How do you chase an unpaid invoice as a garage owner?

By the IZZI DEVIS team · Published 29 October 2026 · 9 min read

Before chasing: check the invoice is genuinely due

Chasing an invoice that is not yet payable costs you credibility for every reminder that follows. The first question is therefore the due date, and the answer differs by customer type.

• A private customer must pay, in principle, immediately: the French public service portal states that for a private individual, payment is generally due as soon as the work has been carried out. A longer period cannot be assumed; it has to be agreed.
• A business customer gets a payment period. Failing an agreement, that period is 30 days from completion of the service. The parties may agree on 45 days end of month, or 60 days from the invoice issue date, so long as this is not abusive towards the supplier. While that period runs, payment is not due.

Two practical checks beat a premature reminder: did the invoice actually go out, and to the right address? Does it state the payment period? That wording is mandatory on the invoice (article L441-9 of the French Commercial Code) and in the general terms of sale (article L441-1). It is also the document that makes everything that follows hard to argue with.

Late payment interest runs on its own, if you wrote it down

This is the point many workshops discover too late. Between businesses, late payment interest does not have to be requested: it is owed as of right. The public service portal is explicit — late payment interest may be applied without having to send a payment reminder or a formal notice. It accrues per day of delay, from the day after the settlement date shown on the invoice.

The rate itself is a choice, within limits set by article L441-10 of the French Commercial Code:

• The rate that applies in the absence of a clause is the European Central Bank key rate plus 10 points. That refinancing rate is taken on 1 January for the first half-year and on 1 July for the second. For the second half of 2026 it stands at 2.40%, giving a late payment rate of 12.40% (it was 2.15%, so 12.15%, in the first half).
• The rate you set in your terms of sale cannot be lower than three times the statutory interest rate, which currently works out at 8.25%.

The fixed EUR 40 indemnity

On top of that comes a fixed recovery-costs indemnity of EUR 40 (article D441-5 of the French Commercial Code). Its rules are worth knowing exactly:

• it is owed once per invoice paid late, not per day of delay;
• it is owed even where part of the invoice has been paid;
• it is not subject to VAT;
• it must appear both in your general terms of sale and on your invoices;
• it only covers commercial acts: not commercial leases, and not lease-purchase agreements;
• if your actual recovery costs exceed EUR 40, you may claim additional compensation against supporting evidence — that one, by contrast, must not be mentioned on invoices or in the terms of sale.

Step 1 — the reminder, which settles most oversights

Amicable recovery comes in two steps, and the public service portal notes that neither is compulsory. The reminder is nonetheless used almost systematically, because it settles the two most common cases: a plain oversight, and a temporary cash-flow problem.

It can be done by phone, in writing, or both. In practice the call gets an answer faster and the written note leaves a trace: doing both, in that order, costs very little. A few points of method:

• Call before writing when the customer is known to the workshop. A forgotten payment clears in a minute; a registered letter, by contrast, damages a commercial relationship for nothing.
• Attach a copy of the invoice to the written reminder, with its number, date and outstanding amount. A customer who has to hunt for the document will not pay today.
• Do not send a reminder where there is a dispute. If the customer challenges the work or the amount, that is a dispute, not an oversight: the right response is to go back to the signed repair order and the accepted quote, not to send one more reminder.
• Offer a written instalment plan rather than letting a debt grow, where the customer acts in good faith but is short of cash.

Worth remembering: the reminder is not a compulsory step before a formal notice or before court action. You can skip it if the file is already tense.

Step 2 — the formal notice, and the form that matters

The formal notice to pay (mise en demeure) is the act that moves a file from commercial to legal. Its regime is set by articles 1344 to 1345-3 of the French Civil Code. It is not compulsory, save in particular cases, but it is the document a judge will expect in most of the procedures that follow.

Three forms are possible.

1. A registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, drafted in terms clear and formal enough to qualify as a formal notice, and amounting to a sufficient summons. That is the normal route for a workshop invoice. A letter that merely recalls the sum politely is not a formal notice.
2. A summons served by a judicial commissioner (commissaire de justice, formerly a bailiff). The public service portal notes that this is costly and not necessarily worthwhile for a small debt.
3. A formal notice provided for by the contract, where the contract states that it follows from the mere fact that payment has fallen due.

What the letter should contain

No rule imposes a template. In practice, for it to have effect, it should name unambiguously: your full details and the customer's, the heading identifying it as a formal notice to pay, the invoice reference and date, the outstanding amount, the breakdown of late payment interest and of the EUR 40 indemnity where applicable, a precise deadline for payment, and what will follow if nothing happens. Date it, sign it, and keep the acknowledgement of receipt: that is what proves the date.

Private customer or business customer: what changes

A workshop invoices both, and the regime differs. Confusing them is costly either way: claiming from a private customer what is not owed by them is a questionable commercial practice, and waiving what a business customer owes amounts to funding that customer for free.

With a largely private clientele, then, the work happens upstream: in the displayed terms of sale and in the signed quote or repair order, which establish what was ordered, at what price and by when.

When the amicable route runs out: the recovery options

Once a formal notice has gone unanswered, four routes exist, and a fifth has just been created. The choice depends on the amount, on the customer's status, and on whether the debt is disputed.

The small-claims recovery procedure

For a debt that does not exceed EUR 5,000, the creditor can instruct a judicial commissioner (articles L125-1 and R125-1 onwards of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures). The commissioner invites the debtor to take part, by registered letter or electronic message; the debtor replies within one month, and no reply counts as a refusal. Agreement to take part suspends the limitation period (article 2238 of the French Civil Code); an agreement reached is made enforceable, which allows a bank seizure without going before a judge. If it fails, the procedure stops and the court route stays open.

The costs fall on the creditor, and they are tariffed: EUR 14.92 including VAT to file the request, EUR 29.76 including VAT for issuing the enforceable title (not payable if the procedure fails), plus fees on payment — EUR 21.28 up to EUR 188, then a tapering scale by bracket. For a debt of EUR 200, the public service portal gives an example of EUR 22.49 in fees. Important: this procedure excludes commercial debts, that is, invoices between traders.

The order for payment

This is the written, non-adversarial procedure with no hearing, set out in articles 1405 onwards of the French Code of Civil Procedure. You apply to the court for the place where the debtor lives: the commercial court (tribunal de commerce, or economic activities court) where both parties are traders or the act is a commercial act, otherwise the judicial court. The application uses a form (Cerfa no. 12946 at the commercial court, no. 12948 at the judicial court), with no obligation to instruct a lawyer, together with the quote or contract, a copy of the unpaid invoice and the formal notice. Court registry fees are EUR 33.47 at the commercial court; there are none at the judicial court.

The judge grants the whole claim, part of it, or rejects the application — a rejection cannot be appealed. The order then has to be served by a judicial commissioner, at the creditor's expense, within three months since 1 September 2026, against six months previously: after that it lapses. The debtor has one month from service to object. Where no notice of objection arrives within two months of service, the creditor can proceed to enforcement: the order then constitutes an enforceable title (article 1422).

Interim payment and the action on the merits

Two further court routes exist: an application for interim payment, which obtains an advance on the sum owed quickly, and an action on the merits, slower, which becomes unavoidable as soon as the debt is seriously disputed.

New: undisputed commercial debts, with no threshold

French Law no. 2026-307 of 23 April 2026 creates a simplified procedure for recovering undisputed commercial debts, which requires no intervention by a judge and complements the small-claims procedure capped at EUR 5,000. It applies to debts that are certain, liquidated and due, invoiced between traders, with no threshold on the amount, and it runs as follows:

1. at the creditor's request, a judicial commissioner issues an order to pay (commandement de payer) describing the obligation, the sums claimed, the order to pay within one month of it being sent, and how payment can be made;
2. if the sum is neither paid nor challenged before a judge, the commissioner draws up a record of non-contestation, at least eight days after the end of the one-month period, which the registrar of the commercial court makes enforceable;
3. that enforceable record is sent to the debtor within six months; the debtor retains the option of applying to a judge.

One notable difference from the small-claims procedure: the costs fall on the debtor. The detailed arrangements are to be set by an implementing text, and the official factsheets state that the procedure will be operational by 31 December 2026 at the latest. The reasoning put forward by the authorities is blunt: the Banque de France estimates that late payment raises a company's probability of failure by 25%, and by 40% where the delay exceeds one month.

What avoids the chase: what happens before the keys go back

An unpaid invoice is better prevented than recovered, and the levers sit in the workshop, not in the reminders folder.

• A signed quote or repair order before the work starts. It proves what was ordered, and therefore what is owed. Our guide on garage invoice requirements sets out what then has to appear on the invoice.
• Written agreement to any additional work discovered during the repair. A customer can refuse to pay for work they did not ask for.
• Up-to-date general terms of sale, stating the payment period, the late payment rate and the EUR 40 indemnity, repeated on every invoice. Without that wording, the mechanism works against you.
• A deposit on long jobs or on orders for specific parts, which commits the customer before the vehicle is tied up.
• Payment on collection of the vehicle, for private customers: that is the moment when collecting is easiest.
• Dated tracking of outstanding amounts, so the chase happens on day three rather than day forty.

What IZZI DEVIS does

IZZI DEVIS is voice-driven workshop management software for mechanical, body repair, motorcycle and electrical professionals. On tracking unpaid invoices, here is what it does, factually.

• The dashboard shows an unpaid invoices alert card and a count of invoices outstanding, alongside the month's revenue and the quote acceptance rate.
• Automatic invoice reminders can be scheduled, with intervals adjustable in the settings — day 3 then day 14 by default — and an automatic stop after 60 days, at which point it offers to close the file. This function is part of the Pro plan.
• Reminder intervals can be set globally or specific to one file, with the option of reverting to the general setting.
• Part payments are recorded against the invoice, and a cancellation produces a credit note rather than a deletion.
• The invoice carries over the quote and repair order details; the accepted quote and its signed version stay attached to the file, which supplies the documents to attach to a formal notice or a court application.
• Invoices issued are kept even if the file is deleted, in line with the duty to retain accounting records.
• FEC and Factur-X export hands the entries over to the accountant.

What it does not do: it does not draft your formal notice, it applies to no court, it is no substitute for a judicial commissioner, and it collects nothing from private individuals — your customers' payments go through your own payment arrangements. The full feature list is on the garage management software page, and the invoicing reform deadlines are in our guide on electronic invoicing.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• French public service portal — Payment periods between businesses and late payment interest (in French)
• French public service portal — Amicable recovery: reminder and formal notice to pay (in French)
• French public service portal — Small-claims recovery through a judicial commissioner (in French)
• French public service portal — Order for payment (in French)
• French public service portal — A simplified procedure for recovering undisputed commercial debts (27 April 2026) (in French)
• Legifrance — Commercial Code, article L441-10 (payment periods and late payment interest) (in French)
• Legifrance — Commercial Code, article D441-5 (fixed recovery-costs indemnity) (in French)

This article is general information, up to date as of 29 October 2026. It does not replace advice from your accountant or legal adviser.