The Call Before It Is Due
A courtesy contact a week before payment is due is not chasing, costs nothing, and resolves most of what would otherwise become a chase.
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A short message a week before the due date — not asking for money, but checking that everything is in order — resolves most of what would otherwise become a chase.
The practical point in “The Call Before It Is Due” is that getting paid depends on records somebody can explain. A small team considering see the relevant Monitask resource for Monitask time tracking FAQ can organise time and project evidence before invoicing, with transparent settings, proportionate collection and a visible correction route.
It is not chasing. Nothing is late. It is administration, and it is read as competence.
As a separate reference point for “The Call Before It Is Due”, see Stripe invoicing guide. Confirm current legal, tax and accounting requirements with a qualified adviser where necessary.
What it says
That invoice 2214 is due on the 14th, that you are checking it has matched and been approved, and whether anything further is needed.
Please can you confirm that invoice 1043 has been received and matched against order 88117, and whether a payment date has been set.
Nothing is overdue, nothing is being complained about, and the person reading it answers several such messages a day.
Three facts and one offer.
Why a status question gets answered
Because every cause of delay that is cheap to fix is still cheap at that point: an unmatched invoice, a missing receipt, an unanswered query, a wrong reference.
A week later, each of them has cost a cycle.
Who it goes to
Accounts payable, not your contact. It is a question about their process, and they answer it without it meaning anything.
Why this is not a chase
Because the money is not yet due. There is no implication, no pressure, and nothing to resist.
The same message sent two weeks later is a different message, however identically it is worded.
What the answers tell you
"Approved, in the run on the 1st" — nothing to do. "Not matched" — a problem you can fix today. "I can't see it" — it never arrived.
Three answers, three completely different next steps.
The supplier who never asks
Discovers at day forty-five that the invoice was parked at day three, and then spends another cycle correcting it.
Nothing about the customer differed. The information was available on day eight.
Making it routine
A diary entry per invoice, a week before due. Or a weekly check of everything approaching its date.
Automated or not, the discipline is what matters.
The tone
Flat, administrative, brief. No apology, no explanation of your cash position, no reference to past lateness.
"Just checking this is in order ahead of the 14th" is the whole register.
Where it does not apply
Customers who pay promptly and reliably. The check costs a minute, so it is cheap to keep doing, but the return is small.
Spend the attention on the slow ones.
When the answer is bad
A parked invoice or an unanswered query found at this point is good news: you found it in time.
Fix it that day, resubmit if needed, and note what caused it.
Why it is not a chase
Nothing is overdue, so nothing is being complained about. The message asks a question about a document's status, at a point when the answer is still useful, and that is a different speech act from asking for money.
It matters because the two are received differently. A chase implies that somebody has failed; a status question implies only that you keep track of your paperwork.
The second can be sent to any customer, including the most important one, in the first week, without any consideration of tone or timing. That is what makes it usable as a routine rather than as a decision — and a routine is what catches the invoices that never arrived.
What a year of asking changes
One such message per invoice, a week after sending, costs a few minutes a month and alters the shape of the year.
Invoices that never arrived are found in week one instead of week six. Reference errors surface while they are cheap. The buyer's accounts payable function comes to recognise you as a supplier who keeps track, which has a small and real effect on how your queries are handled. And the number of genuinely alarming late payments falls, because most of what used to become alarming was a clerical failure discovered too late.
What it does not do is make a slow buyer fast. The approval chain and the payment run are untouched by anything in this note.
The gain is confined to the part of the delay that was never supposed to happen, which in most suppliers' records turns out to be a surprisingly large share of the total.
What the reply tells you about the customer
The answer is worth as much as the confirmation. A reply within a day giving a reference, a status and a scheduled date describes an organisation whose payables function works and whose stated terms probably mean something.
A reply that cannot locate the invoice, or that takes a week, or that redirects you to the person who commissioned the work, describes something else — and does so at a point when only one invoice is exposed.
Either way the information arrives early enough to affect how the next job is quoted, which is more than any later chase can offer.
What it does over a year
Removes most of the occasions for an actual chase, which is the expensive conversation.
The supplier who makes this call rarely has to make the other one.