Your unpaid bills are not your riders' fault. That is good news.

In the industry, unpaid bills are talked about as fate : there would be good payers and bad payers, and one would just have to live with it. Look closely at the figures and that story falls apart.

The myth of the bad payer

Take last year's unpaid bills and ask yourself an honest question : how many came from people genuinely determined not to pay ? One, perhaps two. All the others come from an invoice sent late, a payment method that is a nuisance, or a reminder nobody dared send.

An unpaid bill is rarely a refusal. It is almost always friction : an invoice that arrives late, an awkward payment method, a reminder nobody dared send. Remove the friction and the unpaid bill disappears with it.

Why that is excellent news

If unpaid bills came from people's character, there would be nothing you could do. Since they come from the process, you can remove almost all of them.

• Invoice on a fixed date, automatically. An invoice that goes out on the 1st of every month, every month, becomes a payment habit. An invoice that goes out when you get round to it becomes a surprise.
• Offer direct debit. For livery and packages, SEPA direct debit turns the question « shall I pay this month ? » into « why would I stop ? ».
• Let the machine chase. An automatic reminder, polite and neutral, hurts nobody : it is the software writing, not you. Your relationship stays intact.
• Take the money at the moment of desire. The clinic is booked online ? Then it is paid online, at booking. An unpaid bill that cannot happen.

Stop getting cross, change the plumbing

The day you stop seeing unpaid bills as a people problem, you also stop carrying alone a weight that was never yours.