Invoice on completion, chase that knows the law

Did eleven EICRs for a Suffolk letting agent in March. Got paid in June. They wonder why I’m not picking up.

You did the work. The invoice’s in Xero. Day 30 came and went. Day 45. Day 60. You’d ring the agent’s bookkeeper but you can’t remember which job is which, and she’ll ask you to re-send the photos because she lost the email. You don’t ring. The cashflow gap eats the quarter.

This is the loop that runs after the invoice is raised and before the small-claims threat gets dusted off. Day 0 invoice on completion → day 7 friendly reminder → day 14 polite re-send with the work-photo set re-attached → day 31 a chase that cites the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 and adds statutory interest (Bank of England base rate + 8%) as a line item → day 60 escalation to the partner-side at the customer’s firm → day 90 the formal Letter Before Action template, still drafted in your voice. At each step the tone moves down a notch and the legal grounding moves up a notch - the customer who’s about to pay sees the politely warm version; the one who’s six months overdue sees the cool, but evidenced version. The shape is sealed against HC Electrical, where the cash cycle on letting-agent EICR work pre-build sat north of 80 days, and the build is shaped around closing it to the 30-day promise the contract actually states.

What gets lost between invoice raised and invoice paid

Most businesses don’t lose invoices to refusal - they lose them to silence on both sides. A few moments - pick the ones that sound like your quarter:

• Reactive tradesfour cash cycles in one bookkeeping system, none of them on the same chase rhythm: domestic on the doorstep, ad-hoc fixes on 14-day terms, letting-agent retainer work on 30-60 days, commercial sub-contract on whatever-the-PM-decides.
• Letting-agent batch workthe £4,800 of EICR work invoiced as separate per-property lines that the agent’s bookkeeper “can’t find” in his queue, then re-asks for as one PDF on month-three.
• Commercial sub-contractsthe 30-day terms that turn into 60-day terms because the contract administrator only releases on Friday afternoons and the bookkeeper’s part-time.
• Insurance-pipeline workthe £2,800 trace-and-access invoice waiting on a loss adjuster on holiday; the homeowner who keeps texting “have you heard back?” every other day for three weeks.
• EICR-specialist electriciansthe £35-£75 cert-on-cert volume that quietly adds up to £4-8k a month uncollected because nobody owns the chase.
• Commercial-catering gasthe kitchen-down call-out paid the same week because the restaurant has to run; the FM-side maintenance contract on 60 days because that’s just how FM works.
• Letting agents and lettings teamsthe tenant who’s a month behind because she lost her job vs the tenant who’s a month behind because she’s decided to leave; the same arrears, two different conversations.
• Self-storage operatorsthe DD-failure that becomes arrears that becomes the Sale of Goods Act trigger at day 60; nobody owns it until day 90 and then it’s the auction at day 120.
• Driving instructorsthe 17-year-old’s missed payment chased back to the teenager instead of routing to the parent who holds the card.

These aren’t problems for a generic Xero ledger. They’re the bit between invoice raised and paid - which is where your cashflow actually lives.

What solved looks like

1. Invoice on completion is the trigger, not Friday afternoon

The “I’ll do it Friday” moment: job done Tuesday. The invoice goes on the Friday-evening pile. Saturday-morning admin. Wednesday next week she actually gets it. You’ve started the chase clock four days late on every single job.

Solved looks like: the done event from the job (the same trigger as the Booking & Review Loop cascade) raises the invoice automatically. Line items pull from the quote object, photos attach from the job thread, the customer-type tag carries through. The invoice is out before you’ve left the customer’s drive. The day-0 chase clock starts when you actually finished the work, not when Friday admin got to it.

2. The cadence reads the customer-type tag, not the same clock

The “one-size-fits-no-one” moment: the same chase email goes to a domestic customer at +14 (too aggressive, she paid it on the doorstep - she just lost the receipt), to a letting agent at +14 (too soft, the bookkeeper needs the day-31 statute line to put it through), and to an FM contract at +14 (too early, you’re not at the 60-day terms yet). One generic ladder annoys everyone.

Solved looks like: each customer record carries a type - domestic / ad-hoc / letting-agent-monthly / commercial-subcontract / insurance-pipeline / tenant / business / property-management. The dunning cadence reads the tag and runs the appropriate ladder: a domestic 14-day terms with a friendly SMS at day 7, a letting-agent 30-day terms with the day-31 statutory-interest line and the agent-portal link, an FM contract 60-day with the QS-chase at day 45, an insurer claim with the loss-adjuster on one track and a soft homeowner-status SMS on the other.

3. The day-31 chase cites the Act, with the right interest rate baked in

The “asking feels rude” moment: customer’s at day 35 on commercial terms. You’re entitled to add 8% over base under the Late Payment Act. You don’t, because asking feels awkward, the calculation feels fiddly, and the bookkeeper might query it. So you eat the cost of the agent’s slow ledger every quarter, and the easy ones keep paying easy and the chronic late payers keep paying chronic late.

Solved looks like: the day-31 chase email cites the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 with the current Bank of England base rate baked into the calculation. The current rate updates from the BoE feed automatically - you don’t update a template. The line item appears on the chase as “statutory interest accrued from [date] at base rate + 8%, currently £X”; the day-60 escalation cites the same statute with the right paragraph; the day-90 Letter Before Action draft is legally framed but in your voice, and you sign off before it sends. Quietly, most agents pay sooner once it’s there - the chronic late payers see the line; the easy ones never need to.

4. The agent or property-manager portal that ends the Tuesday-morning phone call

The “can you re-send 14 Mill Lane” moment: letting agent’s bookkeeper rings every Tuesday for the invoice he lost, the cert PDF he didn’t file, the photo he can’t find. Tuesday morning’s gone before you’re on the tools.

Solved looks like: for letting-agent retainer work and commercial-property-management work, the agent / property-manager gets a per-firm portal where every open invoice, every property line, every cert PDF, every photo, every dispute, and every payment link sits in one place. The Tuesday-morning “can you re-send me the invoice for 14 Mill Lane in March?” becomes a one-tap self-service. The portal is read-only from the agent’s side; you stay in control of what’s there. The cert hand-off to Customer & Third Party Portal is the longer-form view of this surface.

5. Multi-channel routing per customer - and per cadence step

The “she doesn’t read email” moment: the domestic customer doesn’t read email; the letting agent’s bookkeeper reads nothing but email; the FM contract administrator only reads what comes through the helpdesk; the tenant in arrears only opens WhatsApp.

Solved looks like: channel routing per customer-type and per cadence step. Domestic chase runs SMS first then email at day 14; letting-agent batch goes by email with the PDF attached and the portal link; commercial subcontract goes by email to the PM and the bookkeeper together; tenant arrears go on WhatsApp where you’ve got opt-in (rent statement attaches as a PDF); insurer-side chase runs by email to the named loss adjuster with a parallel soft-status SMS to the homeowner. Same engine; per-customer voice; per-channel delivery; per-cadence-step escalation.

6. The dashboard answers the Sunday-night cashflow anxiety

The “I’d ring but I can’t remember which job” moment: Sunday evening. £14,800 in aged debt across twenty-two invoices. You’d ring on Monday but you’ve forgotten the detail and the bookkeeper will ask for the photos again. You don’t ring. The cashflow gap eats the quarter.

Solved looks like: every open invoice with its current state, days overdue, statutory interest accumulated, and the next action queued. Multi-customer total exposure rolls up by customer-type so the agent who’s three months behind on five jobs is visible as £6,200 outstanding - not as five separate lines you’ve forgotten about. The Suffolk-letting-agent eleven-EICR batch from March shows at day-90 with statutory interest accumulated, the agent-portal link attached, and the bookkeeper’s last access timestamp on the page so you know whether to ring or to let the portal do its work.

How the dunning ladder runs, by default

The default trade-shape commercial cadence (letting-agent batch, commercial sub-contract, property-management) runs:

• Day 0invoice raised on completion, sent in the customer’s preferred channel with the work-photo set attached and the per-property breakdown the bookkeeper expects.
• Day 7friendly reminder. “Quick note - invoice [#] for the March round is due on the 30th, all the cert PDFs are on the portal if you need a copy.”
• Day 14polite re-send with the photo set and the cert PDFs re-attached. The friction of “I can’t find the original” disappears.
• Day 31statutory chase. The Late Payment Act line cites the current BoE base rate + 8%, with the interest line itemised on the invoice itself.
• Day 45QS-chase / partner-side escalation. Email lifts up the chain to the named partner / contract administrator rather than the bookkeeper.
• Day 60formal escalation with the day-90 LBA flagged. Customer sees the consequence in writing; you sign off before it sends.
• Day 90Letter Before Action draft assembles with the right wording, the statutory-interest line, the per-day calculation, and a send-or-edit prompt to you. After day 90, the Money Claims Online submission has all the evidence pre-assembled - you complete the filing.

The domestic cadence is shorter (SMS day 7, soft re-send day 14, polite chase day 21, escalation day 30 with the Consumer Rights Act 2015 framing - no statutory interest the way commercial gets it). The tenant-arrears cadence runs separately with the right Section 8 / Section 21 timing and the Form 3 / Form 6A wording. The insurer-pipeline cadence runs two parallel tracks - the loss-adjuster chase and the homeowner soft-status - off the same claim record.

Who this is for

The shape repeats across every UK SME that carries an aged-debt column on Sunday evening.

Reactive trades - electricians, plumbers, gas engineers, roofers, builders, decorators, landscapers. One engine, four cash cycles, with the dunning cadence reading the customer-type tag.

Letting-agent retainer work and the trades that do it - letting agents, plumbers/lettings, decorators/property-maintenance, gas-engineers/landlord-cp12, electricians/eicr-specialist. The monthly batch invoice with the day-31 statutory line and the agent-portal that ends the Tuesday-morning phone call.

Commercial sub-contract and FM - commercial electricians, commercial plumbers, commercial-catering gas. 30 / 60-day terms with the QS-side chase, retention released through the Stage Payment & Retention Ledger, and the FM-helpdesk write-back where the helpdesk has one.

Insurance-pipeline trades - leak-detection plumbers and any trade taking insurer-pay work. Two parallel cadences - loss-adjuster chase, homeowner soft-status - off the same claim record.

Tenant-side rent arrears - letting agents. The lawful-but-warm tenant-arrears ladder with the Section 8 / Section 21 timing, the deposit-deduction proposal where applicable, and the per-tenant note field that distinguishes she lost her job from she’s decided to leave.

Subscription and DD-driven recurring - self-storage, driving instructors, and any subscription-led SME. The DD-failure-into-arrears ladder, the Sale of Goods Act 1979 trigger at day 60 where applicable, and the teen-or-parent routing where the payment account-holder isn’t the service recipient.

Same engine; different cadence; different tone; different statute as the day-31 backstop.

The closest thing we’ve already built

HC Electrical - live trade-dunning ladder running on the EICR + EV-installer side. Letting-agent monthly batch invoicing with the cert PDF auto-attached, the statutory-interest line firing at day 31, and the agent-portal for self-service. Pre-build, the cash cycle on letting-agent work sat north of 80 days; the build is shaped around closing it to the 30-day promise the contract actually states. (Named pull-quote + final-£ outcome figures hold behind the permission checklist; see Hc Electrical for the build detail.)

mendmyi - the founder’s own UK device-repair business - runs the doorstep-card + branded e-receipt + 14-day-chase pattern at the small-ticket end of the same engine.

pharmaceutical-analytics.com is the dashboard shape - operational data captured at every invoice-state transition, decision dashboard for the owner.

For letting-agent and property-management work, the dunning ladder pairs with Customer & Third Party Portal - the agent-side view of every property, every cert, every invoice. For self-storage and other businesses with abandoned-goods workflows, the day-60 Sale of Goods Act trigger hands off to the Compliance Evidence Record shape - photo cataloguing, statutory-notice timing, auction documentation.

Tell us what your cashflow gap looks like

What you do, what your customer mix looks like (domestic vs commercial vs property-management vs insurance), where the aged-debt lives in your bookkeeping, what your current chase-and-recovery process is (you Sunday-evening, your partner, your bookkeeper, nobody). Tell us the biggest invoice you’ve written off in the last two years and we’ll come back with a sketch of what we’d build so the next one doesn’t go the same way. No demo, no calendar widget. Email reply, scoped sketch, you decide.

FAQ