Faster payments: how to shorten the wait for a transfer
Late payment rarely comes from bad faith. Terms, reminders, interest and bad debt relief — a practical toolkit for a small company.
A small company with a good product and a bad payment cycle has the same problem as a company with no customers: no money in the account. The difference is that the first problem can be solved without winning any new work.
A payment term is a commercial condition, not a formality
The rules on excessive delays in commercial transactions limit the terms parties may agree, and they limit them even further in dealings with public bodies. This means that a longer term imposed in a contract is not always binding, and a micro-enterprise selling to a large company is a protected party under those rules.
- Write the term as a number of days from the issue date, not as “end of the month following delivery” — the less room for interpretation, the better.
- Set one default term for all customers and treat a longer one as a concession you get something for.
- For new counterparties, consider prepayment or payment split across acceptance stages.
An invoice that raises no questions
A large share of delays is caused by small things: a missing purchase order number, the wrong department name, an attachment format the recipient's document workflow will not accept. The invoice bounces, then rejoins the approval queue and loses two weeks before anyone even looks at the amount.
- On the first transaction, ask what the customer's accounts payable team requires and save it in their record.
- Give your bank account number both on the document and in the message body, so nobody has to retype it.
- Send the invoice on the same day you finish the work — every day of delay on your side is a day of delay on theirs.
- Add a payment link if you sell to smaller customers; convenience works better than reminders.
Reminders: polite, but regular
The sequence that works is boring. A reminder three days before the due date, a note on the due date, another one a week later, and only then a phone call. Regularity matters more than tone — a company that always follows up is taken more seriously than one that goes quiet for two months and then gets emotional.
Automation helps twice over: it sends on time and it takes away the decision about whether following up is appropriate. In Księgowskaz, reminders run from a schedule attached to the invoice, and the document's status changes by itself once a payment is matched to the receivable.
Interest and compensation for recovery costs
In commercial transactions a creditor is entitled to statutory interest for late payment and to flat-rate compensation for recovery costs, set at three levels depending on the value of the claim. There is no need to prove that the costs were actually incurred — the entitlement follows from the delay itself.
Check the sourceThe rate of statutory interest for late payment in commercial transactions moves with the reference rate and is published by official announcement. Verify the current rate and the compensation amounts before you issue an interest note.
In practice the note itself is often more effective than the amount on it. Knowing that a supplier charges interest as a matter of routine and issues notes to everyone moves your invoice up the customer's internal payment queue. That is not aggression, it is predictability.
Bad debt relief, or recovering the tax
If a customer has not paid within ninety days of the payment due date, the seller may correct the taxable base and the output tax, and on the income tax side reduce the base by the value of the unpaid receivable. The debtor has a mirror obligation and corrects the deduction in the opposite direction.
- Keep a list of overdue invoices with the date from which those ninety days run — without it the relief is simply lost.
- Check the customer's legal situation before making the correction; the rules set conditions in this respect.
- Once payment arrives, remember the reverse correction — it is an obligation, not a choice.
Three numbers worth knowing
You do not need elaborate analytics. Three indicators calculated once a month are enough: the average time from issue to payment, the share of overdue invoices in total sales value, and the largest single overdue amount. The first tells you about your process, the second about your customer portfolio, the third about a risk you cannot afford to sleep through.
Late payment does not begin on the day the deadline passes. It begins on the day an over-long deadline was agreed.
