recovery fixes the third. Treating all three the same is why people waste months.

They have the will but not the cash

Usually says so, eventually. A written payment plan — three instalments, named dates, signed by email — recovers far more than a standoff. Get it in writing; a verbal plan is a way of deferring the argument, not resolving it.

They dispute the work

This is where your paperwork earns its keep. An accepted written quote, a clear scope, dated photos and an itemised invoice turn "you charged me for things I didn't ask for" into a checkable claim. Without them it is your memory against theirs, and you will usually settle low.

If some of the work is genuinely disputed, invoice the undisputed part separately and get that paid while the argument continues. Splitting the amount stops the whole sum sitting frozen.

They have simply decided not to pay

The tell is silence — no dispute, no plan, no engagement. At this point politeness has done its work and you move to process: a formal letter before action, then small claims. In most countries small claims for modest sums is deliberately designed to be usable without a solicitor, online, for a filing fee that is recoverable if you win.

The realistic view: it costs time, and a judgment is not the same as money in your account. Which is why the protections that matter are the ones applied before the work — deposits, staged payments, written acceptance.

What I would do differently

Every bad debt I have seen had a warning sign that was visible early and ignored: a client who haggled hard on price, who would not put anything in writing, or who was already late on a small first invoice. A small first job is a cheap credit check. Use it.

Separate the three reasons

"Won't pay" covers three completely different situations and the response to each is different.

• Can't pay. The money is not there. Chasing harder produces nothing; a payment plan produces something.
• Won't pay because they are unhappy. There is a dispute, stated or unstated. This is solvable and often your fault in part.
• Won't pay because they can get away with it. Rare but real. Nothing but consequence changes this.

Work out which one you are in before deciding what to do. Sending a letter before action to someone who is genuinely struggling destroys a relationship that a payment plan would have preserved. Offering a payment plan to someone who is simply stringing you along guarantees another three months of it.

If there is a complaint, get it in writing

A vague dissatisfaction is unanswerable. Ask them to put the specific problem in an email. Three things follow from that. You find out whether the complaint is real. The act of writing it down often shrinks it, because much of the heat is in the vagueness. And if this ends up in a claim, an email describing a small snag sits badly next to a refusal to pay the whole invoice.

If the complaint is fair, fix it. Quickly, without arguing about who was at fault. The cost of returning for half a day is almost always less than the cost of a disputed invoice.

Partial payment as a diagnostic

Where part of the work is genuinely disputed, ask them to pay the undisputed part now and hold the rest. Two things come out of it. You get most of your money. And you learn a great deal: someone who pays 80% has a real dispute about the 20%, while someone who refuses to pay any of it never had a dispute at all. Accepting part payment covers how to record it without losing track of the balance.

What your evidence needs to look like

If this goes anywhere formal, what matters is the paper trail, and it is mostly built before the dispute.

• A written quote or scope the client accepted, with a date.
• The invoice, sequentially numbered, with a due date.
• Any variations agreed in writing, before the extra work happened.
• Evidence of delivery — photographs, a sign-off, a delivery note, an email saying thanks.
• The chasing correspondence, unemotional and dated.

Notice that four of those five exist before there is a problem. This is why a written quote and a properly formed invoice matter beyond looking professional — they are the evidence.

Formal escalation, and its real cost

A letter before action stating the amount, the invoice, the due date and your intention to issue a claim if it is not paid within a stated period resolves a fair number of cases at zero cost. Beyond it, most jurisdictions have a small-claims track designed for use without a lawyer — modest fee, slow, and effective against someone who can pay but has not.

Understand what you are buying. A judgment is not money; enforcing it is a further step against someone who may have nothing. Against a solvent business a claim usually works. Against a failing one it rarely does.

Knowing when to write it off

There is a figure below which pursuit costs more than the debt. Work yours out — your hourly rate multiplied by the hours this will take, plus the fees, plus the weeks of attention. For most sole traders it is somewhere between £300 and £800. Below it, write it off, record it, and change what let it happen: a deposit next time, shorter terms, or not working for that client again.

Writing off is not losing. Spending forty hours to recover £400 is losing.

EstimateBill tracks what is unpaid, reminds you on the due date, and writes the follow-up message for you in three tones. See how the reminders work.