Late payment is the normal condition of Indian B2B trade. Terms say 30 days, reality is 60 to 90, and the business absorbs the working-capital cost because the alternative — pressing hard — risks a customer relationship worth far more than the invoice.
So the follow-up falls to whoever has the least to lose from making it, usually an accounts person with no relationship and no leverage, calling irregularly and apologetically. It is nobody's favourite job and it shows in the results.
What actually delays payment
Very little of it is refusal or distress. In order of frequency:
- The invoice never entered their system. Emailed to a person who left, or to a mailbox nobody processes.
- A mismatch nobody raised. Quantity, rate, GST detail or a missing PO number, sitting unresolved because neither side chased it.
- It is in the payment run, just not this one. Entirely normal and entirely invisible to you.
- A signature is pending from someone travelling.
- Genuine cash-flow difficulty. Real, but a minority.
Four of five are administrative. They are resolved by asking the right person a specific question — and they persist for months precisely because nobody asks.
Why an automated call is better here
This is the case where removing the human improves the relationship rather than degrading it.
A scheduled, neutral, identical call about invoice status carries no emotional charge. It does not sound like your sales head is annoyed. It does not put your account manager in the position of chasing money from someone they need to sell to next week. It is plainly a process, and the accounts payable clerk on the other end treats it as one — because it looks exactly like the process their own company runs.
The email address question pays for the programme
"Invoice not received — confirm which email address to send it to."
A large share of aged receivables in Indian B2B are invoices that never reached a payable system. The supplier is chasing payment for a document the customer does not have, and neither side realises it because the conversation is always about when rather than whether.
Asking the mechanical question, on every call, closes an astonishing number of aged items.
Never threaten supply
The temptation is real, particularly for a customer who is genuinely stringing you along. It is still the wrong thing to put in an automated script, for two reasons.
First, it is a commercial decision with consequences that only a person with account context should make. Second, an automated caller making that threat to the wrong customer — one whose payment is already in this week's run — can cost you an account over a timing misunderstanding.
Capture the situation; escalate to a human who can judge it.
Cadence
Day 3 after due, day 15, day 30. Then a human owns it.
Three neutral status calls resolve most administrative delays. Beyond day 30, what remains is either a real dispute or a real cash-flow problem, and both need a person with authority to trade something.
Cost
A minute a call, three calls per overdue invoice — about ₹15. On invoices worth tens of thousands or more, this is a rounding error against the working-capital cost of the delay.
The real return is coverage: a business with two hundred overdue invoices and one accounts person currently chases the twenty largest. Chasing all two hundred, neutrally and on schedule, is where the collected cash actually comes from.
Reorder calls cover the sales side of the same relationship, and payment reminders done decently sets out the general principles.