Transfers, terms, effective reminders and written conditions: here is how to get paid without spending your days on it.
Three people handle your invoice
That explains almost every delay, and it is nothing personal.
The person who ordered the video from you, who must confirm the work was delivered.
The department that registers the document and checks it is compliant.
And accounting, which triggers payment on its own calendar.
Practical consequence: your contact cannot speed up the payment, they can only unblock the first step. An effective reminder therefore goes to them for the approval, never for the transfer.
What throws an invoice out of the circuit
Five reasons, all formal, and all avoidable.
A missing compulsory mention.
An absent order number when the client uses one.
A service description that is too vague, such as communication services.
An amount that does not match the approved quote.
And sending to the wrong address, often because the invoice must go to a dedicated inbox and not to your contact.
An invoice set aside for one of those reasons is not late: it does not exist in the system, and nobody will tell you.
The written reminder
Three steps, short, and no more.
The day after the due date, a two-line message, with no reproach, with the invoice attached again and the delivery date recalled.
At seven days, a message asking for a precise date and the state of the file: approved, registered, or waiting for something.
At fifteen days, a formal reminder, sent in writing, mentioning the passed due date and announcing a halt to work in progress.
That neutral tone works better there than insistence: the delay almost always comes from an unticked box, not from a refusal to pay.
The banking calendar
That is the detail that saves a week, and you only have to ask.
Many companies pay in batches, on a fixed day, once or twice a week. An invoice arriving the day before the batch goes with it; one arriving the day after waits for the next.
So ask from the first order: which day the payment goes out, and what the deadline for inclusion is.
What makes an invoice payable without a reminder
| Element | What it avoids | Where to put it |
|---|---|---|
| A number and a date | An impossible filing | At the top |
| A precise due date | A payment pushed back | Under the amount |
| The itemised services | An internal query | In the middle |
| Full bank details | A blocked transfer | At the bottom |
What is settled before starting
The payment term, the name of the person who approves and the address to send the invoice to. In organised structures, a misdirected invoice waits a whole month.
What you do when the due date passes
A written follow-up the next day, factual, with the number and the amount. Then a formal reminder with a deadline, and finally a review of the remedies, to be confirmed with a lawyer.
What must be written before starting
Five lines, and they avoid nearly every dispute.
The total amount and exactly what it covers, in number of videos, formats and revisions.
The two invoicing dates, with their deadlines.
The duration and channels of use granted.
What triggers a supplement: an extra format, a revision beyond the agreed number, an extension of rights.
And the name of the person who approves delivery. That last, most banal line settles the most delays: without it, your invoice waits for a signature nobody feels responsible for giving.
