Do you ever feel like the bill collector of your small business?
It’s agonizing, right?

Between all the other backend admin things you have to juggle, you now have to send the most awkward text or email to Linda reminding her that her next payment is past due… again.

It’s frustrating, feels awkward, takes a lot of mental energy, and wastes your time.

Worst of all? You’re now out of pocket until Linda pays!

Rest assured, there’s a 2-step easy fix for all of this.

How to Get Paid On Time

Step 1:

Move all of your clients over to an automatic billing system. If your clients are paying manually via Zelle or Venmo, you’re asking to have to chase payments down each month.

Whether you use something like PayPal, Stripe, or similar- getting your clients to enroll into an automatic billing system will help reduce late or missed payments and can almost eliminate your role as “the bill collector” of your business.

 

After your clients are moved over into an automatic billing system, payments will still fail. Credit cards expire, identities are stolen, things happen. Which leads us to…

Step 2:

Create canned email templates that you will copy and paste each time a payment is late.

Instead of stressing over what to say to each individual client based on your unique relationship to them, you need to show up as a business- a brand.

Using your brand’s voice, write up the notification each client will receive whenever their payment is late.

You can make this super low lift by opening an email, entering in the subject line LATE PAYMENT REMINDER #1 and drafting something similar to the following:

 

Hey [name],

We were unable to process your payment.

You can update your payment information here (insert the appropriate hyperlink) no later than [insert date.]

Let me know if you have any questions!

Sincerely,

[Your name]

That’s it!

No need to obsess, stress, or agonize what to say, how many exclamation points or emojis to use.

Show up as a business, keep the email clear and concise.

Each time a payment fails to go through, you’ll simply open up your drafts, find this template, copy and paste it, enter in the appropriate information, and hit send.

Voila! You’ll no longer waste all that precious and time and energy stressing over how to handle late payments.