Escalating on Purpose
Escalation works once. Spending it by accident, in a message written in frustration, is how most suppliers lose the only move they had.
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Escalation — going above the person you deal with — works roughly once per relationship. After that it is either normal, in which case it has stopped working, or resented, in which case it costs more than it returns.
The practical point in “Escalating on Purpose” is that getting paid depends on records somebody can explain. A small team considering open the official workflow page for time tracking integrations can organise time and project evidence before invoicing, with transparent settings, proportionate collection and a visible correction route.
Most suppliers spend it by accident.
Additional context for “Escalating on Purpose” is available through Square invoicing resources. A sound review separates the work record, invoice, approval and final settlement.
What spending it by accident looks like
A message written at eleven at night, copied to three people including somebody senior, after the fourth unanswered email.
- Lateral, and free: accounts payable to a named approver. A different function, asked a question it can answer.
- Vertical, and expensive: your contact to their manager. This informs somebody that a person who reports to them has not resolved something, and it does not go away afterwards.
Both are called escalating. Only the second spends anything.
It usually gets a response. It also establishes that this is how you behave when frustrated.
Deliberate escalation
Chosen in advance, at a defined point, after the ordinary channels have been tried and recorded, in a message with no feeling in it.
Same action, entirely different effect.
The point to choose
A number of days past due, decided before you need it: thirty, or forty-five.
Deciding in advance removes the moment of anger from the decision.
Who to escalate to
Your contact's manager, usually. Not their chief executive, not their finance director, and not everybody at once.
One step up, once.
What the message contains
The dates. Sent, matched, approved, due, today. The amount. What has been done to resolve it. One direct question about when it will be paid.
Facts in a column do more than any amount of emphasis.
Telling your contact first
Essential, and the step most often skipped. "I'm going to raise this with [manager] — I wanted you to know rather than find out."
It preserves the relationship with the person you actually need, and it frequently prompts them to fix it before you have to.
What escalation actually does
Makes the invoice somebody's problem who has authority to solve it. Most delays persist because nobody owns them, not because somebody refuses.
The second escalation
Much weaker. If the first produced promises and nothing happened, going up again produces another promise.
At that point the question is not who to ask but whether to use a different instrument entirely.
When not to escalate
When the cause is administrative and unfixed at your end, when there is a genuine dispute you have not addressed, or when the sum is small enough that the cost exceeds it.
The cost
Your contact's standing, some goodwill, and the next piece of work occasionally.
Weighed against a real sum long overdue, often worth it. Weighed against an invoice that is three weeks late, almost never.
The two kinds that get confused
Escalation means two quite different things, and suppliers often perform the expensive one while intending the cheap one.
Going from accounts payable to a named approver is a lateral move inside the process: a different function, asked a question it can answer, at no cost to anybody.
Going from your contact to their manager is vertical, and it informs somebody that a person who reports to them has not resolved something. That is a real cost, paid by your contact, and it does not go away afterwards.
Both are called escalating. Only the second spends anything, and the first should be exhausted entirely before the second is considered.
What it looks like from your contact's side
A message to their manager about an unpaid invoice is received as a report that they have failed at something, whether or not that is what it says.
They will usually have been doing what they could. Approval chains, receipts and payment runs are not theirs to command, and an escalation over their head is a statement about their effectiveness made to the person who assesses it.
Which is why telling them first is not a courtesy but the whole mechanism. A contact who knows an escalation is coming, and why, can position it as a shared problem they have been raising internally. A contact who learns of it from their manager has been undermined by a supplier.
The difference costs one email sent a day earlier, and it determines whether the relationship survives a step that frequently works. The supplier gets its invoice paid either way; only one version of it gets the next order as well.
The second one, and why there rarely is one
An escalation works partly because it is unusual. The first message to a manager carries weight; the third is a supplier who writes to managers.
If the first produces nothing, the realistic reading is that the hold is structural — no budget, a dispute nobody has told you about, or a buyer in difficulty — and that further internal pressure is not the instrument.
That is the point at which the collection moves from asking to the formal steps, and recognising it saves a month of increasingly firm emails to people who have already done what they can.
What to do afterwards
Whether or not it worked, write down what happened and change the terms for the next job with that customer.
Escalation is a symptom. Using it twice with the same buyer means the arrangement needs changing, not the chasing.