Collection emails that get paid

Email is where most collections work now happens, and where most of it fails. A customer’s accounts payable team receives dozens of vendor emails a day. The ones that get acted on are specific, easy to answer and hard to put off. The ones that get ignored say “please advise on the status of payment” and attach a statement.

For a collector working financed receivables, the stakes are higher than usual. An invoice that ages past the eligibility cut-off drops out of the borrowing base, and the client’s availability falls. Getting the email right is part of protecting the facility.

Before you write

Check three things first:

1. Who actually pays? Send to the person who processes payments, and copy the person who approved the purchase if you know them. An email to a general inbox can sit for a week.
2. What is really past due? List the invoices by number, date and amount. Check for partial payments, unapplied cash and credit memos so you don’t pursue something already settled.
3. Is anything disputed? If an invoice is under dispute, work the dispute separately. Asking for payment on a disputed invoice irritates the customer and gets nowhere.

What a good collection email contains

• A subject line that does the work. “Past due: invoices 4417 and 4431, $7,850, due September 30” tells the reader what it is before they open it. “Account inquiry” doesn’t.
• The invoices, in a short list. Number, date, amount, due date. Nobody should need to open an attachment to find out what you’re asking about.
• One clear request. Ask for payment by a specific date, or for a date when payment will be made. Not both, and not “any update”.
• An easy way to answer. Give the remittance instructions shown on the invoice, a direct phone number, and a name. People reply to a person, not to “Accounts Receivable”.
• A short close. Thank them, and stop. The longer the email, the less of it gets read.

A simple sequence

Collection works best as a sequence, so each email builds on the last and the customer can see where it is going. A typical pattern:

1. Before the due date. A brief reminder that the invoices are coming due, with copies attached. This catches missing invoices and wrong addresses early, which is when they are cheapest to fix.
2. Just after the due date. A polite note that payment hasn’t arrived, the list of invoices, and a request for a payment date.
3. About a week later. A firmer email, referring to the earlier one, asking for payment by a specific date. Follow it with a phone call the same day.
4. When a promise is made. Confirm it in writing right away: amount, invoices, date. A promise confirmed in writing is much easier to hold someone to.
5. When a promise is broken. Say so plainly, ask for payment within a short period, and explain the next step, which is escalation within your process.

The exact days depend on the customer’s terms and your client’s facility. What matters is that each step happens on time, every time, so customers learn that this vendor follows up.

Tone

Firm and polite always beats either one alone. Avoid sarcasm, capital letters and long paragraphs about how long you’ve been waiting. Don’t threaten anything you’re not authorized to do. On financed receivables, placing an account for collection or stopping shipments are decisions for the client and the lender, not a line in an email.

Write as if the email might be read by someone senior at the customer, or forwarded to a dispute file. It sometimes is.

Email and phone together

An email is a record; a call is a conversation. The two work best together. Send the email, then call to make sure it arrived and to get the date. After the call, confirm what was agreed by email. This combination is far harder to ignore than either on its own.

Common mistakes

• Sending the statement, not the invoices. “Please see attached statement” asks the customer to work out what you want. Name the invoices.
• Copying everyone. An email to six people is an email nobody owns. Write to the person who can pay, and copy one other at most.
• Changing remittance instructions by email. On financed receivables, payment instructions should never change in a collection email. If a customer is told to pay somewhere new, that is a matter for the lender, and an email asking for it is a known route for fraud.
• Letting a reply go unanswered. If a customer replies with a question, answer it the same day. A slow answer becomes the customer’s reason to wait.

Keeping the record

Every email you send and every reply you receive is part of the account history. File it against the customer, note any promise and its date, and set a follow-up for the day after the promised date. When a customer later claims it never received an invoice, or that nobody followed up, the record is your answer.

Good collections work is not about clever wording. It is about being specific, consistent and easy to pay.