If a brand has not paid you, three things decide what happens next: the date the payment legally fell due, whether you have a written record of what you delivered, and whether you were registered as a small enterprise before you raised the invoice. The last one is the one almost nobody gets right, and it is free.
Most advice for creators stops at "send a polite follow-up". That is step one of five, and it is the only step brands expect.
How late is actually late?
Later than you think, and earlier than the brand will tell you.
The Storyboard18 report from July 2025 put the official payment cycle at large brands at 90 days, with intermediary agencies holding creator payments for 90 to 120 days and some consumer brands leaving dues unclear for over a year. One senior executive quoted in it summed the market up as very few clients paying on time. The same report noted creators increasingly asking for 25 to 50 percent in advance, which tells you what experienced people have concluded.
None of that is the legal position. If you are a registered micro or small enterprise, the MSMED Act, 2006 sets the clock, not the brand's finance calendar. Section 15 says the buyer must pay by the date agreed in writing, and that agreed date cannot exceed 45 days from acceptance. Where there is no written agreement at all, the period is 15 days.
The detail that matters most is buried in the definitions. Under Section 2(b), where the buyer raises no written objection within 15 days of delivery, the day of deemed acceptance is the day of actual delivery. So the clock starts when your reel went live, not when someone at the brand got round to approving it. A brand that sits silent for two months has not paused anything.
Late payment carries interest under Section 16, at three times the RBI bank rate, compounded monthly. You rarely need to collect it. You need to be able to mention it.
Step one: fix the date, in writing
Before you chase anything, work out the exact date payment fell due, and write it down.
You need three things: the date you delivered, the date you invoiced, and whatever was agreed about timing. If the agreement was a voice note or a direct message, that still counts as evidence of what was agreed, so screenshot it now rather than when you need it. Our guide to invoicing a brand as a creator covers the fields that make the invoice itself a usable record.
A specific date changes the conversation. "It has been a while" invites a vague answer. "This fell due on 14 July" does not.
Step two: one reminder, not five
Send a single short message to the person who commissioned you, and copy the accounts email if you have one.
Quote the invoice number, the delivery date, the due date and the amount. Ask one question: on what date will this be paid. Not "any update on this", which can be answered with "checking with finance" forever.
If you get a date, hold them to that date and nothing else. If you get nothing in a week, stop sending reminders. Five soft follow-ups teach a brand that nothing happens when they ignore you, and the reasons brands let creators drift have a lot to do with how little it costs them.
Step three: the formal demand
This is the step most creators skip, and it is where a surprising number of unpaid invoices get paid.
A formal demand is a written notice stating the amount, the due date, the statutory basis if you have one, and what you will do next if it is not paid by a stated date. It is not aggressive and it does not need a lawyer to be effective, though taking advice before you send it is sensible.
What gives it weight is naming the consequence accurately. For a Udyam-registered supplier that means the interest under Section 16 and the reference you can file. There is also a consequence on the brand's side of the ledger: income tax law defers a buyer's deduction for a sum owed to a micro or small enterprise until it is actually paid, which turns your unpaid invoice into a problem for their tax position rather than just yours.
Step four: file it, free
If the demand goes nowhere, a registered micro or small enterprise can escalate without hiring anyone.
The address changed recently and a lot of advice still points at the old one. Following a Ministry of MSME notification dated 3 October 2025, all new delayed-payment cases under the MSMED Act must be filed on the MSME ODR portal at odr.msme.gov.in with effect from 15 October 2025. The Samadhaan portal that most articles still name no longer accepts new filings.
Three things worth knowing before you look at it:
- It costs nothing. There is no court fee or filing fee for micro and small enterprises.
- The reference goes to the Micro and Small Enterprise Facilitation Council, which is required to dispose of it within 90 days of the reference being made.
- You will need your Udyam certificate, the purchase order or written work order, and the invoices. This is why the paperwork habits matter long before there is a problem.
The catch that decides everything
Here is the part that makes this post worth reading before you have a problem rather than after.
Eligibility requires that your Udyam registration date precedes the invoice date in dispute. Registering after a brand has stopped replying does not apply backwards to that invoice. The route exists, it is free, and you locked yourself out of it months ago by not spending ten minutes on a government form.
Udyam registration is free, requires no documents to be uploaded, and the certificate does not expire. A solo creator operating in their own name is eligible. If you take brand work at all and you have not done it, that is today's task, and it protects every invoice you raise from here on rather than the one you are currently chasing.
There is a deadline on the other end too. A recovery claim is generally subject to a three year limitation period under the Limitation Act, 1963, running from when the payment became due. That is far longer than it sounds useful for, because the person who commissioned you will have changed jobs long before then.
Step five: make it structurally impossible
Every step above is recovery. Recovery has a poor success rate everywhere, in every industry, which is why the useful work is upstream.
Three things change the odds more than any chasing technique.
- Ask for part of the money before you shoot. The 25 to 50 percent advance that Storyboard18 found creators moving towards is now a normal request, not a rude one. Our negotiation scripts for creators have wording for it that does not cost you the deal.
- Get the scope and the payment date in writing before you start, in any form. A confirmed direct message is evidence. A nod on a call is not.
- Register on Udyam now, and put the number on every invoice.
The fourth option is to not carry the risk yourself. On Qolab the brand pays before the work starts and the money is held by Qolab rather than by the brand, so whether the money exists is settled before you shoot rather than discovered afterwards. Once you have delivered, a brand has no button that withholds it; Qolab checks the live content and releases the payout. Across 338 connected creators with a reel rate on file, the median asking price for a reel is ₹1,734 in the 1,000 to 10,000 follower band, which is worth holding against the effort of chasing one unpaid invoice for four months.
That is the real argument. Not that chasing never works, but that a creator's time is better spent making the next thing than litigating the last one.
What to do this week
- Register on Udyam if you have not. Free, no documents, ten minutes.
- Put the registration number and a real due date on every invoice from now on.
- For anything currently unpaid, write down the delivery date, the invoice date and the due date today, while you still remember them.
- Ask for an advance on the next deal, once, and see what happens.
A brand that intends to pay you is not offended by any of this. A brand that is offended by it has told you something useful.
If you would rather never send the reminder at all, a creator account on Qolab makes step five the default: the brand's payment is held before you start, and Qolab releases it to you after the content is verified live.
