How to chase a friend or referral for payment

A friend asks you to fit their kitchen. A neighbour's brother needs a rewire. Someone in your five-a-side team passes your name to their sister-in-law. The work goes fine. The invoice goes out. And then nothing.

Chasing a stranger is uncomfortable. Chasing someone you know, or someone connected to someone you know, is something different. Most tradespeople either let it drift for months, or send one stiff message and quietly lose the relationship anyway. There is a better path, and it starts before the first chase.

1. Why this one is harder

The reason these debts stick is not laziness on either side. It is that you have two relationships with the same person, the personal one and the business one, and the personal one tends to win every internal argument.

The personal relationship says: don't make it awkward, they're probably good for it, you'll see them at the school gates next week. The business relationship says: the work is done, the invoice is overdue, you have a mortgage to pay. Most tradespeople listen to the first voice for too long, and by the time the second one wins, the personal relationship is already strained from the silence.

The fix is not to pick one side. It is to separate them, deliberately, before you send any message at all.

2. Separate the work from the relationship

The invoice is a business matter, not a personal one. The friendship, the family connection, the referral chain, none of that changes what is owed.

This sounds obvious. In practice, most messages to friends and referrals do the opposite. They open with the relationship ("hope you're well, how was the weekend"), bury the ask in the middle, and end with something soft that gives the customer nothing to commit to. The customer reads it as a social message, not a business one, and replies accordingly. Or doesn't reply at all.

The mental move is to write the message you would send a stranger, then add one short personal line at the top if it genuinely fits. Not the other way round.

Common mistake: treating the chase as a favour you are asking for. It is not. The favour was doing the job for someone in your circle. The payment is the part they agreed to.

3. The first message: name it directly

Day +1 to +3 from the due date. Same as any other customer. The temptation with a friend or referral is to wait two weeks because "they're good for it." This is exactly when the debt starts to drift.

The shape of the message is short, friendly, and specific. It names the invoice, the date, and asks for confirmation. It does not apologise for sending it.

Sample wording:

Hi [name], just a quick one to flag invoice [number] was due on [date]. Probably already sorted, but let me know if anything's not landed.

That is the whole message. If you know them well, you can add a single line at the top about something unrelated. One line. Not three. The chase has to be the main thing the message is doing.

Common mistake: writing four lines of small talk before the ask. It signals that you are uncomfortable, and the customer picks up on it. They reply with their own small talk, and the invoice never gets mentioned.

4. When the relationship is the leverage, use it gently

If the first message goes unanswered for a week, you have a choice. With a stranger, the follow-up gets firmer. With someone you know, firmer often backfires. The relationship is the leverage, but only if you use it honestly.

Honestly means naming what is happening, in plain words, once. Not threatening to escalate. Not guilt-tripping. Just being direct about where the situation is heading if it does not move.

Sample wording:

Hi [name], following up on invoice [number] from [date]. We know each other, so I'll be straight: I need to get this settled this week. Can you confirm when payment will be made?

The line that matters is "I'll be straight." It does two things at once. It acknowledges the relationship, and it tells them you are no longer in the polite-chase phase. Most people who were going to pay will pay after this message. Most people who were not going to pay will reveal themselves.

Common mistake: hinting instead of naming it. "Just wondering if you've had a chance to look at this" leaves the customer all the room to keep not looking at it. The whole point of using the relationship is that you can be more direct, not less.

5. When to escalate the same as any other customer

If the direct message goes unanswered, you have your answer. The customer is not treating this as a business debt, and your continued politeness will not change that. From here, the playbook is the same as for any other unpaid invoice: a formal demand, then a Letter Before Action, then a money claim if it gets that far. The full sequence is here.

This is the moment most tradespeople freeze. It feels like a step too far for someone you know. It is not. By this stage, the customer has had a friendly nudge and a direct ask and chosen not to respond. The relationship has already changed. The only thing left to decide is whether you also lose the money.

A few things help here:

• The escalation messages are about the invoice, not the person. Same wording you would use for anyone else.
• A Letter Before Action does not have to be sent by you alone. Some trades use a no-win-no-fee debt recovery service for exactly these cases, which puts the formal contact at one remove.
• The fact that you are willing to escalate is itself often enough. Many invoices that reach this stage get paid before court is involved.

Common mistake: telling mutual contacts what is happening before the formal process is over. Vent in private, not in your shared circle. If it ends up in court, anything you said publicly can be used against you.

6. When to write it off, and what it really costs

Some friend-and-referral debts will not get paid. The customer disappears, or refuses, or claims a dispute you cannot evidence. At some point the question stops being how to get the money and starts being how long to keep trying.

Write-off is the right answer more often than people think. The cash cost is fixed and finite. The cost of carrying the debt compounds. The mental load, the time spent thinking about it, the way it sits in the back of your head between jobs. If you are six months in and the customer has not engaged, the relationship is already gone, and so is the money. What is left is the question of whether you also lose the next six months of attention.

If you are VAT registered and the invoice has been overdue more than six months, you can claim bad debt relief through HMRC to recover the VAT element. The labour and materials are gone, but the VAT does not have to be.

Before you take on the next friend or referral job, check

The chase only works if the setup was right. The same things that protect you from any other customer protect you here:

• A written quote with payment terms, signed or digitally accepted before the work starts
• A deposit, agreed and paid where the job size justifies it, even if the customer says "no need"
• The same invoice template you use for everyone else, with no homemade discounts or vague descriptions
• Written sign-off on completion before the invoice goes out, by text or email. A photo of the finished work and an "all good?" reply is enough
• The invoice sent the day the job finishes, not whenever you get round to it
• Your normal rate, or any discount explicitly noted in writing

If any of these feel awkward to do with a friend, that is a signal worth listening to. The awkwardness now is much smaller than the awkwardness of chasing an unpaid invoice from someone you will see at Christmas.

For more on what should be in those payment terms, see how to write payment terms that actually get you paid.

If you would not do the job for a stranger on these terms, do not do it for a friend on weaker ones.

Trame keeps the quote, the sign-off, and the invoice on the same record, so the paper trail is the same for your sister-in-law as it is for a commercial client.

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Frequently asked questions

Getting paid: full guide series

• Why UK tradespeople get paid late, and how to stop it
• How to write payment terms that actually get you paid
• What to do when an invoice goes unpaid
• How to chase a friend or referral for payment (you are here)
• How to send a letter before action for an unpaid invoice