What a 60-day-late invoice quietly costs
The float has a price: your borrowing rate applied to their unpaid balance, every day. A calculator to see it — and the phone calls that tend to get it moving.
A big customer 60 days past due creates two problems, and only one of them is visible. The visible one is the missing money. The invisible one is the float: their unpaid balance, financed at your borrowing rate, every single day the check doesn't come. It's a real number, and it's rarely zero.
What the float is costing
An $18,000 balance at 60 days past due, against a 12% line of credit, has already cost about $355 — and burns roughly another $180 for every month it drags. That's an invoice nobody will ever reimburse.
As for getting the visible money moving, what works is surprisingly consistent — and it starts with calling the right department:
- Accounts payable, by phone, with one question: “Is anything blocking payment on invoice 1042?” Half the time something genuinely is — a missing PO number, an approval asleep in an inbox, an invoice sent to a dead address. None of that surfaces through a fourth polite email to the buyer, who doesn't cut checks anyway.
- A commitment date, from a person, out loud. Not “soon” — “Friday the 22nd, per Maria in AP,” confirmed in a one-line email. Dates people have said aloud mostly get hit. Invoice footers bind no one.
- New work moves to payment-on-delivery until the balance clears, said without heat: “Happy to keep scheduling — new orders run COD until the account's current.” This is the step most owners skip out of fear, and the one that most reliably moves money.
- If the date slips: one escalation, to the owner or controller, with a stop-ship behind it. A call, not a campaign.
Filed under Cash Flow & Finance · Field guide: The Timing of Money