What to do when a client won't pay after you deliver

If a client won't pay after you've delivered, move fast and stay professional: send a firm written reminder with the invoice attached, give a clear new deadline with a late fee, then escalate to a formal "letter before action" if that's ignored. The real fix, though, is to stop handing over finished work before you're paid. Here's the full playbook for getting paid now, and never being in this spot again.

What to do right now

First, don't go quiet, and don't assume the worst. Plenty of late payments are an admin oversight, a lost email, or a client waiting on their own client. Your first move is a calm, clear reminder, not an angry one. But do act on day one, the day after payment was due. The longer an invoice sits, the more it slips down the client's list and the more awkward it feels to chase.

Before you send anything, get your evidence in one place:

• The signed agreement, proposal, or the email where they approved the work and the price.
• The invoice, with its due date and your payment terms.
• Proof you delivered, the transfer link, the email, the download confirmation.

That paper trail is what turns "they won't pay" into "they owe me a documented, agreed amount." It's also exactly what you'd need if this ever goes formal, so it's worth two minutes now.

Send a firm follow-up

Keep it short, factual, and free of apology. You're not asking for a favour, you're reminding them of an agreement. Attach the invoice again so there's no "I can't find it." Something like:

Hi [name], just following up on invoice [#] for [project], which was due on [date] and is now [X] days overdue. I've reattached it here. Could you let me know when I can expect payment? Happy to sort out any issue on your end.

That last line matters. It gives a stuck client an easy way to tell you what's actually going on, a budget hold, a missing PO number, a change of finance contact, without either of you losing face. Most late payments unstick right here.

Add a deadline and late fees

If the friendly reminder gets nothing after a few days, the tone shifts from reminder to notice. Set a specific new deadline and reference any late-payment terms in your contract. If you're a UK business and there's no agreed rate, you have a statutory right to charge interest and a fixed recovery fee on overdue commercial invoices under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts legislation, worth mentioning by name.

You don't have to be aggressive. You have to be firm and specific. "Please settle this by [date] to avoid late fees of [amount/rate] applying" is a sentence, not a threat, and it tells the client you're not going to quietly forget.

When to escalate

If a hard deadline passes with silence, you escalate in steps. Each one is cheap, and each one gets paid more often than the last:

• Letter before action. A formal final notice stating the amount, the deadline, and that you'll begin legal recovery if it's not paid. The phrase itself does a lot of work, plenty of clients pay the moment they see it.
• Small claims. In England and Wales, Money Claim Online handles debts up to £10,000 without a solicitor and for a modest fee. Other regions have an equivalent small-claims track. Your paper trail is what wins it.
• A debt collection agency. They take a cut, but for a stubborn, clearly-owed debt it can be worth handing off the chase entirely.

Know when to stop, too. If the amount is small and the client has genuinely vanished, sometimes the right call is to write it off, learn the lesson below, and never work with them again. Your time is worth more than a long fight over a small invoice.

Make it impossible next time

Chasing payment is a symptom. The disease is handing over finished, usable work on a promise. Fix the structure and you stop having this problem:

• Take a deposit. 30 to 50 percent up front filters out the clients who were never going to pay and covers your time if a project dies.
• Deliver in stages. Tie each milestone to a payment, so you're never more than one stage ahead of the money.
• Gate the final files behind payment. This is the cleanest fix of all. Instead of emailing the finished work and hoping, you send a watermarked preview, and the clean, usable files unlock the moment the client pays.

That last one is exactly what payment-gated delivery does. The client sees enough to approve the work, but can't use it until they've paid, and the money lands straight in your own Stripe account. There's nothing to chase, because "pay me later" was never on the table. An invoice is a request you hope gets answered. Delivery that pays you on the spot isn't. For the full prevention playbook, see how to get a client to pay before you hand over the work.

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