Free money and payment document templates

Cash flow kills more trades businesses than a shortage of work does. You can have a full diary, a healthy margin and still fail, because thirty thousand pounds of completed work is sitting in other people's accounts and your merchant wants paying on the twentieth. Credit control is the part of the job nobody trained you for, and doing it well is mostly about having the documents ready before you need them.

This category covers the money paperwork that sits between the invoice and the payment. A statement of account summarising everything outstanding, which is often all a busy commercial customer needs to release a batch. Deposit receipts, so a deposit is documented as a deposit rather than argued about later as a part payment. Payment plan agreements for the customer who genuinely cannot pay in full — a written schedule you both sign is far more likely to be honoured than a vague phone conversation, and it protects your position if it is not.

The late payment letters are the ones worth reading properly. Under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, on business-to-business contracts you are entitled to statutory interest at 8% above the Bank of England base rate, plus a fixed compensation sum per invoice that steps up with the debt size, without needing a clause in your contract. Most small firms never claim it, and most late payers know that. The letters here reference the entitlement clearly and give the customer a deadline, which is usually enough on its own. Note that the Act applies to business customers, not consumers — for homeowners you rely on your own contract terms.

There is also a letter before action, which is the last step before a small claim. Use it sparingly, send it recorded, and keep the copy.