Every entrepreneur likes his invoices to be paid on time. Unfortunately they not always are. How do you make sure your clients pay them faster? These are a couple of tips & tricks.
1. Add a payment link to your invoice
By adding a payment link to your invoice, your client is able to pay you using iDeal, Paypal or creditcard with the click of a button. Nowadays almost every invoicing system has an option to add a payment link. For instance our system has a connection with Mollie.
2. Payment term
Always state a payment term on your invoice. This way you let your client know what payment term you expect and you have something to fall back on when your client doesn’t pay.
There are some rules for payment terms:
- If you invoice a private person you can determine the payment term yourself. This has to be a reasonable term. Write down the payment term in a contract, in your general terms and conditions or state it on your invoice.
- When you invoice a company, by law the invoice has to be paid within 60 days. Usually, the term in which an invoice gets paid is 30 days. This is almost always the case except when both parties have agreed on a different term.
- Has the payment term of your invoice expired? Make sure to send your client a reminder. It’s likely that the system you used to send the invoice gives you an automatic heads-up when the payment term has expired, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on it yourself as well.
3. Personal relationship with your client
It might be obvious but a good relationship with your client can prevent payment issues. A personal relationship is crucial. Think about it: you would also pay the invoice first of the people you know the best. A personal relationship doesn’t have to mean that you take a holiday together. Simply picking up the phone instead of emailing could already increase the personal relationship with your customer.
What are the consequences when your invoice isn’t paid on time?
For your VAT return the invoice date is leading. So invoices that aren’t paid on time will still be added to your VAT declaration. When VAT is charged on the invoice this will be processed in your VAT declaration and you need to pay the VAT on time.
When a client is long overdue paying you, you have the right to charge interest over the period that has passed since the payment term has expired. You can also demand to be compensated for any legal costs or collection charges. However, it would be nicer if this could be prevented by the tips in this article.
