Late payment is rarely a decision. Most of the time an invoice is sitting in an inbox belonging to someone who left, or in an approval queue nobody owns.
Day one after the due date
Send the invoice again with one line: the amount, the date it was due, and a question about who should receive it. Treating it as a filing problem rather than a payment problem is accurate more often than not, and it lets everyone stay comfortable.
Day fourteen: change who you are writing to
Copy in someone in finance and someone senior to your contact. Do not accuse anybody of anything. Two names on an e-mail moves a queue faster than three paragraphs of pressure.
Day thirty: say what happens next
State that work pauses until the invoice clears, and then pause it. This is the only step people find hard and the only one that reliably works. A deadline you do not keep teaches the client exactly how long they can wait.
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