How to ask a client for payment politely, with samples

Waiting for a client abroad to pay an invoice and unsure how to ask without sounding rude? Ask the way a business asks: a short, friendly message that names the invoice, the amount and the due date, then the same message a little firmer at fixed points. Most late payments are a busy person who has not got to it yet, so the first two messages are reminders, not complaints, and only a client who stops answering needs anything stronger. Below are the messages I would send, in order, with the wording you can copy.

Why good clients pay late

Late payment happens to almost every freelancer: in a 2022 survey by the Freelancers Union, 91% of freelancers in New York said they had been paid late at least once in their career.¹ Very often nobody meant it. The founder who approved your work forwarded the invoice to a bookkeeper who pays on Thursdays, or it is sitting in an inbox under forty other emails, or the person who approves payments is travelling.

I know this from the other side too. A very nice agency client agreed to pay $3,500 before I started a project, and even offered to pay straight away. I was so busy with meetings that I never sent them the invoice, and the AI assistant I use for my daily plan reminded me about it every morning for about three months. One morning, when I asked it what my tasks were, it refused to tell me anything until I had raised that invoice. The client had forgotten, I had forgotten, and the money was waiting for someone to ask for it.

A reminder is part of the invoice

Asking for money you are owed can feel awkward, as if you are begging, so it is tempting to wait and hope. A reminder is not begging. It is part of sending an invoice, the same way a follow-up email is part of a meeting. I send reminders even to clients I trust and enjoy working with, more than once.

The messages to send, in order

If you have not sent the invoice yet, the free invoice maker puts the due date and payment details where the client's accounts team will see them. Change the names, numbers and dates, but keep the invoice number, the amount, the due date and the payment link in every message, so that the client can pay from that one email.

On the due date, a friendly reminder.

Hi Sarah, a quick reminder that invoice 014 for USD 1,200 is due today. The payment link is below. Thank you, and have a good week.

PayPal (opens in a new tab) and Stripe (opens in a new tab) can send reminders like this for you automatically, before or after the due date, if you turn them on.²³

Two days later, a second reminder. Send the same message again, by email or from your invoicing tool.

A day or two after that, one easy question. Ask whether anything is in the way, because sometimes something is: a missing detail, a wrong name on the invoice, or a new person in accounts.

Hi Sarah, invoice 014 for USD 1,200, due on 10 October, is still showing as unpaid. Is there anything holding it up, such as a missing detail, or should I send it to someone in your accounts team?

About a week later, a firmer message with a date.

Hi Sarah, invoice 014 for USD 1,200 is now ten days overdue. Could you confirm a payment date for this week?

If there is still no answer, call. If you have the client's phone number, ring them and ask about the invoice in person.

If the late invoice is your fault, say so plainly. When someone I work with forgot to invoice a client for two months, my advice was to tell the client directly that he had been busy and had not sent the invoices, and that he was raising them now. You do not need to ask permission to bill for work you have already done. You only need to let the client know before it arrives.

When to pause the work

If a client keeps replying and gives you a date, keep working and keep reminding. If there is no real response, or you sense that the client does not intend to pay or will not be able to, tell them clearly, calmly and in writing that you are pausing the work until the invoice is paid, and why.

Whatever happens, never damage the client's business. When I was building websites, some developers took a client's website offline when a bill went unpaid. You may have put a lot of effort into that work, and I still disagree with it completely. Pausing your own work is fair; harming the business or the people in it is not.

On Upwork (opens in a new tab), the platform's own rules decide much of this. Fixed-price work is protected only when the client funds the milestone before you start, and hourly work only for time recorded with Upwork's time tracker, not time added by hand.⁴⁵ Check both before you begin, not after a payment goes missing. For deposits and terms that make the next late payment less likely, see freelance invoices and getting clients to pay on time.