When Clients Don't Pay

I pulled my company's A/R (accounts receivable) report this morning and continued to see a discouraging trend. Clients are not paying their bills in a timely fashion. At the moment, we have two clients that are 31-60 days late, and three clients that are 1-30 days late. Although frustrating, it's an improvement over where we were last year when we had some clients who were more than 90 days late, and much better than two years ago when we had two clients completely stiff us for a total of about $20,000.

On the plus side, some of our clients paid on time or early, so we were able to pay off my father for a loan he gave us last February to repair our damaged car, and we paid next month's mortgage payment and health insurance premiums early. It's a good feeling to be a month ahead on those two major bills, but I have to admit to a significant amount of concern, since we haven't made any estimated tax payments so far this year.

It's really hard to stay motivated to do quality work when clients don't pay their bills on time. I'm staring to develop this really fatalistic attitude that it doesn't matter if I do a good job or a lousy one, because the end result will be the same -- bills will come due, and I'll be stressing out over the fact that I don't have the money to pay them when they arrive. Although things always seem to work out so I can pay everything on time, every month paying bills is definitely a stress-fest, because I'm constantly having to juggle things and figure out who can wait a week or two.

I would like enough money in my checking account so that I can just pay the bills and forget about it!