We have heard some bad payment excuses over the years, ranging from slightly believable to downright ridiculous. This blog post will be focused on the slightly more believable excuse: We never received your invoice. Although this excuse is perfectly possible, when you get it over and over again from the same customer, you shtick starts become stale and you start to get frustrated.
So, what do you do when you start to hear month after month that the customer hasn’t received the invoice? We have a couple tips that you can follow to ensure that they truly do receive your invoice and start to pay you on time, instead of receiving multiple extensions.
PERFECT YOUR EMAIL SUBJECT LINES
It can be pretty easy for your invoice to end up in a customer’s spam or quarantine folder based on your subject line. If any word in the subject line sounds spammy, such as “pay now”, your customer may truly miss it completely. One way to battle the spam folder is by putting in the specific invoice number, such as “Invoice #1234 for Company XYZ”, as the subject line. By making this specific, it is more likely they will receive it.
CONFIRM THE CORRECT RECIPIENTS
If your customer is always saying that they never got it, make sure you’re simply sending it to the right person. Maybe the previous recipient left the company and now they have a new hire or maybe you have the email of the employee who chose to buy your product, but it should be sent to their accounting department. Always double check that you have the most current address to send to.
GET INTO YOUR CUSTOMER’S INBOX
Another trick to get out of the customer’s spam folder is to request that you be added to their favorites in their contact list. This will ensure that every invoice sent to them will bypass the spam filter.
USE INVOICING SOFTWARE
Invoicing software is specifically made so that you never hear the dreaded “we never received your invoice” excuse again. With the software, you can call up the customer and when they give you the bad payment excuse, you can quickly send them a link to a payment portal. While you still have them on the phone, you can confirm that they received the link and go straight into the portal to pay via credit card or ACH.
Although we sometimes have to take a step back and simply just laugh at some bad payment excuses, there is also a way to fight back against them. Instead of losing your cool or getting frustrated, be one step ahead of them with a response to get them to pay quickly. If they tell you that they never received the invoice, send it again and keep them on the line so you can confirm they received the second version.
