Customer follow-ups are a balancing act. On one side, you lose money every day an invoice stays unpaid. On the other, following up too mechanically can annoy a good client who simply forgot. Here's how we organize this for our SME clients.
The truth about late payments
Most payment delays aren't bad faith. It's forgetting, disorganization, or an internal process on the client side that slows everything down. A well-done reminder solves 80% of cases without friction.
The problem is that in an SME without a dedicated tool, reminders never happen at the right time. Either too early (annoying) or too late (we forgot ourselves). That's exactly what a workflow solves well.
The timing we recommend
- D+1 after due date: polite email, friendly tone. "We wanted to make sure our invoice reached you." Works in 50% of cases.
- D+7: second email, slightly more formal. Remind the amount, the missed date, and attach the invoice again.
- D+14: here we switch to human. A call or personal email from the owner. That's the line.
- D+30: formal notice. Again, human — this is a legal step, not a marketing step.
What we automate, concretely
Our typical workflow plugs into your invoicing tool (Sage, Odoo, Pennylane, even a simple Sheet) and:
- Detects each overdue invoice
- Sends D+1 and D+7 reminders automatically, from your email, in your tone
- Auto-stops all reminders if payment arrives in between
- Adds a line to a tracking table you open once a week
- At D+14, escalates to you with a summary: client history, amount, reminders already sent, suggested action
What we never touch
Automation is like salt. Too much and it's inedible. Not enough and it's bland. The skill is knowing where to stop.
We never automate:
- The D+14 human reminder. This is when the client needs to feel there's a person behind the invoice.
- The formal notice. It's a legal act, not a notification.
- Strategic clients. Your top 5 clients should never receive automated reminders — relational risk is too high for the potential gain.
The special case of public B2B clients
Administrations, local governments, large groups with centralized accounting: their payment delays are structurally long (60 to 90 days), and reminders must follow a precise format (often with mandatory PO reference).
For these clients, we don't take risks: the workflow sends reminders in the right format, but we add a manual validation step before each send. 10 seconds of work for the owner, zero risk of relational mistake.
The real ROI
For an SME that invoices ~100 clients/month, we observe on average:
- 10 to 12 hours per month of admin time saved
- 15 to 25% reduction in DSO (average payment time)
- Zero forgotten invoices — which over a year often means 2 or 3 invoices found in drawers
The system typically pays for itself in less than 2 months of operation.