Tracking which invoices are unpaid

You need one screen that shows outstanding totals by client and by age. Without it, chasing is guesswork and something always slips.

Ageing matters more than the total. £10,000 outstanding where everything is under a week old is healthy; £3,000 where half is ninety days old is a problem that is already partly a write-off.

Group by client too. A single client holding three unpaid invoices is a pattern that needs a conversation, not another reminder.

Ageing matters more than the total

£10,000 outstanding where everything is under a week old is a healthy business. £3,000 where half is ninety days old is a problem that is already partly a write-off. The single number tells you nothing; the distribution tells you everything.

Group by age: current, 1–30 days over, 31–60, 61–90, and beyond. The shape of that list is the most useful page in any invoicing system.

Why ninety days is the line

Recovery rates fall sharply with age. An invoice a week overdue is usually an oversight. At sixty days it is a decision. Past ninety it is often a business in trouble, and the money may not exist. The practical implication is that chasing early is worth far more than chasing hard.

Group by client as well

One client holding three unpaid invoices is a pattern, not three oversights, and it needs a conversation rather than a fourth reminder. It is also a concentration risk that is invisible when you look at invoices individually. A client who always pays late covers changing the structure rather than the chasing.

Know your average days-to-pay

One number, calculated across everything you invoiced this year. It tells you what terms actually mean in practice, whether your chasing is working, and how much working capital your business needs to hold. A trade with 30-day terms and a 52-day average is financing its customers by three weeks, permanently.

Watch it as a trend. Rising means either new clients with worse habits or existing ones drifting, and both are worth catching early.

Make the check a habit with a trigger

Weekly, at a fixed time. Monday morning works because anything that arrived over the weekend is visible and anything overdue can be chased the same day. The specific day matters less than it being the same day, because a review that depends on remembering does not happen.

Automatic reminders do most of the work

A reminder that fires on the due date, every time, without you deciding to send it, is worth more than any escalation technique. It removes the part where you work yourself up to it, and it trains clients within about two cycles because your dates become reliably real. How the reminders work covers the mechanics.

Write off deliberately

Something over a year old, from a client who has stopped responding, is not an asset. Keeping it in your outstanding figure makes the list less useful and hides the health of everything else. Write it off, record it, note what let it happen, and let the list tell you the truth again.

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