What to do when they don't pay...

THERE is always someone who doesn't pay the bill when it's presented. This ‘somebody' can be a large corporate concern, the municipality, a contractor, a private person or any variation of these. What can an electrical contractor do about this?

There are a number of options:
Firstly, does the party who has not paid know that they have your invoice? Many contractors let the back room office write out the invoices and then do nothing until 30 days have passed, which is when they start asking for payment. This is foolish.
Make sure your back room office phones up whoever you have invoiced and check that the invoice has, in fact, reached them and confirm that they understand it is due for payment in 30 days. You will be surprised at how often the invoice makes it to the engineer or project manager's desk where it just gets buried under incoming paperwork.

Which leads us to the second point: Always send a copy of the invoice to the accounts department. They are not engineers or project managers but they are the ones who will prod the latter if they don't know what to do with the invoice.

Thirdly, is the invoice correct? Does it have an order number, your and their VAT numbers, and is the arithmetic correct? Does it have the correct contract name? Is the person who owes you money addressed correctly?

In my practice, we have a super competent person who gets this all right but in the past we've not been so lucky... we have had people who send out invoices with double or no VAT, that are addressed incorrectly.... and so on.
So, if you can, sign off all the invoices yourself. If you can't, then sign the big ones.
Right, so let us assume that all the above has been done and you're still not being paid. Perhaps your client says they can't pay you until they get paid and their client is not paying. For some this story will wash, but should you put up with it?
Unless you have contractually agreed with this, the answer is: "No, you should not."
Give them a week then pull off site, telling everybody why you're going. You think they'll still withhold payment? Well, if they do, they were never going to pay anyway.
Make trouble. Money is serious stuff.
What if they have paid well until the very last payment, which they withhold for some mysterious reason? All that you should do is withhold the Certificate of Compliance for the work for some mysterious reason.
Hold it, hold it, hold it! If they say, give us the CoC and we'll pay in seven days, forget about it. Tell them to pay and then you will give them the CoC.
You will come under pressure; they will promise that they will never use you again... they will say they'll spread the bad word.... Do you care?

What if the people who are not paying are very large contractors who have a habit of throttling the sub-contractors? Well, if it is were me, I would just stop work if payment was due and nothing had happened. Sooner or later you will get paid.
So, you have chipped off a very large contractor? Do you care? Do you want to work under the conditions that they impose in terms of payment?
What about the situation where they say they are withholding payment since some of your work is defective? This is legitimate. Get them to show you what is wrong, take a photo of the defective work, fix it, then take another photo and go and ask to be paid.
I think you must be getting the point. Cash is cash... and it's vital. If you scream very hard when it stops flowing, sooner or later they will pay, just to get rid of you.

Finally, remember two things: If somebody is going to stop paying, it will usually be when the job is finished, the last claim. So make sure that your second last claim is the highest and your last claim not so much. Claim all the variation orders in the second last claim. Then, if they plan on not paying you, you will at least be a little ahead with no variation order disputes.
Good luck.