What to do with late paying clients?

My husband and I have run our small business for 10 years. I help him with small projects, big projects, and I also do all the invoicing and accounting. Most of the time, our great clients pay promptly and return to us with their next project. Every so often, a new, small job, goes south and I have to write a small amount off as a loss. However, this happens very rarely and it’s never for a very large amount. But, recently, with the economy in the doll-drums, our largest client who we have worked for over a year, has been holding on to two very large invoices.

This particular client, we’ll call them ‘A’,  always takes their time to pay. Usually, their estimated time from invoicing to payment is between 4 – 5 weeks. This is well over our usual 30-day grace period. But, they have been a very lucrative client and we have made decent money off of them, so I haven’t complained. That is, until now.

Let me back track a bit. In July, my husband went to meet with ‘A’, they are in a state next to ours. One of the topics that he brought up to the client was we’d like to be paid monthly, or every 30-days, instead of the 35-45 days they had been paying. He even said he’d give them a reduced hourly rate if they could pay monthly. They agreed. When he returned from his trip, we sent them two separate estimates for their 2 separate projects. They agreed to the estimates and I sent over the invoices. Our target completion date was September 17th.  We had thought that they would send us a partial payment with in the original 30-days. That never happened.

After the 30-days was up, we waited, and we waited, and we waited. I sent their accountant a pleasant email asking of the status of our invoices. I never heard back from her. (I now know she no longer works for this company).

We finally got to the bottom of our outstanding invoices this week. (We are now in week 8!) The work detailed on both invoices is almost complete. The incomplete work is due to ‘A’ not having their material ready. So, a very small part of both invoices isn’t complete because they are holding up the project. Talking to the so called ‘project manager’ about our invoices was not very encouraging. He basically said that they couldn’t pay on the invoices until the work was complete. I asked if he could give me a due date, maybe mid-October, on the items they needed to provide us with. He said that the way they work around there (slow), it would take a couple of months.

I'm not happy!

Of course, at this point, I was thinking in my head, “You guys are jerks! We gave you a reduced hourly rate and this is how we are treated!?” I kindly asked, again with patience due to working with children, if we could at least get 50% of both invoices paid. The ‘project manager’ said he would talk to the ‘person in charge’ and see if that was possible.

Well, let me just say that on top of being exasperated about this invoice hullabaloo, I now know we must ask for a deposit with this client from here on out. Obviously, their financial situation has changed. Ours has as well! Since these two invoices total close to $6,000, we have had to dip into our house savings to cover business expenses.

Here is my list of what I’d like to do with late paying clients, feel free to add any to my comments:

• drop them off a cliff
• replace their website with a “this client can’t pay his bills on time” message (I have the power to do this, but I’m really not this mean)
• send them a stink bomb
• send them rotten tomatoes
• forward their calls to some racy 800 number phone line
• forward their emails and respond with “we stink, don’t call us, we don’t pay our bills on time” message (again, I have the power, but I’m much too nice!)

The bottom line, sometimes owning your own business and depending on others to pay prompty really stinks!