Find out who pays late before you quote them again

You remember that Hartmann was slow. You do not remember whether slow meant two weeks or two months, and you quote them again at the same terms as Acme, who pays in a week. The quote is fine. The terms are wrong. A deposit would have been obvious if the number was on the client before you wrote the price.

The client list, the detail page, the suggestion, and the pipeline are Pro. Starter still has clients, because you cannot invoice without them, and it still has open tracking on each invoice. What Starter does not have is the rollup: outstanding, lifetime value, and average days to pay on the list, plus notes, documents, and a board. If you have three clients and you know their habits by heart, you can wait. If you have fifteen, you will misremember the slow one.

The list is the warning

Each row is a client, what they still owe, what they have paid you over time, and how many days they usually take. Six days, 34 days, 58 days. Sort by the slow column before you send the next estimate. The client at 58 days does not get the same 'due on receipt' sentence as the client at six days, unless you enjoy writing reminders. They get a deposit, or a smaller first milestone.

Outstanding is what is unpaid now, not what you wish was unpaid. Lifetime is what has actually been paid, so a client with a huge quote and no payments does not look like your best client. A client with a high lifetime and a high days-to-pay is still a good client. They are a client you bill with a deposit. Those are different facts. The list keeps them in different columns so you do not mix them up.

The suggestion reads their history, not a credit file

Open the client and you get the activity, your notes, documents, and a payment chart of the last invoices. Under it, a suggestion in plain language: they average 34 days, ask for a deposit next time. The suggestion is computed from invoices you have already sent this person. It is not a credit score, a company registry, or a guess about a client you have never billed. A new client has no average. The panel should be quiet, and you should treat them as unknown, which usually means a deposit until you have seen them pay.

Notes are yours. 'Asked for net 45, I said no.' 'Pays when their finance lead is back from leave.' Incusia will not write those for you. The chart will not explain a 70 day outlier if the reason was a disputed line. Write the note when it happens. Six months later the chart still shows the outlier, and the note is why you do not panic or, worse, why you do not ignore it.

Documents on the client are the estimates and invoices, not a file dump of every attachment you have ever sent. If you need the signed quote, it is there because the estimate was accepted. If you need a contract PDF from your lawyer, keep that where you keep contracts. This page is the money relationship.

The board moves when the document does

The pipeline is columns and cards. A card moves when something happens to a document: an estimate is sent, an invoice is opened, a payment lands. You can still drag a card. You should not have to drag it because you sent the invoice. The event is the move. A board you update by hand is a board you abandon in week three, and then it lies.

What the board will not do is move because you thought about the client. There is no 'warm lead' detector. If you have not sent a document, the card stays where you put it. That is a limit, and it is the correct one. A pipeline that invents progress is how agencies convince themselves a deal is alive.

Use the board for the live jobs and the list for the money habits. They answer different questions. The board answers 'what is in flight'. The days-to-pay column answers 'what terms do I offer this person next time'. Analytics then asks whether one of those people is too large a share of the year. You do not need all three on day one. You need the days-to-pay column before the second quote.

A new enquiry from Blue Harbour should not be priced until you have opened their row. Fifty-eight days is not a moral failing. It is a fact about their accounts office. Quote the work, ask for half before you start, and put that in the estimate they sign. The CRM did not close the sale. It stopped you from giving them the same terms as Acme.

Before you send the next quote

Open the row first, then the estimate. Read outstanding. If they already owe you $3,200, a new project does not start on a handshake. It starts when you have a plan for the old invoice, which might be a call today and a deposit on the new work. Lifetime tells you whether they are worth that call. A client who has paid you $22,100 and runs late is a relationship. A client who has paid you $400 and runs late is a pattern you do not need to repeat.

The chart of the last six invoices is more honest than the average alone. An average of 34 can be six invoices around a month, or it can be five fast ones and one that took 90 days because of a dispute you already resolved. The bars show the shape. The note should say which bar was the dispute. If you did not write the note, you will treat a solved argument as a character flaw and ask for terms they have already earned their way out of.

Write the note in the hour, not at quarterly cleanup. 'Finance lead is out until the 20th, she asked me to resend then.' That sentence saves you from a reminder on the 12th that makes you look like you do not listen. 'Refused the print cost, I ate it, do not offer print again without a deposit.' That sentence saves you from being generous twice. The suggestion panel will not know either of those. You will.

On the board, a card in 'estimate sent' that has been there for three weeks is not a vibe. Open the estimate and read the events. If they toggled options last week, the card is alive and the column is right. If nothing has been opened, the card is stale. Move it only after you have decided the quote is dead, and write why. A board full of hope is worse than a short board, because you will forecast income from cards that are fiction.

When a payment lands, the card should leave 'invoice open' without you dragging it. If it does not, something about the payment was recorded outside the invoice, a bank transfer you have not marked. Mark it. The board and the outstanding column both depend on that. A client who paid you in the bank and still shows as owing you will get a reminder, and they will be right to be irritated.

Use one currency's story at a time when you compare speed. Days to pay is days, so it survives a currency change. Amounts do not. Do not decide Hartmann is your largest client by glancing at a euro total next to a dollar total as if the symbols were the same. The list is there to stop sloppy comparisons, not to create a new one. If you bill them in euros, read the euro figures as euros.

A quarterly pass takes twenty minutes. Sort by days to pay. Anyone over 30 days gets a deposit line in the next estimate, written down in the note so you remember you decided it. Anyone with outstanding older than their own average gets a call this week, not a new quote. Anyone whose lifetime is almost all one project gets a second proposal somewhere else, which is the concentration problem on the analytics page, seen from the client side. The CRM is the list you consult before you say yes. It is not a place to store logos.

If you only do the pass when you feel disorganised, you will skip the quarter when a slow client is about to become half your income. Put it on the same day you look at the forecast. The list tells you the habit. The forecast tells you the exposure. Together they are a reason to change the next estimate, which is the only place the lesson turns into money. A note that says 'deposit next time' and an estimate that does not ask for one is a note you wrote for yourself and then ignored. Open the draft before you send it and check the deposit line against that note. If the line is missing, add it now, while their row is still open on the screen beside the draft.