1. Invoice immediately after delivery
The simplest measure on this list is also the most effective. An invoice sent two weeks after delivery signals to your customer that the payment is not urgent, and it pushes your due date into their next payment run, which in many companies takes place once a month. A two-week delay on your side therefore becomes six weeks on theirs.
2. Draft the invoice in such detail that discussion becomes pointless
A dispute is far cheaper to prevent than to win. Describe what was delivered, when, at what unit price, and refer explicitly to the quotation or the order if there was one — by number and date. In Belgium this matters twice over: an invoice that is not contested in time is treated very differently from one that is, and the administrative collection route we describe in this article is only open for undisputed claims.
3. Contact your customer the day after the due date
Not a week later: the day after. A brief telephone call from a person achieves more than three automated reminders, and it tells you immediately whether you are dealing with an oversight, a liquidity problem or an excuse. Confirm the call by e-mail, so that the date and the promise are recorded in writing.
4. Have proper terms and conditions drawn up — and communicate them before the contract is concluded
This is the single clause set that decides how much of your money you keep, and Belgian law is strict about when it has to reach your customer: the terms must be communicated before the agreement is concluded. In practice that means with the quotation, and repeated on the order confirmation and on every invoice afterwards. Terms that appear for the first time on the invoice arrive after the deal was struck and are, as a rule, not binding. Four provisions do the heavy lifting:
- a short, clear period within which the invoice must be contested in writing;
- interest for late payment;
- a fixed compensation clause — 10% of the principal is the customary figure in Belgium;
- a retention of title clause, so goods you delivered remain yours until they are paid for.
Without an enforceable compensation clause, the cost of collecting your money comes out of your own pocket instead of your debtor's. If you sell into Belgium regularly and your terms were written for another jurisdiction, having them checked against Belgian law is a small investment against a recurring loss.
5. A payment plan? Usually worth considering
Usually, yes — within reason. A Belgian court asked to grant grace periods will often allow something in the order of six months anyway, so a structured plan you negotiated yourself is rarely worse than the outcome you would be given, and it comes without the delay and the cost of proceedings. Put it in writing, fix the dates and the amounts, and state that the whole balance falls due again if one instalment is missed.
6. Use the payment plan to obtain security
A customer who asks for time is a customer who needs something from you. That is the moment — and often the only moment — when you can ask for a personal guarantee from the director alongside the plan. If the company later goes bankrupt, that guarantee is the difference between filing a claim in an insolvency and having someone to address who is still solvent.
7. "I never received your invoice"
Between businesses this argument carries little weight. Belgian law attaches evidentiary value to properly kept accounts, and now that invoicing runs through the Peppol network, dispatch can in any event be demonstrated from the transmission record. Keep your bookkeeping in order and your proof of dispatch to hand, and the discussion ends before it starts.
Prevention is contractual, not commercial
These measures are organisational and contractual rather than commercial: they are settled long before the first reminder, and above all in your terms and conditions, which determine what you may claim on top of the principal once matters go wrong. Businesses that have both in order do not have fewer late payers; they lose considerably less money on them.
Already past that point? If the invoice is overdue and undisputed, upload it and a Belgian lawyer serves formal notice within 24 hours. You pay nothing up front.