Getting paid as a tradie: chasing invoices in NZ
You're on the tools all day, quoting at night, and the invoice chasing happens never. Meanwhile the money you've already earned sits in someone else's account. Here's how to fix it without burning evenings or customers.
Set terms that protect you
- Payment terms on every quote and invoice — 7 days is normal for residential work; you don't have to offer the 20th of the month following.
- Deposits and progress payments on bigger jobs, so no single invoice can sink a month.
- Late-payment interest and collection costs in your terms of trade — you can only charge them if the customer agreed before the job started.
- Construction work? Payment claims under the Construction Contracts Act 2002 give commercial building work a formal payment process with deadlines. Worth setting up if you do commercial jobs.
A chasing routine that survives a busy week
The trades problem isn't knowing what to do — it's finding the time. The routine has to be small enough to happen:
- Reminder emails on autopilot in Xero or your job software.
- One phone call when an invoice hits a week overdue. Two minutes, from the ute, between jobs.
- Write down what they said, and follow it up when the date passes.
The call is the step that collects — and the step that gets skipped, because ringing someone about money after a full day on site is nobody's idea of a good evening. (Calling late is also the wrong move: keep follow-up calls to business hours.)
When a customer won't pay
- Disputes Tribunal — claims up to $30,000, no lawyers, small filing fee. Bring your quote, invoice and contact notes.
- Debt collection agency — hands-off but takes a commission, and it usually ends the customer relationship.
- Stop work — for repeat customers with an unpaid balance, no new job until the old one's settled.
Or put the chasing on autopilot
Gary was built for exactly this gap. It connects to Xero, finds what's overdue, and rings your customers in a friendly voice — during business hours, with a recording disclosure, only for the customers you switch on. You're back from site to a transcript and a payment date instead of a list of calls you didn't make. See how Gary works.