Most unpaid invoices are not disputes. They are invoices with terms nobody agreed, sent to somebody who does not pay them, with no stated consequence for being late — and every one of those three things is fixable before you send the next one.
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Payment terms are the agreement about when money is due. They are usually written as a number of days from the invoice date, and the shorthand is worth knowing because people use it without explaining it.
| Written as | Means | In practice |
|---|---|---|
| Due on receipt | Payable immediately | Common for one-off and new customers. |
| Net 7 | Due 7 days from the invoice date | Realistic for small regular jobs. |
| Net 30 | Due 30 days from the invoice date | The common business default. Often means 30 days from when THEY process it. |
| EOM 30 | Due 30 days after the end of the month the invoice falls in | Can be nearly 60 days on an invoice sent on the 1st. Read carefully. |
Australia has no single statutory payment period for ordinary commercial invoices. If your contract says nothing about when payment is due, the position falls back to payment within a reasonable time — and 'reasonable' is a judgement about your industry and your dealings, not a number you can point at.
That vagueness is entirely the seller's problem. It is what turns 'you are late' into an argument. Stating a term, in writing, before the work — on the quote, not first on the invoice — removes the argument before it exists.
You can charge interest on an overdue invoice, but generally only where the customer agreed to it before the work — in your terms of trade, quote or contract. Adding a line about interest for the first time on an overdue invoice is not an agreement, and a customer who declines to pay it is usually on solid ground.
So the work is done up front. Put the rate and when it starts in your terms, reference those terms on the invoice, and keep the rate modest — the aim is to be paid on time, not to earn from lateness. If the amount is large or the relationship is going sideways, that is the point to get advice rather than to improvise.
Late payment is frequently not refusal. It is an invoice that could not be processed: no purchase-order number, the wrong email, a due date nobody could find, no way to pay without ringing you.
If you are registered, the tax side has to be right for the same reason — an invoice a customer cannot claim against is one they send back rather than pay. GST is 10%, the document has to be headed Tax Invoice, and it has to carry your ABN.
Chasing works better as a routine than as a confrontation. Same wording every time, sent on a schedule, with no apology in it — you are not asking a favour.
If most of your invoices run late, the fix is usually the term rather than the follow-up. Net 30 on a job you paid wages for last week is you lending money to a customer, interest-free, whether or not anyone called it that.
Shorter terms, a deposit on larger jobs, or progress invoices on longer ones all move the money closer to the work. Customers push back less often than people expect, because the terms were only ever a default nobody had questioned.
Set your terms once and every invoice carries them — due date calculated, not typed, so the date on the invoice and the date you chase from are always the same day.