How to Get Paid After the Job in Australia

Invoice from the driveway vs Sunday night

The one thing you fully control is the gap between finishing the work and the customer seeing the invoice. Hand it over while you're still packing the ute and it lands while they're happy and the job is fresh. Leave it until Sunday night and you're a stranger asking for money for something they've stopped thinking about. Invoice on the spot and you can ask for payment on the spot, which is a very different conversation to a phone call next Thursday.

DayRoute sends a GST invoice by text or email before you leave the driveway, and every invoice sits at draft, sent, paid or overdue so you know who owes you without digging through your sent folder.

Payment on the day vs 7 days vs 14 days

You set your own terms for general domestic work. Put them on the quote and use the same words on the invoice, so the customer knew them before you started rather than after. What's common in the trades:

• •Small domestic repairs and maintenance (roughly under $1,000): payment on completion, before you drive off
• •Larger domestic jobs: on the day, or 7 days if the customer needs to move money
• •Working for builders, shopfitters or as a subbie: 14 or 30 days, often end of month
• •Strata, real estate agents and property managers: 14 to 30 days, and the invoice must carry their work order or job number or it won't get processed
• •Anything with a purchase order: no PO on the invoice, no payment. Get the number before you start

Long terms are normal in commercial work. A homeowner deciding on their own that they'll pay you next month is not.

What to do on day 3, day 7, day 14

Have one sequence and run it every time, so you're not inventing a response while you're annoyed. Most late invoices aren't disputes. They're an invoice that got buried, and a polite nudge fixes it.

• •Day 3: a short text. Friendly, specific, no essay. Hi Sarah, just checking the invoice for the hot water service came through. $680, happy to resend if it's gone missing.
• •Day 7: resend the invoice in writing by email, with the terms and the bank details repeated. This is the one you want a record of.
• •Day 14: a plain written note that the account is overdue and that you've stopped scheduling further work for them until it's cleared. Then actually stop. No more jobs, no more parts on your card.
• •Day 21 and beyond: a letter of demand in your own words. It costs you nothing and it moves a surprising number of them.
• •Still nothing: small claims tribunals exist in every state for exactly this, and a lawyer is not your first move.

Keep all of it in writing. The bloke who chased by phone for six weeks has nothing to show anyone.

Deposits and progress payments on bigger jobs

A deposit isn't really about the money. A customer who's paid something is a customer who's committed. Progress payments are so you're never carrying more of the job than you can afford to lose. Typical practice for 2026:

• •Jobs under about $1,500: no deposit, pay on completion
• •Jobs where you're fronting real materials: materials invoiced and paid before you order them, balance on completion
• •Jobs over about $5,000: a deposit then staged claims at agreed points. Rough-in, fit-off, completion
• •Never let the final claim be the big one. If the last payment is 40% of the job you've handed them all the leverage.

Write the stages and the dollar figure for each on the quote before you start. Deposit limits apply to residential building work in some states, so check yours before you put a big number on a big job.

Mistakes that lose the money

Every one of these is someone else's hard week.

• •Invoicing a week later, then wondering why it takes a month to get paid
• •No written scope, so the price went up becomes an argument you can't win with a memory
• •Keeping the tools moving for someone who hasn't paid the last invoice. That's not patience, you're funding them
• •Services rendered as the description, so the customer has nothing to recognise and an accounts clerk has nothing to approve
• •Bank transfer only. Plenty will pay by card on the spot and never get around to a transfer. A typical tap-to-pay surcharge of 1.5% to 2.5% is cheap next to chasing for a month
• •Doing the variation on a handshake and putting it on the final invoice as a surprise
• •No due date on the invoice, so overdue is your opinion instead of a date

Set the terms once, invoice from the driveway, run the same sequence every time. DayRoute is a 7-day trial, no card, then Pro is $19.99/mo.