Do I include this "We understand and will exercise..." on all our quotes/invoices even to loyal cus

Hi, My partner is self employed plumber, my question is a matter of judgement but should I include this paragraph "We understand and will exercise...etc" on all our quotes and letter heads? He has many loyal customers such as builders who always pay him on time and generally private customers pay on time also, mostly on completion without the need to state credit terms, I put on our quotes "payment on completion" when they don't would you put it on the invoice then to spur them on? I think it may be a good idea to put it on quotes & invoices to new businesses to clarify when we expect payment and really we want all our work to be paid on completion not within 30 days as these companies tend to do! We also have a company that constantly are late with their payments and when I did include this on our invoices to them I got a snotty response from their accountant saying that it won't work in retrospect as they work on 60 day terms which we can't do and have never agreed to, we get a lot of work from them so have just had to kind of forget the interest thing and wait till they decide to pay. Can you advise anything? Thanks, Ellie

Hi Ellie,

As David says legally you do not have to include this on your invoice, but it can help to include it.

Mr wrote:

We also have a company that constantly are late with their payments and when I did include this on our invoices to them I got a snotty response from their accountant saying that it won't work in retrospect as they work on 60 day terms which we can't do and have never agreed to, we get a lot of work from them so have just had to kind of forget the interest thing and wait till they decide to pay.

And that accountant doesn't know what they are talking about as the legislation does (generally) work in retrospect and unless you have agreed to 60 day terms in writing or by accepting their terms then it's likely the 30 day "default" credit period would apply.

Theoretically you could pursue the late payment charges up to six years after the invoices have been paid.

Does this clause need to be in a Contract?
Thanks.
June