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Quick answer: There is no magic hour that gets you paid faster. Across 550,565 Fergus invoices, the time the invoice is sent does almost nothing to impact how quickly it’s paid. There’s two things that do get invoices paid faster: how soon after the job you send the invoice, and how quick and easy it is for the customer to pay.
You finish a job on Friday afternoon. The customer is happy and you’re just about to drive off.
Do you send the invoice now, wait until Monday morning, or hold it for the supposed perfect time?
It sounds like a small decision. Across hundreds of jobs, though, small delays can turn into real pressure on cash flow.
So we looked at the data.
The finding is not a clever scheduling trick. It is a more useful lesson for any trade business that wants to get paid faster with less admin.
We reviewed a supplied extract covering 550,565 invoices sent since 1 January 2025.
This was broken down into day-and-hour combinations of when the invoice was sent (eg Weds 7pm). Times were localised to the sending business, because invoices were sent from all over the world.
For each time slot, we compared:
This gives us several ways to define “best”. That distinction turns out to be important.
Not really.
Across the 40 supplied time slots, the share of invoices paid within seven days ranged from 31.0% to 33.4%. That is a gap of just 2.4 percentage points between the best slot and the worst.
The chart makes the point better than any table. Wherever you send, the result lands in the same narrow band.
The stronger slots clustered from Wednesday to Friday, late afternoon into the evening. That likely just reflects how tradies already work: finish the job, pack up, then do the paperwork at the end of the day. Morning slots averaged about 31.4% paid within seven days, against about 32.0% for afternoon and evening. That gap is too small to justify holding a finished invoice for hours.
One practical note on Fridays: if a job finishes on Friday, send the invoice on Friday. Do not wait until Monday. Weekend payments move more slowly, but waiting only adds a guaranteed delay before the customer can act.
Barely, and not enough to change what you should do.
The slots that led on seven-day payment were not the same slots that led on payment within 48 hours. Weekday evenings looked best for the seven-day rate, while Tuesday and Wednesday around 5pm looked best for a fast 48-hour response. The top results also overlapped statistically, so the data cannot crown one winning hour.
This is why a headline such as “Friday at 7pm is the best time to invoice” would be catchy but misleading. The safe read is simple: send promptly and do not batch, because no send time is strong enough to rescue a slow process.
Instead of asking, “What hour should I send the invoice?”, ask:
How quickly does a completed job become a clear, payable invoice?
In plain terms, two things get you paid on time: how soon after the job you send the invoice, and how quick and easy it is for the customer to pay it. That is where the real gains are, not in the clock.
If a job is complete at 2pm on Tuesday but the invoice does not go out until Friday evening, a one-percentage-point timing advantage will not recover the lost three days.
Every hand-off creates a place for work to get stuck:
A world-class process shortens that path. The best time to send an invoice is usually when the job is done, the details are accurate and the value is still fresh in the customer’s mind.
Most businesses do not need a complicated model. They need a reliable process that covers five things.
Aim to send the invoice the same day the job is done, ideally before you leave the site.
Capture labour, materials, notes, photos and variations on the job. That reduces the end-of-day detective work and removes double-handling.
With Fergus Go, teams can prepare and send invoices from the field instead of rebuilding the job later at a desk.
An invoice should be easy to understand and easy to pay.
Check the customer details, job description, amount, due date and payment instructions. Then give the customer a simple online payment option.
In a separate observational Fergus analysis, invoices paid through Fergus Pay had a median payment time of one day, compared with 11 days for the comparison group.
Either way, payment convenience deserves more attention than chasing the perfect send hour.
Do not let the invoice be the first time a customer sees the payment terms.
Agree on the price, deposit, milestones, due date and accepted payment methods before work begins. For larger jobs, use progress payments so the business is not funding the whole project until the end.
Clear terms reduce disputes and awkward follow-up. Australian businesses can also review the government’s payment terms guidance.
Most overdue invoices do not need a custom email from the owner. They need a consistent reminder at the right point in the payment cycle.
Set a simple cadence:
Fergus lets you set invoice reminders so routine chasing happens without relying on memory.
Keep the normal path simple. Give personal attention to the invoices that genuinely need it: disputes, missing approvals, incorrect purchase orders, rejected payments or repeat late payers.
That is where an owner or office manager adds value. They should not spend the afternoon manually checking every invoice that is progressing normally.
Use a simple 15-1-5 rule:
The five measures are:
This tracks the whole journey from job done to money in the bank, not just the invoice-to-payment step.
If your business still batches invoices, use the data as a test plan rather than a rule. Compare your current schedule with a Monday-to-Wednesday 5pm-to-7pm window, then measure the result over several weeks.
Do not delay invoices that are ready. The test should improve consistency, not create another queue.
There is no universal best hour. In the supplied Fergus data, evening slots performed slightly better on average, but the seven-day difference between morning and later slots was under one percentage point. Send the invoice as soon as it is accurate and ready.
Wednesday and Friday evening slots ranked highly for seven-day payment rate. Tuesday and Wednesday at 5pm ranked strongly for payment within 48 hours. The result depends on the metric, so no single day wins every measure.
No. Send it when the job is complete. Friday payments may move more slowly over the weekend, but waiting until Monday adds a guaranteed delay before the customer can act.
Evening slots were slightly ahead in the supplied extract. The gap was small, so speed and consistency matter more than morning versus evening.
For straightforward work, aim to send the invoice on site or by the end of the same day. Larger or more complex jobs may need a short review, but the process should still have a clear owner and deadline.
Send promptly, use clear terms, provide a convenient online payment option, include all required details and automate reminders. Focus on removing friction from the full journey between job done and payment.
Consistent reminders reduce the chance that an invoice is forgotten and remove the need for owners to remember every follow-up. They work best when the original invoice is clear and payment is easy.
Usually not. Weekly batching creates avoidable delay and makes one admin session carry too much risk. Capture job details as the work happens and send each invoice when it is ready.
Measure job completion to invoice sent, invoice sent to viewed, viewed to payment started, payment started to cleared funds and the percentage requiring manual follow-up.
No payment method can guarantee when a customer will pay. Fergus data shows a strong association between Fergus Pay use and faster payment, but the comparison is observational and may include other differences between the invoice groups.
There is no secret hour that fixes cash flow.
The 550,565-invoice extract shows some small timing patterns, with weekday evenings a touch ahead. It also shows that the gap between slots is tiny.
The bigger win is simple:
That process will do more for cash flow than waiting for the clock to hit the supposed perfect hour.
Want to get invoices out faster and spend less time chasing? See how Fergus handles invoicing, payments and follow-up.
Less admin, a clearer read on your trades business.
Our 25,000+ trades businesses have slashed their admin, are getting paid faster, and are finally enjoying their weekends again.
