The Getting Paid Playbook You already earned it. Go and collect it.
People spend months thinking about how to fund the business and almost no time collecting the money they have already earned. This guide shows how to set terms, invoice so you get paid, and chase without damaging the relationship.
Raising money costs ownership. An overdue invoice costs an email.
One gets treated as strategy and the other as admin someone will get to. The reason is not stupidity, it is discomfort. Asking to be paid feels like asking for a favour, so you wait, send a softer message, and finance your customers' working capital for free. Late payment is also a habit: pay sixty days late once, hear nothing, and you have taught that customer what your terms really are. Alone, there is nobody whose job this is. It is you, on an evening, which is why you need a system that removes the decision.
None of them is "chase your invoices".
Equity costs ownership. Debt costs interest. Cutting costs capability. Collections costs an email and a little discomfort, and the money is already yours. It is the only source of cash with no downside.
The gap between doing the work and being paid for it is a hole you have to fund, and it scales with revenue. The faster you grow, the more cash it consumes. That is why profitable operations run short of money.
The first invoice sets the pattern. Pay late with no consequence and that becomes the schedule. The discipline is cheapest at the very start and more awkward to introduce later.
Someone who invoices accurately and follows up predictably reads as organised and serious. Someone who goes quiet reads as chaotic, and chaotic suppliers get deprioritised, not protected.
A large amount owed is a permanent low-level uncertainty. Tightening collections turns an uncertain future amount into cash on a predictable schedule.
Chronic late payment often travels with scope creep and the loudest complaints. Revenue from someone who pays at a hundred and twenty days is worth materially less than the same revenue from someone who pays at fifteen.
A system, not resolve.
Set the terms once. Invoice the moment the work is done, with the details right. Let the reminders run themselves. Then look at the list for half an hour a month.
Five parts, in order.
Six mechanisms, each a specific return, and the honest limit: chasing badly does real damage, and some late payment is not a collections problem at all.
Your terms, deposits and milestones, who you extend credit to, what triggers an invoice, the escalation ladder, and a policy for persistent late payers.
Why a defective invoice is the leading cause of late payment, how to ask how a customer pays, making payment easy, and reminders that start before the due date.
Escalating in tone, calling earlier than feels natural, opening with goodwill, telling disorganisation from inability from dispute, payment plans, and your stopping point.
Set the terms, invoice properly, and the thirty-minute monthly collections review. Each line is a box you either can or cannot tick.
Nine ways earned money stays uncollected. Every one is a failure of nerve or routine, not of finance, and a system fixes both.
Decide the event that raises an invoice and raise it straight away. A surprising amount of late payment is late invoicing, and eleven days given away is eleven days given away for nothing.
Which entity, which inbox, what reference or purchase order, who approves it, what cycle. Five minutes at the start removes the most common causes of delay.
A reminder before the due date, a prompt on the day, a follow-up, a call, a firmer message, a pause on work. Decide it now, calmly, and automate the early steps.
- You run a one-person business and want to scale it without funding your customers for free.
- You find asking to be paid uncomfortable and want a system instead of willpower.
- You are willing to ask for a deposit and find out the reaction is milder than the fear.
- You want a method, not motivation.
- You want legal advice on enforcing a debt.
- You expect chasing harder to fix an invoice that is genuinely disputed.
- You want a way to avoid ever asking for money.
- You think collections is admin and will stay admin.
The strongest position is not chasing well. It is not needing to.
Evenings are for building the thing and finding customers. Every one spent worrying about money you are already owed is an evening spent badly. It is not the interesting part. It is the part that means you get to keep going.
Luis Gonçalves
Twenty years in digital product development. Led the agile transformation at Nokia. Teaches at Porto Business School. Has spent the last decade working with founders across Saudi Arabia, Portugal, Brazil, and the broader emerging-market startup ecosystem.
He calls himself the Dark Entrepreneur because he believes the founder world is allergic to honesty. No success theater. No highlight reels. Just the real work that has to happen.