Customer Says They Never Got the Invoice

Resend it straight away

Whether or not the claim is genuine, the fastest way to neutralise it is simply to resend the invoice immediately. Attach a fresh PDF, restate the amount and the reference, and ask the customer to confirm in reply that they have now received it. Speed here matters more than scoring a point.

Do not get drawn into a long argument about whether the original ever arrived. That debate goes nowhere, satisfies nobody, and only delays the payment you are actually after. Resending costs you nothing and removes the excuse entirely, which is the outcome you really want. Treat 'I never got it' not as an accusation to rebut but as a small obstacle to clear, and you keep the focus where it belongs — on getting the invoice in front of the right person and getting it paid.

Confirm the right address

Invoices genuinely do go astray, usually for mundane reasons — a single typo in an email address, a recipient who has since left the business, or an over-zealous spam filter quietly swallowing the message. Before assuming bad faith, check the address you actually used and ask who the right person is for accounts payable:

• Verify the exact email or postal address.
• Ask for the correct accounts payable contact.
• Request a read-receipt or a reply to confirm.

Getting this right matters beyond the immediate invoice. Once you have the correct contact confirmed and on record, the same 'we never received it' excuse cannot be reused to brush off your next reminder, because you can point to the address and the acknowledgement. A few minutes spent confirming the delivery details now closes off a whole category of future stalling.

Reset the clock clearly

Once the invoice is confirmed as received, set a clear new payment date and put it in writing straight away. A reasonable customer will not expect the entire original term to start again from scratch, but allowing a few days to pay from the confirmed receipt date is fair, proportionate and very hard to argue with.

State the new deadline plainly and without hedging: 'Now that you have the invoice, please arrange payment by Friday 19th.' This removes any grey area about when payment is due and gives you a clean, documented point from which to escalate if the money still does not arrive. Vagueness at this stage just hands the customer room to delay again, so be specific about the date and confirm it in the same message that resends the invoice.

When it keeps happening

One lost invoice is entirely plausible and worth handling graciously. A customer who claims never to have received the first, the second and the third copies, however, is almost certainly stalling. The 'never got it' line is one of the oldest delay tactics there is when payment, not delivery, is the real problem.

If you have resent to a confirmed address, secured acknowledgement, and the excuses simply keep coming, stop treating it as a delivery issue and start treating it as plain non-payment. At that point you can refer the debt to Merion on a commission-only basis and let specialists take over. There is little reason to keep resending copies to someone who has made clear, through repetition, that the missing invoice was never the real obstacle.