The invoice went out in March; it is July now, and the work — done, delivered, signed off in a friendly email you have since reread eleven times — has quietly become a debt. Before a court will look at it you send one more letter, the letter before claim, and if the person who owes you is an individual the Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims gives them thirty days to reply; the claim itself, when it comes, is form N1, or the same claim made online.
Where money claims are filed: the official portal is www.moneyclaims.service.gov.uk — HMCTS’s own Money Claims service. It is new (still badged beta), and following the 181st Practice Direction update there is no upper limit on the amount you can claim through it — and if you qualify for Help with Fees, the issue fee itself can be reduced to zero, whatever the size of the claim. New to the portal? Read our step-by-step walkthrough.
That is the part nobody tells you. You do not go straight to court. You go to the letterbox first.
The free routes are worth naming before anything else. Citizens Advice will talk you through a debt like this without charging you a penny. And if the claim is ever defended, the court runs a free mediation service for small claims — which most claims of this kind are — and a phone call that settles the matter in an afternoon beats a hearing you have to book a day off for. Mediation is not the lesser outcome. It is often the whole outcome.
But say the reminders have stopped landing. Say the read receipts have dried up. Then you write the letter before claim.
It is a dull document that does a great deal of work. It sets out who owes what, for what, and by when they must respond. For a business chasing an individual the protocol is exact: a letter of claim, a reply form, an information sheet, thirty days. Skip that step and the missing letter becomes a hole in the case later — not because anyone is against you, but because the step was there to be taken and wasn’t. The letter is not a threat. It is the thing that makes everything after it clean.
When the thirty days pass and nothing comes, the claim begins.
If the amount is specified — a precise figure, not “damages to be assessed” — the sensible route is Money Claim Online, reached through GOV.UK. It is quicker than the post and it does not mislay things. The paper form, N1, still exists for anyone who cannot use the online service; it goes by post to the County Court Money Claims Centre. Either way there is an issue fee, and it scales with the amount you are claiming. The current figure lives on GOV.UK, and it is the sort of number that changes, so check it there rather than take a stranger’s blog on trust.
Then there is interest, which is where people either overreach or give up. You can ask for it. Section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984 says that in proceedings for the recovery of a debt “there may be included … simple interest, at such rate as the court thinks fit.” Read that twice. *May. Thinks fit.* Eight per cent is the rate people commonly write in, but it is not yours by right — it is the court’s to grant or withhold. Claim it, justify it, and let the judge decide. Do not treat it as arithmetic already done for you.
The heart of the whole thing is the particulars of claim, and it is where honest cases quietly go wrong. This is the short account of what happened: the dates, the invoice number, what you supplied, what was agreed, the sum still outstanding. The form has no patience for “they know what they did.” It wants the boring specifics, set out so that someone who has never met you can read them once and understand exactly what is owed and why. Vagueness is not punished with drama. It is punished with delay — a request for more information, another fortnight, another wait.
None of this is hard. It is only precise, and precision held steady under mild fury is difficult to manage alone.
That is where Chris comes in. Tell Chris what happened — the invoice, the silence, the sum — and Chris helps you build the letter before claim first, then the particulars for your N1 or your online claim, in your own words, to a professional standard. Not a template you have to decode. Your facts, in the right order, on the right form.
The unpaid invoice does not have to stay the story you tell resentfully at dinner. It can become a completed money claim — dated, particularised, sitting in the court’s queue, and finally someone else’s turn to answer.
Draft my document with Chris →
When the next one goes unpaid, you’ll know exactly where to begin.