Asking to be paid, politely, again.

Friday afternoon, again.

The aged-debtors list is open. Someone's trying to remember who was chased last week and who's on their second reminder, then drafting the awkward "just following up on this one" email to a customer they genuinely like. Some invoices get chased twice. Some never get chased at all. It ended up this way because no one ever designed it: getting paid depends on somebody's memory.

The usual advice is firmness — chase harder, tighten your terms. But firmness was never the missing piece. The missing piece is a routine that runs on schedule instead of on memory, with a person kept for the conversations that actually need one.

How it actually works.

1. Every invoice is watched from the moment it's sent. Not a spreadsheet someone updates — the system reads what's outstanding straight from your accounts package, so it always knows what's due, when, and what's already been paid.
2. Reminders go out in your tone, at the right moments. A friendly nudge as the due date approaches, a note on the day, firmer follow-ups as it ages. You set the words and the escalation; it keeps to them — politely, every time, with no awkwardness to swallow.
3. The moment payment lands, the chasing stops. The system sees the money arrive and stands down — so a customer who paid this morning never gets chased this afternoon.
4. The genuinely awkward ones come to a person. The big account, the disputed job — those surface to you, with the full history attached: every invoice, every reminder, every reply. And because it runs nightly and logs everything, you always know who was asked, and when.

What module one looks like.

We don't rebuild your invoicing. Module one sits on top of the accounts package you already use and takes the chasing off someone's desk.

• The chasing, off your desk

  We connect to where your invoices live, agree your tone and escalation rules, and switch the reminders on — live in about a month. You keep sign-off on anything sensitive. Then the same engine can take on statements, arrears and the rest of getting paid.

What the chasing costs.

Late payment gets discussed as a cash-flow problem, and it is one. But the government's own research says the biggest everyday cost is simpler: the average affected business loses 86 hours a year just chasing overdue invoices (DBT, 2025). At the ONS median wage of £19.67 an hour, that's about £1,700 a year of someone's time (ONS ASHE, 2025) — spent asking for money the business has already earned.

And the hours are only the visible part. The invoices nobody chased at all are the part that never shows up in a report.