Amara does social media management for five businesses in Lagos. Every month she does the same work. And every month she creates five separate invoices by hand, sends them, and then spends the next two weeks following up on WhatsApp.
Some clients pay in three days. Some take three weeks. One has not paid in six weeks. Meanwhile, Amara needs to pay her subscriptions, her data, and her assistant's salary — whether the money has come in or not.
This is a cash flow problem — money owed to her is not arriving in time to pay what she owes. And it is almost entirely caused by how invoicing is set up — or not set up.
This guide shows you how to stop chasing and start getting paid.
For any client on a monthly arrangement — a fixed monthly fee for ongoing work, like Amara's five clients — you should never be creating the same invoice from scratch each month.
In Lucrive, when you create an invoice, you can set it to recur. Choose:
Once set up, Lucrive generates the invoice automatically. You review it, click send, and it goes out on schedule — even if you are on holiday or focused on other work.
For Amara, this means five minutes of setup replaces two hours of monthly invoice creation.
In Nigeria, late payment is treated as a relationship problem — you feel awkward chasing clients because it seems aggressive. But there is a professional way to handle this: put a late fee in the invoice itself, before the work begins.
When creating an invoice in Lucrive:
Now the invoice itself says: "Payment due in 14 days. A late fee of 2% per month applies after 14 days."
This changes the dynamic. The client is no longer deciding whether to pay — they are deciding whether to pay the original amount or more. Most will pay on time.
The late fee serves two purposes: it compensates you for waiting (money sitting unpaid is money you cannot use to run your business), and it makes the due date real. "Pay by the 15th" means nothing. "Pay by the 15th or incur a 2% fee" means something.
One hidden reason clients delay is that paying feels like work. They have to find your account number, open their bank app, type in the details, confirm. Some people genuinely put this off.
Lucrive invoices include a payment link powered by Paystack. Your client clicks one button and can pay by:
The payment arrives in your account and the invoice is automatically marked as paid. You do not follow up. You do not confirm. It just happens.
① In Lucrive, click Invoices → New Invoice
② Fill in the client, line items, and amount as normal
③ Under Invoice Settings, toggle Recurring to ON
④ Choose frequency (monthly is most common for ongoing work)
⑤ Set the start date — the first invoice will go out on that date
⑥ Set your due date (e.g. 14 days after issue)
⑦ Add a late fee if appropriate
⑧ Click Save Recurring Invoice
The first invoice generates immediately. Each subsequent one generates and can be reviewed before sending.
If you have outstanding invoices right now, here is a simple approach:
Day 1–7 overdue: Send a friendly reminder. "Hi, just checking in — invoice #INV-2026-0032 for ₦180,000 was due on June 10th. Please let me know if you have any questions." Keep it warm.
Day 8–14 overdue: Send the invoice again with the late fee applied. "Please find the updated invoice attached — a late fee has been added as we agreed in the original terms."
Day 15+ overdue: Have a direct conversation. If this is a repeat pattern with a client, consider asking for a deposit upfront before the next job begins.
The goal is not to lose the relationship — it is to make the payment terms real. Clients who pay on time will not mind the policy. Clients who pay late will be motivated to improve.
After setting up recurring invoices and a 2% late fee in Lucrive, Amara's average payment time dropped from 18 days to 9 days. Two of her five clients started paying the same day the invoice arrived — something that had never happened before.
She did not follow up more. She followed up less. The system did it.
Set up your first recurring invoice today. Log in at lucrive.io, open the Invoices section, and turn one of your regular clients into an automatic monthly payment. It takes about five minutes.
People and businesses in our examples are illustrative, not real Lucrive customers. Figures are worked examples: confirm your own position with a qualified tax adviser.