How Can I Get Customers to Pay Invoices Faster?

Chasing invoices is one of those tasks that takes up far more time and headspace than it should. You have done the work, delivered the service, raised the invoice. And then you wait. And chase. And wait again.

For most growing businesses the problem is not that customers do not want to pay. It is that paying you requires effort on their part. And effort creates delay. The businesses that get paid fastest are not necessarily the ones with the toughest credit control processes. They are the ones that make paying the easiest thing their customer does all week.

This post covers the practical steps and tools that remove that friction, accelerate payment, and free your team from the cycle of chasing.

Listen to the podcast episode that inspired this post:

Episode 104 - Are Payment Frictions Killing Your Cash Flow? Here's How To Remove Them

Why Credit Control Alone Is Not Enough

The traditional approach to slow payment is to chase harder. Send reminders at seven days, fourteen days, thirty days. Pick up the phone. Send a letter before action.

This works eventually. But it is slow, it creates relationship friction with customers, and it consumes significant time from your finance team or from you.

The better approach is to make payment so easy that it happens before the reminder is ever needed. Your goal is to remove every unnecessary step between your customer receiving an invoice and the money arriving in your bank.

Every unnecessary step is friction. And friction costs days.

The Seven Ways to Remove Payment Friction

Direct Debit via GoCardless

This is the most powerful tool available for businesses with recurring customers and it is underused by most businesses at this level.

GoCardless integrates directly with Xero and other accounting software. When you send a proposal or invoice, you include a link that allows the customer to sign up for direct debit for that specific invoice or for all future invoices. Payment then happens automatically on the due date without the customer needing to do anything.

The objection most business owners have is the transaction fee, typically one to two percent of the invoice value. But compare that to the cost of carrying debt in your business, the interest you pay on an overdraft, or the hours your team spends chasing payments. For most businesses the fee is significantly cheaper than the alternative.

For smaller customers in particular, direct debit should be the default. The administrative cost of chasing a £500 invoice three times exceeds the GoCardless fee by some margin.

Pay by Statement

A newer feature in Xero that is particularly useful for customers with multiple outstanding invoices.

When you send a customer statement it includes a single link that allows them to settle the entire outstanding balance in one click. They do not need to work out what they owe, open each invoice separately, or make multiple payments. One click covers everything.

The friction this removes is real. A customer who owes you money across four invoices has to make four decisions and four actions to clear the balance. Pay by statement collapses that into one.

Tap to Pay

If your business involves any face-to-face customer contact, this changes the payment conversation entirely.

Using apps from Xero, Zettle, SumUp, or most modern business banking apps, your smartphone becomes a payment terminal. The customer taps their card or phone and payment is taken immediately on site.

For service businesses that currently deliver work, return to the office, raise an invoice, email it, and then wait thirty days, shifting to tap to pay transforms a thirty-day collection cycle into instant payment. The working capital difference is significant.

QR Codes on Invoices

Banks including Revolut and payment processors including SumUp and PayPal can generate QR codes that you embed directly on your invoices.

The customer scans the code with their phone. It opens their banking app with your account details already populated. They confirm and pay.

This removes the most common source of delay on bank transfers: customers who cannot find your account details, mistype the sort code, or forget to add the reference number. The QR code eliminates all of that.

Pay Now Buttons on Invoices

Every modern accounting system offers this and most businesses have not activated it.

Every invoice includes a prominent Pay Now button. The customer clicks it and goes directly to a payment portal where they can choose their preferred method. Stripe, GoCardless, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and standard bank transfer can all be offered as options.

Different customers pay differently. Some want the consumer protection of a credit card. Some want the speed of Apple Pay. Some prefer bank transfer. Giving them options and removing the need to hunt for your bank details dramatically reduces the time between invoice and payment.

Pay by Card Link

For occasional larger invoices where a customer specifically wants to pay by card but you do not want to maintain full merchant infrastructure.

Tools like Apron allow you to generate a payment link on demand and send it by email or text. The customer enters their card details and pays immediately.

For business-to-business transactions, card processing fees can be passed to the customer transparently. Many customers paying on a business credit card are happy to cover the fee in exchange for the convenience and the points they collect.

Strategic Payment Terms by Customer Type

Not every customer needs to be treated identically, and your payment terms should reflect that.

For smaller recurring customers, direct debit should be the default and in some cases the requirement. The administrative cost of managing payment for smaller monthly invoices almost always exceeds the transaction fee.

For larger customers with formal procurement processes, flexibility matters more than standardisation. Large businesses often run scheduled payment runs and mandating direct debit creates friction rather than removing it. For these customers, offering multiple options while making each one as easy as possible is the right approach.

The goal is not to force every customer into a single payment method. It is to ensure that for every type of customer, there is a frictionless path to paying you quickly.

What This Does to Your Finance Team's Time

When payment is frictionless, the credit control conversation changes entirely.

Instead of your finance team spending hours each week sending reminders, reconciling who has and has not paid, and chasing overdue invoices, they can focus on the analysis and insight work that actually moves the business forward.

The time saving compounds quickly across a client base of any meaningful size. And the cash flow improvement is immediate. Businesses that move from an average collection time of thirty days to ten days release significant working capital, sometimes tens of thousands of pounds, without winning a single new customer.

Where to Start

You do not need to implement all seven of these at once. Start with three.

Direct debit for all recurring customers. A Pay Now button on every invoice with at least two payment options. One on-demand card link option for special requests.

That covers the vast majority of scenarios for most businesses and can be implemented in a week.

After sixty days, look at your average payment times and your aged debtors report. The improvement should be measurable. Then consider which of the remaining options would add the most value for your specific customer base.

Want to Know What Your Cash Flow Is Really Costing You?

Slow payment is one of the most common and most fixable cash flow problems in growing businesses. The Finance Health Check looks at your actual numbers including your debtor days, your working capital position, and your cash cycle, and gives you a written report on what we find.

Book your free Finance Health Check →

Listen to the podcast episode that inspired this post:

Episode 104 - Are Payment Frictions Killing Your Cash Flow? Here's How To Remove Them