Apology Letter to Supplier for Late Payment of Invoice (Sample)

Making delayed payment of invoices to your vendor (or supplier or client or any other parties) is a bad business practice. If you want to succeed in business, then you should put best efforts to pay the dues on time to the parties. Only in extraordinary circumstances or where there are some disputes on payment amount, the payment can be made in a later date after everything is settled.

In case there is any delay in payment of bill amount to the supplier, then you should write an apology letter (in advance, if possible) wherein you have to explain the cause of delay and seek his forgiveness for the delay so caused and give commitments to make a payment on a certain day.

Apology letters to the party can be written under three scenarios:

1) Apology letter before the due date of payment when you are expecting a delay in payment;

2) Apology letter after the due date of payment is crossed but before actual payment is made;

3) Apology letter after the due date of payment is crossed and after actual payment is made.

The formats for all these letters are almost the same. You can use the following format and make necessary modifications in it as it suits your case.

FORMAT

Date: ...............

Ref: .................

To

(Name of the Officer)

(Designation)

(Name of the Business)

(Address)

(Contact No.)

Sub: Apology for delay in making payment

Ref: Invoice No. ................. dated ..............

Dear Mr. ..................,

At the outset let me apologize for delay from our side in making payment towards the invoice no. ......... dated for the supply of .............. We are deeply sorry for this delay and we apologize for any inconvenience that may have been caused to your organization for this delay.

While I would not like to take any ingenuine excuses to cover up the delay, but I would really appreciate if you would kindly understand our situation and excuse us for this late payment. We were expecting a few large payments from our big clients, from which we were going to make payment to you as soon as the monies were to be received. Unfortunately, there are some inadvertent delays from our clients' side too for which some of the payments are not yet received. We're in touch with those clients and hopefully they will be making payment in the next few days.

In order to make payments to you at the earliest, we are also in touch with our bankers and they may allow us extended overdraft facility by the end of this week. If that comes through, we will make payments to you immediately upon receipt of bank approval.

Let me reassure you that we are committed to make payments to you as soon as the funds are realized. Until then, I would request you to kindly bear with us. Our deepest apologies once again please for the delay.

Thanking you for your understanding and cooperation in this regard.

Yours sincerely,

For ....................... Limited

   (signature)

(Name of the Employee/ businessman)

(Name of the Organisation /business)