My wife is an accountant, and here's a protip on how to make sure that a client never "overlooks" a payment: put a penalty clause in your contract that says the client is to pay 1.5% of the balance every month after the payment is due, and the client is responsible for any recovery fees. Your invoice will always be paid on time. If the client does not agree to this, walk away. It's a laughable amount of money, but their accounting department will front-load any "penalty" contracts nevertheless.
All this "overlooking" is bullshit anyway. Nobody would "overlook" you not doing any work for a couple of weeks. So why should it be any different when it comes to payment?
Penalty clauses are not always enforceable. Early payment discounts are...
I mentioned it in my post, but the number one reason a reasonably sized company doesn't pay is that your invoice is not on their ledger. Call their accounts payable dept up after a few days, check they have the invoice, ask them when it will be paid. Don't be shy, this is what they expect!
Doesn't matter - they work anyway. Nobody in accounts payable is going to get into the details of whether things are enforceable or not. They'll just pay your invoice instead.
This is not a universal truth. Discount incentives work much better.
The clients who pay late will pay their invoices without the late fees anyway, in my experience. Now you’re tracking down payment for your work and the fees.
It depends, lots of larger professional ap just don't work that way. They don't choose when things are paid. They are trained to look for discounts though
It's a great advice. If my job,as a consultant,is to consult them,their job is to make sure payments do happen and they happen on time. In my current job, I do have a decent visibility on when,who and why gets paid. And guess who gets paid first? A massive tech company, that threatens to suspend our system if we don't pay,which would mean the company going into ground.
It also depends on what country you live in. Where I live it is 60 days by rule unless it is in a contract signed by both parties.