to see you soon. thank you, j.j. unfortunately sometimes customers pay late or not at all. it is unavoidable and this happens to every business owner. luckily, there are ways you can keep this from becoming a frequent occurrence. mashable.com gives us five key things you can do to avoid not getting paid. one, have a written contract. without one, there is no legal obligation for a client to pay you. two, use recurring billing. one of the biggest reasons why businesses don t get paid is because they forgot to request payment. choose a software that will take care of that job for you. three, keep it simple. using words like days instead of net will get you paid 14% more often. you want the bill to be easy to understand for the client. four, track pavement history. consider sending a gift to your customers who pay on time.