You're putting a job in for someone and they've still not paid for the last one. That's the moment it's cheapest to sort out — a quick word on the phone, or a deposit up front — and it's the moment you're least likely to remember, because you're looking at the diary and not at the invoices.
So Mucka tells you. Pick the client on the job form and, if they've got anything overdue, a line appears underneath:
£840 overdue — 23 days past its due date.
That's it. It doesn't stop you, and it doesn't do anything about it.
It's a heads-up, not a block
The Save button works exactly as it always did. Loads of perfectly good customers are slow payers — a managing agent on sixty days, someone who's been away, a landlord waiting on their own tenant — and whether you take the work on is your call, not Mucka's.
What you do with it is up to you:
- Book it and say nothing.
- Book it and chase the old invoice while you're at it.
- Ring them first.
- Ask for a deposit on this one.
What counts as overdue
Only invoices that have actually gone past their due date. An invoice sitting inside its payment terms isn't late, and Mucka won't mention it — otherwise nearly every regular customer would set the warning off and you'd stop reading it.
It counts what's still owed, not what you originally billed. Someone who's paid £900 of a £1,000 invoice shows as £100, not £1,000.
If there's more than one, they're added up into a single figure and the days are counted off the oldest: "£1,240 overdue across 3 invoices — the oldest is 51 days past its due date."
It's the same sum you see on the customer's own record, so the two can't tell you different things.
Where it shows up
- The job form, under the client, as soon as you pick one.
- The service reminder and certificate booking sheets, when you book a due service in.
- The approval card when your AI receptionist takes a booking on a call. The caller is never told anything about money — that's for you to decide, not for Mucka to raise with someone on the phone.
- When you ask Mucka to book something in chat or by voice, it'll mention it after confirming the job's in.
Who can see it
Only people who can see invoices. A subcontractor booking a job in sees nothing at all — not a blanked-out line, nothing — because what a customer is worth isn't theirs to know.
If they're on Breathing Space
You'll still see what's owed, because you're entitled to weigh it up before taking more work on. But the line says so:
£840 overdue — 23 days past its due date. Chasing is paused — Breathing Space until 12 November.
Breathing Space is the Government's Debt Respite Scheme. While it's running you must not chase them, and neither will Mucka. If you ask it to, it'll tell you why it can't.
Common gotchas
- No warning doesn't mean no money owed. It means nothing is late. An invoice you sent yesterday on 30-day terms is still an invoice.
- It only looks at that customer. If the work is for a landlord and the unpaid invoice is in the tenant's name, they're two different records and Mucka treats them as two different people.
- Nothing gets sent. Seeing the warning doesn't chase anyone or tell the customer anything. If you want the old invoice chased, do that yourself, or ask Mucka to.