CoreyHow to chase late payments with AI (UK)
Agree payment terms in writing, invoice with the details the law requires, then chase on a fixed schedule rather than when you remember. On a late business payment you can add statutory interest of 8% plus the Bank of England base rate, and a fixed debt recovery sum.
Late payment is not usually a dispute. It is a queue, and you are in it because nobody has made it uncomfortable to leave you there.
The fix is dull and it works: agree the terms in writing, invoice to the legal standard, and chase on a fixed schedule instead of when you finally get annoyed. That last one is where most one-person businesses lose the money, because chasing is unpleasant, so it happens late, inconsistently, and least of all to the client you least want to annoy - who is, reliably, the one who pays slowest.
This is a job worth handing to something that does not find it awkward. Corey is the worked example throughout: it tracks what is owed, drafts every chase on time with the right numbers already in it, and hands you the send. It does not email your clients on its own, and you would not want it to.
One line before the how-to, because this is money and somebody else’s contract: the figures below are the statutory ones published by GOV.UK, and the statutory interest rate moves with the Bank of England base rate. Check the current rate before you put it in an email, and take advice on anything that has become a real dispute. AI does the legwork; the judgement calls stay yours.
How do I chase late payments?
Send a polite reminder before the invoice is due, one on the due date, then again at seven, fourteen and thirty days, using the same schedule for every client. If the payment is between businesses and still late, you have a statutory right to interest at 8% plus the Bank of England base rate, plus a fixed sum for debt recovery costs. Most people never claim either, which is precisely why the queue exists.
The rest of this page is how to make that schedule run without you having to feel anything about it.
Agree the payment terms before you start the work
The terms you never agreed are the ones you end up arguing about, usually at the point where you also want more work from the same client.
If you do not agree a payment date, GOV.UK is explicit about what happens: the law makes the payment late 30 days after the customer gets the invoice, or gets the goods or service, whichever is later. Where terms are agreed, they are usually within 30 days for public authorities and 60 days for business transactions.
So there is always a deadline. The only question is whether it is one you chose. Write it into the proposal or the engagement email, not into a follow-up after the first invoice goes unpaid, and have AI hold the agreed term against each client so the chase dates are already known the moment you invoice.
Send an invoice that meets the legal requirements
An invoice with a missing detail is a free excuse, and a slow payer will take it.
GOV.UK sets out what an invoice must include: a unique identification number, your business name, address and contact information, the company name and address of the customer, a clear description of what you are charging for, the supply date, the invoice date, the amounts being charged, the VAT amount if applicable, and the total owed.
Then it depends what you are. A sole trader adds their own name and any business name being used, and where a business name is used, an address at which legal documents can be delivered. A limited company uses the full company name exactly as it appears on the certificate of incorporation - and if you name one director, you have to name all of them, which is the usual reason to name none.
Have AI build the invoice from your own records and check every required field is there before it reaches the client. This is exactly the kind of task where a machine beats a person: it is a checklist, it is identical every time, and the failure mode is silent.
Track what is owed, not what is paid
Watching money arrive tells you nothing until it is already late.
Track the other side. Every issued invoice, its agreed term, its due date, its age. The question you want answered is “who is overdue today”, and you want it answered without opening anything, because a question that requires effort gets asked on the days you feel organised rather than on the days it matters.
Have AI reconcile issued invoices against the bank continuously and keep the outstanding list current. The by-product is that you always know your real position, which is a different and considerably less cheerful number than your bank balance.
Chase on a schedule, not on a feeling
Here is the whole trick, and it is not a technique. It is a calendar.
A reminder a few days before the due date. One on the day. Then seven, fourteen and thirty days after. The same schedule for everybody, including the client you like, including the big one, including the one who always pays eventually.
Applying it identically is what makes it work, and it is also what makes it survivable. A chase that goes to everyone on a fixed schedule is administration. A chase that goes only to the people you have decided are a problem is a message, and it is read as one.
Have AI draft each reminder on time with the invoice number, the amount and the age of the debt already filled in, so the only thing left is whether to send it. Sending is outward-facing and occasionally relationship-ending, so it waits for you. That is the deal with anything that leaves the building.
Add statutory interest and debt recovery costs
This is the part almost nobody uses, which is a shame, because it is free and it is already law.
On a business to business debt, GOV.UK gives statutory interest as 8% plus the Bank of England base rate. On top of that you can claim a fixed sum for debt recovery costs, set by late payment legislation:
| Debt size | Fixed sum |
|---|---|
| Up to £999.99 | £40 |
| £1,000 to £9,999.99 | £70 |
| £10,000 or more | £100 |
You can only charge the business once for each payment. And because the interest rate moves with the base rate, the figure is only right on the day you work it out, so check the current base rate rather than copying last quarter’s number.
Have AI calculate it per invoice so the number in the email is correct. Whether to actually charge it is a commercial decision about a relationship, and that one is yours - but knowing the figure changes the conversation even when you waive it, because a late payment stops being something you quietly absorb and becomes a cost with a published price.
Escalate, and know when to stop
When the schedule runs out, the remaining routes are a formal letter before action, mediation, a debt recovery service, or the small claims track. Each costs time or money or both, so the honest calculation is the size of the debt against what recovering it will take, and for small sums the answer is sometimes to stop and stop working for them.
What makes any of those routes cheap is having the record already assembled: the contract, the invoice, every chase you sent, and the dates. Have AI put that file together, because the alternative is reconstructing eight months of goodwill from your sent items at the exact moment you are least inclined to be careful.
The part that actually changes the outcome
None of the above is clever. Terms in writing, a correct invoice, a fixed chase schedule, the statutory interest you are already entitled to.
The reason it does not happen is not that founders do not know it. It is that every step is small, dull, recurring and slightly unpleasant, which is the exact profile of work that a one-person business drops first and misses last. Give that whole category to something that does it on a schedule and never once finds it awkward, keep the sending and the deciding, and the queue you are in gets noticeably shorter.