Overdue accounts can become a costly thorn in the side of small companies, especially if they add up to a few hundred dollars or more.

How can you keep tabs on them so as to collect and gain access to the cash, without offending the customer or client?

As a first-line effort, you should be sending regular written invoices that make clear exactly how much is owed and what the terms of payment are. These invoices should be sent in a timely way, with increasingly firm insistence for payment.

Clearly, sizable overdue accounts present a dilemma. On the one hand, you can easily feel angry at the customer for delaying payment; especially if the amount at stake is significant. Yet a customer is a customer, and if you become overbearing or obnoxious in your collections efforts, you can turn off the customer.

The reality is that you can be aggressive in your collection efforts without aggravating the customer. The reality also is that if the customer becomes so uncooperative about paying in a timely way that you may have to question whether the non-payer is a customer worth having.

• Begin your collection efforts on day 31. Too often, collections become a problem because the company waits until two months or more have gone by. At that point, the customer may have entered additional orders, and complicated the collection effort by making you feel that you can't be aggressive for fear of endangering payment for everything.

  In any event, the longer you wait to begin your collection effort, the more difficult it may be to collect because of mixed up paperwork or reassigned contacts.

• Work through purchasing or accounts receivable. Ideally, you want to deal with an individual apart from your regular contact at the delaying customer. That way, you reduce the chances of irritating the individual.

• Get commitment to a specific time for payment. Once you get a contact and get agreement that the invoice should be paid, try to lock in a commitment to a date for payment. That way, if the payment isn't made, you gain some leverage; no one likes to be seen as being dishonest.

• Follow up regularly. Assuming you don't get the right person or get a commitment to a payment date, try not to let the matter get lost in your own priority scheme. You may even have to follow up daily until you finally get the right person and gain a commitment to payment.

• Invite payment via overnight mail. Another tactic that sometimes speeds things up is to offer to pay for overnight shipment of the check; that suggests your seriousness and commitment to getting paid.

• Be prepared to take tougher action. If none of the previous tactics work, consider telling the customer that you will initiate collections procedures, and even court action if necessary. Let them know that while you don't want a fight, you consider it important that everyone honor their part of the deal, and you already honored yours.

In the end, an angry customer is a better bet than a customer that never pays.