An unpaid invoice does not die of old age. It dies of a chaser.
Every day late costs: strained cash, chasers postponed to Friday, verbal promises forgotten. Backlane sweeps the balance every morning, chases with a payment link, and tracks every promise. Measured: collection delay divided by 3.
Chasing waits for Friday
The average delay does not come from bad payers: it comes from batch chasing, once a week, when someone has time.
Paying is complicated
A chaser without a payment link asks the customer to make a manual transfer. Every friction adds days.
Promises evaporate
"I'll pay Friday" said on the phone is written nowhere. Nobody re-chases when Friday passes.
The Collections agent drafts the chasers, you approve the sensitive ones, it does the rest. Every send is announced the day before.
See the agent →The same unpaid invoice, five rungs later.
A single reminder recovers nothing: it is the sequence that gets paid. Here is the default ladder, the one running the morning after you arrive.
The due date
The debit goes out. If it clears, nothing fires and nobody is disturbed.
automaticThe nudge
A short email, neutral tone, with the payment link. Most delays stop here: they were not unpaid invoices, they were oversights.
automaticThe reminder
Email and SMS. The portal lists every invoice this customer owes, not just this one: you collect the balance, not a line.
automaticThe firm reminder
A draft is put in front of you. You send it, because at this point the tone commits the commercial relationship.
your approvalThe file
Invoices, reminders sent, promises kept or broken, exchanges: the file is built as it goes and exports. Your lawyer leaves with the history, not with a spreadsheet.
your approvalThese rungs are the defaults. They are rewritten in one sentence: "chase at D+5, then D+12, never on a Friday, never twice in the same week." The sentence becomes the next morning's round.
Will my customers get aggressive chasers?
No: your rules, your tone, your brand. Every sensitive chaser is a draft you approve, and the agent announces the day before everything that will go out.
What about small amounts?
That is exactly where manual work gives up: chasing 40 invoices of €80 is not worth an hour of human time, but is very much worth an agent pass. Nothing falls under the radar.
What if the customer still does not pay?
The complete file (invoices, chasers, promises, exchanges) is built as you go and exports: your lawyer or collections firm starts with the history, not a binder to reconstruct.
No commitment. Nothing changes with your current tools or insurer.