Sent Before Six

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as ever. Your century today, and the document in it is the last thing your customer will ever see of you.

Two firms both finish equal work,
Both send the bill, both wait, both lurk.
One sends it in a fortnight, vague,
One sends it in an hour, and plain.
Same sum, same customer, same trade.
Why was one paid in four days flat?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two firms in the same trade, and the work, all together now, was equally good. Each finished a job on a Tuesday and each, in due course, sent a bill.

The first sent his a fortnight later, when he got round to the paperwork. It said work as discussed, a figure, and please pay within thirty days, with the bank details somewhere near the bottom in a smaller type.

Consider what that document asked of the customer. She had to remember, two weeks on, what had been discussed and whether the figure matched it. She had to find the bank details and copy them without error. She had to decide when, within thirty days, she would do it, which is a decision that reliably resolves itself as later. And she had to do all of that for a firm that had, by its own timing, made clear the money was not urgent to it, so why would it be urgent to her.

It was paid on day forty-one, after a reminder, and the reminder was the last contact the two of them ever had, which means the final impression the firm left in that house was a request for money it had been slow to ask for.

The second firm sent hers before six that evening, from the van.

It said what had been done, in three lines, using the words the customer herself had used about the trouble. It attached the photograph of the finished work, since she could not see behind the wall. It said the figure agreed and that nothing had changed from the quote. It said payment by Friday, please, which is a date rather than a duration, and it gave one way to pay that took a single step. And it ended with a line that was not about money at all: the second part, if she wanted it, could be done in the spring, and here is roughly what it costs.

Paid on the Thursday, without a reminder, by a customer who had seen the work she was paying for and been told what happened next.

The two invoices asked for the same sum. One arrived as a chore with a long fuse; the other arrived as the last page of a job well done.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Late payment is usually caused by the invoice, not the customer. A bill that arrives a fortnight late, says work as discussed, and asks for payment within thirty days has made three separate requests for delay, and the customer has merely granted them. Every piece of vagueness and every extra step is a reason to put it down and come back to it, and people do not come back to things.

So treat the invoice as what it is, which is the last piece of marketing you will do for that customer and very often the only document of yours they keep. It should arrive the same day, while the work is fresh and the goodwill is at its height, which is the recency letter applied to money. It should describe the work in their words so they recognise what they are paying for. It should show the work where the work is hidden. It should name a day rather than a span. And paying it should take one step, since every step you add is a fraction of your customers who will do it next week.

Then the line that most trades leave off, which is the one about what happens next. An invoice that ends with the next stage and its rough cost has turned a demand into a continuation, and the customer reads it as a firm with a plan for her rather than a firm that wants its money. That single line, on the last document she receives, does more for the second job than any letter you might send in March.

Two cautions. Same-day billing only works if the work is genuinely finished and genuinely right, since an invoice that arrives before the snagging is a provocation, not a courtesy. And keep the tone of the whole thing plain and warm, because a customer who has just paid you well and been thanked for it in the same breath is the customer who recommends you, and one who has been chased is not.

Three questions, and go and look at your last five invoices:

1. How long after finishing did they go out? Count the days. Every one of them is a day you told the customer the money was not urgent, and she believed you.
2. Could a stranger tell what was done? Read the description. If it says work as discussed or similar, you have asked the customer to reconstruct the job from memory before she pays for it, and she will do that later.
3. How many steps to pay? Walk through it as she would. If it is more than one, or requires copying a number, you have built a small obstacle in front of your own money and called it an invoice.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why was one paid in four days?

Because it arrived while the job was still the newest thing in the house, said what had been done in the customer's own words, showed her the work, named a Friday, and took one step to settle. The other arrived a fortnight later saying work as discussed, and was paid on the forty-first day after a reminder, by a customer who had learned from the firm's own timing that nobody was in a hurry. Same money, same trade. One firm sent a bill, and the other sent the last page of the job.

The verse:

Send it late, say work as done,
And thirty days becomes forty-one.
Send it at six, and show, and say,
And find it paid by Thursday.

Until next time. Go and rewrite your invoice so that it goes the same day, describes the work in their words, names a Friday and takes one step to pay.

P.S. If you dread the paperwork enough to leave it a fortnight, write the invoice template once, properly, with every line above already in it, so that on the day the job ends you change three things and send it from the van. The fortnight was never about the invoice. It was about starting from a blank page at the end of a long day.

Also in the archive: The Deposit, Ten Days After and Rot Behind the Boards.