Some of our customers always pay on time.  Others don't.

I'm trying desperately to not sabotage our working relationship, but its pretty hard to tell someone that you'll work for them, do the work, and then not receive payment as scheduled.  In fact, sometimes I wonder if we'd be better off just not working with them (could all that time spent trying to get payment be used to get a customer that will pay on time?).  The fact is though, we're a small business that needs any customer that comes our way.

Right now, I think we have 5 customers that do this.  It just gets old.  It's like babysitting.  It's even more infuriating to find out that the majority of them have the money, they just “forgot”.  I'm also getting tired of the “I put it in the mail” only to wait a few days with nothing.  The wierd thing is, each person that pays late has almost the same excuse or same delay tactics.  Maybe they're talking to each other?

We're pretty leanient.  A lot of our relationships are built on trust.  We've kept websites up that were 6+ months late in payment.  These days though, I'm thinking we're cutting the power earlier...maybe that will get the message across.