Getting Paid: A Receivables Playbook for SMEs
By Allan C. Haynes FCCA FCA CTP
Of the three levers we met in Week 5, receivables is the one owners feel most viscerally—because it is your money, already earned, sitting in someone else's account. This week we turn that lever into a system. Getting paid on time is not about being aggressive or being liked; it is about being organised, consistent, and slightly earlier than everyone else who is chasing the same customer's cash.
First, measure the thing
Your Days Sales Outstanding—average receivables divided by daily sales—is the number to know. If you invoice US$900,000 a year and are typically owed US$150,000, your DSO is about sixty days. If your terms say thirty, you are effectively financing your customers for a month, unpaid, out of your own working capital. Most owners are startled by their real DSO. Calculate yours before you read on; it reframes everything that follows.
The system, from quote to cash
- Invoice instantly and correctly. The clock starts when the invoice arrives, not when the work finishes. Same-day invoicing is the cheapest DSO reduction available—every day of delay is a day added directly to your cycle. And a clean invoice, with the right reference, contact, and no query to dispute, removes the customer's favourite reason to sit on it.
- Set terms deliberately. Terms are a commercial decision, not a default. Offer a small discount for early settlement where margins allow; charge, or at least reserve the right to charge, for late payment. Treat payment terms as part of your pricing, because they are.
- Chase before the due date, not after. A friendly note a few days ahead—"just confirming invoice 1042 is scheduled for Friday"—is not chasing; it is service, and it puts you at the front of the queue. Waiting until an invoice is overdue means joining the back of it.
- Make a ladder and follow it every time. Reminder before due; prompt on the day; a call at seven days over; a firmer written notice at fourteen; a decision point at thirty. Consistency is the whole trick—customers pay predictable suppliers first.
- Make paying you easy. Bank details on every invoice, a link or a card option, no friction. Every extra step is an extra week.
Read the behaviour, not just the balance
The most valuable signal in your receivables ledger is change. A reliable thirty-day payer who drifts to forty-five, then sixty, is telling you something before their financial trouble reaches you as a bad debt. As we saw in Week 7, a slipping payment pattern is an early warning—of your customer's stress and of your own coming shortfall. Watch the trend on your biggest accounts as closely as you watch the totals.
When it goes wrong
Some invoices will age badly. Deal with them early and unemotionally: a payment plan agreed at day forty is worth far more than a legal letter at day one-twenty. The single most expensive receivables mistake is silence—hoping a bad debt will resolve itself while it quietly hardens. It will not. Concentration is the other risk: if one customer is a large share of your book, their late payment is your crisis, and their failure could be too. Know your exposure before you need to.
Your one action this week: pull your aged receivables report and find your three oldest invoices. Make contact on all three today—politely, specifically, with a date. That one habit, repeated, is worth more than any letter template.
CrediPulse AI tracks DSO and per-customer payment behaviour continuously, flags the accounts that are slipping, and shows the cash a tighter collections rhythm would release. It launches Tuesday 20 October 2026, with plans from US$19 a month; waitlist members get first access and a Founders' Circle invitation (30% off year one, 100 places, through 31 October).
Part of the Money Moves Forward series by ACH Consulting Inc. CrediPulse AI launches 20 October 2026 — join the early-access waitlist at ach-consultinginc.com.