First, be sure this is silence and not a dispute
These are two different problems and only one of them is collections.
A client who is unhappy with the work and has not said so will go quiet in exactly the same way as a client with a cash flow problem. Before you escalate, send one message that makes it safe to complain: "Is there something about the job you are not happy with?" If the answer is yes, you have a conversation to have and a possible partial payment to negotiate, and every escalation step below would have made it worse. If there is no answer at all, you are in collections.
The ladder, in the order it is worth climbing
1. Stop work. If the job is ongoing, this is the only step that costs you nothing and it is the one with the most leverage. Say it plainly and without threat: work is paused until invoice 1043 is paid, and here is the link. Do not carry on working while an invoice goes unpaid in the hope of being paid for both. That is how a $2,000 problem becomes a $6,000 problem.
2. Call the person who signs the cheques. Not your day to day contact, and not by email. In anything bigger than a two person shop these are different people, and the one who hired you often has no idea the invoice is unpaid. A two minute phone call clears a surprising number of these, because it removes the one thing email cannot remove, which is the ability to postpone.
3. Send a formal demand, on paper if you can. This is the last free step and the most under used. It is a short letter, not an angry one. It states the invoice number, the amount, the original due date, the dates you followed up, a final deadline that is at least seven days out, and one sentence on what you intend to do next. Send it by email and by post. Keep the delivery confirmation.
Subject: Final notice before further action, invoice 1043
Dana,
Invoice 1043 for $2,400 was due on 1 August. I followed up on 4 August, 15 August and 1 September and have had no reply.
The work described on the invoice was delivered and accepted on 28 July.
Please pay in full by 15 September. If payment has not arrived by then I will pursue this through the options available to me, and I would rather not.
The invoice and pay link: [link]
Ron StackStack Plumbing
The value of this letter is not the threat. It is the record. Every step after this one goes better if you can show a clear, dated, unemotional paper trail, and worse if you cannot.
4. Small claims, if the amount justifies the day. Small claims court is designed to be used without a lawyer and the filing fee is usually modest. The cost is your time: filing, serving, and a hearing you have to attend in person. Dollar limits vary a great deal by state, so look up your own state limit before you plan around it. And note the part nobody mentions: winning gets you a judgment, not money. If the client has nothing to collect from, a judgment is a piece of paper.
Rough test that most trades land on: if the invoice is worth less than a day of your billed time, it is usually not worth a court date. Say that out loud before you file, not after.
5. A collections agency, for the ones you have written off. Contingency agencies take a percentage of whatever they recover and cost you nothing if they recover nothing. Ask for the rate in writing before you hand anything over, because it varies a lot by agency and by how old the debt is. Expect to hand over the paper trail, and expect the relationship with that client to be finished, which is why this comes last.
If you are in the trades, ask about a lien before you do any of this. In construction and related trades many states give you a claim against the property itself, which is far stronger than chasing the person. The filing deadlines are short and the rules differ by state, so this is a question for a local attorney on the day the invoice goes late, not months later. We are not the right people to tell you how it works where you are.
The part most articles will not say
Most unpaid invoices at this size are never paid, and the time you spend chasing one is time you are not spending on a client who does pay. Setting a limit in advance is not giving up. It is the same decision every trade makes about a job that has gone wrong, made earlier and with less anger in it.
The better place to spend the same effort is the next invoice: a deposit before the work starts, a due date on the document, and a reminder that goes out before it is late. All three are on this site and none of them takes longer than the first chase email you already sent.
What Pro does for you
Pro will not make anyone pay. What it does is remove the two arguments you cannot win without records.
- Read receipts on hosted invoices, so "I never received it" is answerable with a date and a time.
- A/R aging, so you can see every unpaid invoice and its age on one screen instead of reconstructing it from your sent folder when you need it most.
- Automatic reminders, so the follow up trail in the demand letter above builds itself while you are working.
Pro is $9 a month. See what is in it.
Everything on this page works on the free plan too, including the invoice, the hosted link and the pay button. Make an invoice.
Lalo Docs is invoicing software. Nothing here is legal advice, court procedures and lien deadlines vary by state, and a local attorney is the right person to ask about your situation.