They have stopped replying. What that usually means, and what to do now.

When a customer stops replying about an invoice, the silence is information. On its own, however, it does not tell you much. Often it means somebody is uncomfortable rather than absent. What changes the outcome is working out which situation you are in, then putting a date and a consequence in writing rather than sending another reminder.

The job is done, the invoice is sent, and then nothing.

First come the excuses. Waiting on another payment to come through. I will do it tonight, just flat out today. I thought my partner paid it already. Can you resend it, I lost it. Next week for sure, I promise. Then the excuses stop too, and you are left chasing somebody who has simply stopped answering.

This is a well-worn path, trodden by good businesses doing good work and getting strung along, so if it is happening to you it is not a sign you have done something wrong.

Why would somebody just stop replying?

Most people do not set out to be dodgy. Money triggers people. It taps into shame, fear, pride and ego, and when things are tight the instinct is rarely to confront it. It is to delay, distract, or disappear. It is a bit like when somebody sees your number come up and suddenly develops an urgent need to water the driveway. They are not bad people. They are uncomfortable, and they are hoping you will forget.

And the longer it runs, the harder it becomes for them to admit they are stuck, which is why silence tends to feed on itself rather than resolve on its own.

Four situations the silence is usually covering.

Working out which one you are looking at is most of the job, because the right move is different for each.

• They never intended to pay. Silence is the strategy here, and so is making it so hard and so draining that you eventually let it go.
• Something happened that they were not expecting. A dispute they have not voiced yet, usually about scope, price or what was agreed.
• Circumstances outside their control. They cannot pay at the moment and cannot bring themselves to tell you.
• An imbalance of power. You are simply not important enough to reply to this week, and they know you need the work more than they need you.

There is more on each of these, and what works with each, in the five types of customer who do not pay.

The one thing that tells you which of them you are dealing with.

If someone wants to pay you, they will. It might not be immediate, but they will be proactive. They will keep you updated. They will make arrangements. It will not just be empty promises.

That is the test, and it works when nothing else is clear. Somebody who intends to pay behaves like it, even when they are struggling. Somebody who has gone quiet and stays quiet after a direct, dated request has told you something, and it is worth believing them.

The step in between, that nobody owns.

There is a stretch after an invoice is overdue and before anything formal happens, and plenty of businesses have nothing that governs it. So it drifts. Another polite reminder, then a fortnight of nothing, then the same reminder again, while the amount stays exactly where it is and your options quietly narrow.

Often the cause is simply that nobody owns it. The person who would chase it is flat out until the 20th, so an account that went overdue at seven days does not get looked at until then, and by that point the conversation is harder than it needed to be. That gap is where this gets decided.

What to do this week, in order.

Check the company still exists

Search the customer on the Companies Office register. It is free and it takes seconds. Check the company name matches the one on your invoice and that the director is the person who signed your paperwork. Now and then it turns out the company is not a registered company at all, or the director is somebody else entirely. While you are there, look at the directors themselves. If they have opened and closed a lot of companies, that is worth knowing before you decide how hard to push.

Follow up on the day you said you would

If they told you Friday, follow up on Friday. Not the following Wednesday, and not after you have stewed on it for a fortnight. Following up on the day you named is not rude, it is what a professional business does, and it takes away the runway that lets the situation spiral.

Put a date and a consequence in writing

The sequence that works is short. A friendly reminder once the invoice is a week or two past due. Then, if it stays quiet, a seven-day letter that says plainly what is owed, that it is overdue, the date you need it paid by, and what happens if that date passes, which is usually that the matter is handed to a debt collection agency.

In our experience the seven-day letter is effective, and it is the step people most often skip, because it feels like a threat. Some customers do find it heavy-handed. If that worries you, the answer is in how it is written rather than in whether you send it. It can be firm and still sound like a business that values the customer and needs to be paid on time, like any business does.

Decide now what you will do when the date passes

Decide before you send it, while you are calm, and write the decision down. A deadline you do not act on teaches the customer exactly what your next deadline is worth. We teach people how to treat us in business, just as we do in life, whether we mean to or not.

When businesses we have worked with finally drew a line, half the time the customer paid immediately, because they could all along and it simply had not been a priority. The other half stayed quiet, which is its own answer, and it tells you more about what you had in place than about them.

What is debt collection actually worth?

Worth knowing before you rely on it. In our experience getting your money back is harder than most people expect, and a customer who says they dispute the invoice generally stops a collection where it stands.

That is a reason to know what the threat in your back pocket is really worth, rather than a reason to do nothing. What happens after that, and whether it is worth sending, is set out in what to expect from debt collection.

When it should not be you making the call.

Some people should not be the one having these conversations, and saying so is more useful than telling somebody to toughen up. If somebody is conflict-averse and gets too engaged in whether or not someone is going to dislike them, then it is not the right fit.

That is a role question rather than a character one. It might be a different person in the business, a set sequence that runs without anybody having to decide in the moment, or getting the awkward part out of one person’s hands entirely. You can be kind and clear at the same time. Boundaries are not rudeness, they are professionalism.

What stops the next one going quiet on you.

Most of what makes this easier happens before the work starts: knowing who you are dealing with, terms they have actually agreed to, a deposit or progress payments so the gap between doing the work and being paid stays short, and invoicing the moment the job is done, while the customer is still pleased with it.

We cover those foundations, from terms of trade and credit checks to deposits and the PPSR, in what to do when you are not being paid for work you have done.

If this one is still sitting there, you do not have to work out the next move on your own.