My clients keep ghosting invoices and I'm so fucking done

i wait a week i send the "hey just checking in email"

i feel like an idiot asking for money i’ve already earned

two weeks later i’m refreshing stripe like a fool

i am sick and tired of having to beg for my money

so i thought of creating a small ai that links to stripe/paypal figures out who is likely to be late on a payment and emails them automatically

it starts off polite gets firmer with time stops me from having to chase payments and even shows how much money $$ it recovered so i can stop guessing who’s ghosting.

not selling anything. not built yet. just trying to see if this pain’s real enough that people (like you) would drop around $49/mo for it. be real would you actually pay for this, or nah?

i just need to know if this is a real pain or if i’m over it.

Do not see clients who do not pay as clients, but as liabilities. The real solution isn't chasing them with smarter reminders, it is changing how you work.

Take partial or full payment upfront, use incremental milestones, and only extend credit to proven partners with a solid track record.

Chasing money after delivery just wastes time and energy. Protect your work, and time, and sanity, not your clients' excuses.

1. Get half up front so they are taking the engagement seriously. Call it a retainer fee if you need to. Proves you’re in their accounting system and that the actual buyer is motivated enough to get you on-boarded and paid so that they can get going on the project. There is nothing wrong with half up front. You’ve got expenses while the project is ongoing. It’s a good way to improve you’re overall cash flow.

2. Accounting people and the people you’re actually working with are almost never the same humans. Make sure you know the exact submission process to get the invoice into your clients accounting system. The larger the company you’re contracting with, the more complex and exacting their processes are likely to be. Very large companies tend to use systems like Coupa, and there’s a learning curve to interacting with them.

3. Make sure you have a PO, and then reference that PO on the invoice. Most accounting folks will ignore requests for payment that feel “blind”. It’s part of their anti-fraud and due diligence. Lots of automated, AI-driven fraud out there. We see fake invoices all the time. Don’t do business on a handshake. Document that buying process, including a signature on a scope of work, quote, or similar document that can serve as a contract.

4. As a small company or indie contractor, you can put terms of service as Net 15, payable upon receipt, or whatever you want. Yes, you need to put something on there…but generally speaking, it doesn’t matter what terms you set, especially to larger companies. They’ll pay you when they pay you according to their own byzantine policies, and their payment terms will override yours. We’ve noticed that the biggest companies tend to pay 90 days + day of the month the invoice was submitted, but have never experienced anything longer than that unless the buyer is going through their own hardships or other shenanigans are afoot.

5. We generally engage with accounting contacts to track down late payments, but will go back to the actual buyer that contracted us and ask for help if a payment gets stuck or the accounting folks are ghosting us. In our experience, the actual buyer is usually embarrassed that an invoice is unpaid and can shake the money loose.

6. Finally…getting paid is a PITA. 100%. But if you can put up with the nonsense of having to track it down, you’re almost certain to get paid…eventually. In over a decade of small business work, we’ve never not gotten paid for an invoice, because we were persistent. But yeah, late payments suck especially if you’re going through tight cash flow.

Hang in there and good luck. I feel your frustration.

If you demand 100% up front, then they assume all thd risk.

If you do deposits and partial payments and so on then you share the risk.

Naturally you want to take no risk. Your customer wants to take no risk. It sounds like the original poster here is taking all the risk.

So to the OP I say, treat the money lost as an education. I spent 7 months chasing a tiny amount of money early in my career. It taught me the value of risk.

Lots of companies don't pay invoices on receipt. 90 days is really common. So all is not lost. But the important thing is to understand where you went wrong. Work out the value of the risk, and include it in your price.

I usually specify payment terms when quoting. Changing the payment terms changes the quote.