How to hand over
debtor follow-up
Most businesses have no follow-up cadence at all — they chase when cash is tight. A dedicated person with a schedule pulls cash forward within a month, and it is the least glamorous win available.
Ask a business owner what their debtor days are and you often get an estimate. Ask what happens on day thirty-one and you usually get a description of a feeling rather than a process.
That is the actual problem. Chasing is emotionally uncomfortable, so it happens inconsistently — hard when cash is tight, not at all when it is not. Inconsistent chasing teaches customers that your terms are negotiable.
A dedicated person removes the emotion. The follow-up happens on day one past terms because that is the schedule, not because anyone is annoyed. Customers respond to consistency far more than to firmness.
Who this is for
✓Worth your time if
- You chase invoices when cash gets tight rather than on a schedule
- You do not know your current debtor days
- Some customers routinely pay at sixty days on thirty-day terms
- Chasing is done by the person who also owns the relationship
✕Probably not if
- Your invoices go out late or inaccurately — fix that first
- You have no written terms
- You want someone to make credit or write-off decisions
- You are unwilling to escalate when the schedule says to
What a follow-up cadence actually involves
All of it scripted and scheduled. None of it requires judgement about the relationship.
Confirming the invoice actually arrived and reached the right person — a surprising share of late payment is an invoice sitting in the wrong inbox.
A short reminder a few days before due date. The cheapest intervention available and the least confrontational.
Contact on the first day past terms, every time, to your script. Consistency here does most of the work.
A defined sequence — day 1, day 7, day 14, day 21 — with the tone stepping up on schedule rather than on mood.
Regular statements so nobody can claim they did not know what was outstanding.
When a customer commits to a date, it is recorded and followed up on that date rather than forgotten.
Invoices that are unpaid because something is wrong, separated from invoices that are simply late — a distinction most businesses never make.
Ageing, debtor days, promises outstanding and disputes, weekly, so you can see the trend rather than the feeling.
What stays with you
The chasing travels. Every decision about money and relationships stays with you.
- Credit decisionsWhether to extend credit, put an account on hold or stop supply is yours.
- Write-offs and settlementsAccepting less than the invoice is a commercial decision, never delegated.
- Legal escalationDebt collection agencies, letters of demand and legal action are your call and your instruction.
- Relationship judgementWhen a customer is genuinely struggling and the answer is a payment plan rather than pressure, that is yours to decide — they flag it.
How to set it up
The cadence is the whole design. Get that right and the person is executing, not deciding.
Write the cadence down, with the words
Not "follow up regularly". The actual schedule and the actual wording at each step, including the one where the tone changes. This is an one-hour job and it is the entire handover.
Set your thresholds and escalation points
At what age and what value does it come to you? Who gets a phone call rather than an email? What is the point at which supply stops? Decide once, in advance, so nobody is deciding in the moment.
Start with the aged debt, not the current ledger
Point them at everything past sixty days first. It is finite, it produces cash quickly, and it teaches them your customers.
Then run the standing cadence
Pre-due reminders and day-one follow-up on everything, every cycle. This is where debtor days actually move.
Review the weekly report and adjust
Debtor days, promises kept, disputes found. Adjust the cadence based on what the data shows rather than on how the calls felt.
Chasing invoices that were never going to be paid as issued
A large share of "late" invoices are not late — they are disputed, and nobody has noticed. Wrong amount, wrong PO reference, work the customer believes was not completed, an invoice that never reached accounts payable. If your follow-up process treats all of these as reluctance to pay, you get an escalating sequence of increasingly firm reminders aimed at a customer who is waiting for you to fix something. That damages relationships and recovers nothing. Build the split into the process from day one: the first contact establishes whether the invoice is agreed and simply unpaid, or whether something is wrong. Agreed-and-unpaid goes into the escalating cadence. Anything else comes to you as a dispute, immediately, because that is a different problem with a different owner.