Blog

Getting paid: invoices that don't get ignored

By Buzz Accounting · 2026-07-13

Late payment is not a personality quirk of the freelance industry. It is a system — someone else's system — and you are allowed to redesign your half of it. Freelancers who get paid on time are not luckier or pushier. They run tighter mechanics, and they understand something most freelancers never find out: that a late business-to-business invoice earns interest and a fixed cash sum by statute, whether or not the contract says so.

Here are the mechanics, the money, and the sequence when it goes wrong.

Why freelance late payment is structurally different

When a small client pays late, it is usually because they are disorganised. When a large client pays late, it is almost never personal. You have become a line in a payables system designed to hold cash as long as it defensibly can, operated by people who have never met you and are measured on working capital.

That distinction matters because the fixes are different. Disorganised clients respond to reminders and pay links. Systems respond only to being fed correctly. Most freelance invoices that go badly late were never actually rejected — they simply never entered the system properly, and nobody was assigned to tell you.

Before the work: terms, deposits and stages

Payment terms belong in the agreement, not the invoice. By invoice time the leverage has gone. Fourteen days is a perfectly professional default; seven for small jobs.
Deposits are normal. 25% to 50% up front on project work funds the work in progress and filters out the clients who were never going to pay well. Getting this right starts with pricing the work properly in the first place.
Stage payments for anything long. Never 100% on completion of something that takes three months. Tie payments to milestones the client signs off, so an argument about the last deliverable does not put the whole fee at risk.
Say what happens when payment is late. A single line noting that you may apply statutory interest and compensation on overdue accounts costs nothing and changes the tone of every subsequent email.

Get into the payables system properly

This is the unglamorous part that does most of the work with corporate and agency clients. Before you start, or at the latest on day one, establish four things and write them down:

Who actually pays. Not your day-to-day contact — the accounts payable inbox or the finance contact. An invoice sitting with the marketing manager is not in a payment run.
Whether a purchase order is required. If it is, no PO means no payment, and the system will usually reject the invoice silently. Get the PO number before you invoice, not after.
Whether they use a supplier portal. Many mid-sized and large clients will not accept emailed invoices at all. Registering as a supplier can take a fortnight, so start it while the work is in progress.
When the payment runs happen. A client who pays on the 25th of the month has effectively made your 14-day terms into anything up to 40 days. Knowing the date lets you time the invoice rather than be surprised by it.

The invoice itself

Send it the day the work completes. Every day of delay signals the invoice is not urgent, and the person paying it takes the hint. Include a due date rather than a duration, the PO or project reference, your bank details, and a card or open-banking pay link for the smaller clients who will simply pay it on their phone.

FreeAgent, included in every one of our packages, handles all of that plus the part most freelancers postpone indefinitely: automatic reminders that go out before and after the due date without you writing them. The chasing is the feature, not the invoice template. Chasing feels rude, so it gets delayed, and the delay is precisely what teaches a client that your invoices can wait.

What you are legally owed, and how much it comes to

Under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, a business-to-business invoice paid after its due date carries statutory interest at 8% above the Bank of England base rate, plus a fixed sum for debt recovery costs. The right exists in statute, so it applies even where your contract is silent, and a client cannot simply decline it.

The base rate used is fixed in six-month blocks rather than moving with each Bank decision. The rate in force on 31 December governs debts falling late between 1 January and 30 June; the rate on 30 June governs 1 July to 31 December. Bank Rate stood at 3.75% on both dates — the Monetary Policy Committee held it there again on 30 July 2026 — so the statutory rate is 11.75% for any commercial debt that becomes late during 2026. Interest runs on the full amount outstanding, VAT included, from the day after the due date until payment.

The fixed compensation is per invoice: £40 where the debt is under £1,000, £70 from £1,000 to £9,999.99, and £100 at £10,000 or more.

Worked example: what 60 days actually costs

Illustrative figures. A VAT-registered freelance designer invoices an agency £4,800 plus VAT, so £5,760 is owed. Terms are 30 days. The agency pays 60 days after the due date.
Statutory interest: £5,760 × 11.75% = £676.80 a year, or £1.8542 a day. Over 60 days, £111.25.
Fixed compensation: the debt is in the £1,000–£9,999.99 band, so £70.
Total claimable: £181.25 on top of the invoice.

Now the larger number the interest calculation misses. That designer bills roughly £5,000 a month. Accepting 60-day terms instead of 30-day terms does not delay one payment — it permanently moves an extra month of billing out of her account and into the agency's. That is £5,000 of her own working capital lent to a client indefinitely, for nothing, for as long as the relationship lasts.

The second figure is the one worth arguing about. Statutory interest is a remedy for a specific late invoice. Long payment terms are a permanent transfer of working capital, and they are agreed in advance by freelancers who treat the terms line as boilerplate. If a client insists on 60 days, the honest response is to price it: a 3% to 5% uplift on the rate is a reasonable reflection of financing two months of your own work, and it is a far easier conversation than chasing.

The escalation ladder, and what each rung costs

Due date: automatic reminder. Software's job.
+7 days: a short personal email to the finance contact, invoice attached again, asking a specific question — "can you confirm this is scheduled in the next payment run?" A question requires an answer; a statement does not.
+14 days: phone. It works far better than it should, because almost nobody does it. Ask whether the invoice was received, approved and scheduled — those are three different failures with three different fixes.
+21 days: pause ongoing work, warmly and in writing. "Happy to pick this back up as soon as the account is current" is the single most persuasive sentence available to a freelancer, and far more effective than any letter.
+30 days: a letter before action setting out the invoice, the 11.75% statutory interest and the fixed sum, with a 14-day deadline.
Then: Money Claim Online. Court fees run £80 for a claim up to £1,500, £115 up to £3,000, £205 up to £5,000 and £455 up to £10,000, with 5% of the claim above that. The fee and the statutory interest can be added to the claim, and the small claims track is built to work without a solicitor.

One specific tactic to be ready for: the invoice that is suddenly "disputed" on the day it becomes overdue. Answer it in writing within 24 hours, in detail, and ask what specifically is wrong and what evidence would resolve it. A genuine dispute survives that question. A cashflow-management dispute usually does not.

What the Commercial Payments Bill will change

The Government introduced the Commercial Payments Bill to Parliament in May 2026, calling it the largest crackdown on late payment in over 25 years and putting the cost to the UK economy at £11 billion a year. For freelancers the headline is a statutory maximum payment term of 60 days between businesses, falling to 45 days after five years, with 30 days for public authorities. The Small Business Commissioner would gain powers to investigate poor payers, adjudicate disputes outside court and issue fines, and boards of persistently late large companies would have to publish an explanation of why.

It is not in force. The Bill is still passing through Parliament, the Government has said it will allow a lead-in period before the powers commence, and the rules will not apply retrospectively. For the invoice you are chasing this month, the enforceable tool remains the 1998 Act.

The pattern behind the problem

Chronic late payment clusters — certain clients, certain sectors, certain project shapes: large one-off deliverables, no deposit, vague scope, no named finance contact. Your own accounts show the pattern the moment anyone reads the debtor report, and the fix is usually pricing or terms rather than persistence. A client who reliably pays at 60 days is charging you for credit. Reprice them or release them.

Getting paid is also a bookkeeping problem, because you cannot chase what you cannot see and you cannot plan around income you have not tracked — our post on managing irregular income covers the buffer side, and the freelancer tax guide covers the rest. Every package we sell includes FreeAgent, the automatic chasing and someone who will tell you which client is actually the problem, from £19 + VAT a month. Get started.

Quick answers

About this post

What payment terms should a freelancer set?

Fourteen days is a sensible default for most freelance work, and seven is fine for small jobs. Thirty days is not a rule, it is a habit borrowed from large companies, and you are not obliged to inherit it. Whatever you choose, put it in the agreement rather than discovering it at invoice time, express it as a date on the invoice rather than a duration, and pair it with a deposit on anything substantial. The one thing worth knowing before you negotiate is when the client's payment runs happen: 14-day terms with a client who pays on the 25th of the month are effectively 30-day terms, and it is better to price that in than be annoyed by it later.

My client says their standard terms are 60 days. Do I have to accept?

No, but refusing outright often costs you the work, so the better move is to price it. Sixty-day terms do not delay one payment — they permanently shift roughly two months of your billing out of your account and into the client's, for as long as the relationship lasts. A freelancer billing £5,000 a month is lending that client £5,000 of working capital indefinitely and free of charge. A 3% to 5% uplift on your rate is a fair reflection of financing that, and it is a far easier conversation than chasing. Alternatively, offer 60 days with a 30% deposit, which gets you most of the cashflow benefit without touching their standard terms.

Can I charge statutory interest to a big client without losing them?

The right is unconditional for business-to-business invoices, so the question is commercial rather than legal. In practice most freelancers use it in stages. Putting a line in your terms saying you may apply statutory interest and compensation costs nothing and changes the tone of every chaser. Quoting the specific figure in a letter before action — 11.75% for debts falling late in 2026, plus £40, £70 or £100 depending on the size of the invoice — is the point at which large clients tend to move, because it is a defined liability their finance team recognises. Actually invoicing the interest is normally a decision you take once you have accepted the relationship is over.

What should I do if a client disputes the invoice the day it goes overdue?

Treat it as a deadline, not an argument. Reply in writing within 24 hours asking two precise questions: what specifically is wrong, and what evidence would resolve it. Attach the agreed scope, the sign-offs and the deliverables. A genuine dispute survives that question and can usually be settled by fixing something. A dispute raised purely to defer a payment run tends to evaporate once it requires written specifics, because someone now has to put a reason in an email. Keep the whole exchange in writing either way — if it later goes to a letter before action or a court claim, a documented request for particulars that went unanswered is exactly what you want on file.

Is it worth taking a client to the small claims court over an unpaid invoice?

It is worth it when the debt is clear, the client can pay, and the relationship is already finished. Court fees for a money claim online are £80 up to £1,500, £115 up to £3,000, £205 up to £5,000 and £455 up to £10,000, with 5% of the value above that, and you can add both the fee and the statutory interest to the claim so winning recovers them. The small claims track is designed to work without a solicitor. The real costs are your time and the certainty that the client will not return. Below about £500 that rarely stacks up — but a letter before action setting out the interest and the fixed sum settles a good number of those without ever being filed.

Free · straight to your inbox

Liked this? Get the next one.

Practical freelancers and the self-employed tax and money tips by email — no jargon, unsubscribe any time.

No spam, no jargon. Unsubscribe any time.