Chasing Unpaid Invoices: What You Can Legally Charge

When you are chasing unpaid invoices in Sweden, four things can lawfully be added to the debt, and only two of them are free of a paperwork prerequisite. You may charge a påminnelseavgift of 60 kr, but only if the fee was agreed before the debt arose. You may charge an inkassokrav fee of 180 kr with no prior agreement, provided the demand meets inkassolagen. You may charge dröjsmålsränta at the Riksbank's referensränta plus 8 percentage points under räntelagen, with no prior agreement at all. And against a business customer you may add a fixed förseningsersättning of 450 kr. Then comes a betalningsföreläggande at Kronofogden for 300 kr plus 380 kr for your own work. The order matters, the timings matter, and the reminder fee is the one people lose, because they put it on the invoice instead of in the quote.

The four chargeable items, and which need an agreement first

This is the table to check before you type a single chasing email. The legal basis for the fees is lagen (1981:739) om ersättning för inkassokostnader m.m., with the amounts set in förordningen (1981:1057). Interest sits in räntelagen (1975:635).

Two traps live in that table. First, the reminder fee and the payment-plan fee need an agreement made no later than when the debt arose. A line added to the invoice after the job is finished is too late, because the debt already existed when you wrote it. Second, the amounts are set by regulation and have been revised before. Confirm the current figures rather than trusting a template you inherited.

What must be in the avtal before the debt arises

The fix is one clause, and it belongs in the quote your customer signs, not in the invoice you send three weeks later. Something plain:

Payment terms 20 days from the invoice date. On late payment we charge a reminder fee of 60 kr and late payment interest at the reference rate plus 8 percentage points under räntelagen. Unpaid claims are passed to collection.

Note what that clause does not need to do. It does not need to establish your right to interest, because räntelagen already gives you that. It does not need to establish the 180 kr collection fee. It exists almost entirely to buy you the 60 kr, and to remove the argument later.

It is worth 60 kr per invoice, which is small. It is worth much more as evidence that terms were presented and accepted, which is what the argument is actually about if this ends in front of a judge. This is the honest reason to have the quote signed electronically rather than agreed on the phone: in OdinTask the signed quote carries a document hash and an audit trail, so the terms and the acceptance are one record with a timestamp on it.

Working out dröjsmålsränta correctly, which your template probably does not

Under räntelagen 6 § the rate is the referensränta in force at the time plus 8 percentage points. The Riksbank sets the referensränta twice a year, on 1 January and 1 July. It is the policy rate at the end of the previous half-year, rounded up to the nearest half percentage point, and it is published at riksbank.se.

That word floating is the whole problem. Swedish rates have moved repeatedly in recent years, so an invoice template that says a fixed percentage is stating a number that was true once. If your stated rate is above the lawful one you are overcharging; if it is below, you are giving money away because you are bound by what you wrote.

The safe wording is not a number. It is referensräntan plus 8 procentenheter. That sentence stays correct forever and recalculates itself.

The arithmetic

Daily interest is the amount, times the rate, divided by 365, times the days late:

• Look up today's referensränta at riksbank.se, then add 8.
• On a 40 000 kr invoice at a 10% total rate: 40 000 × 0.10 ÷ 365 = 10.96 kr per day.
• Sixty days late is roughly 658 kr. Add 60 kr, 180 kr and, for a business, 450 kr.

Run the same sum at a few reference rates and the point lands: at a referensränta of 0% your rate is 8%; at 2% it is 10%; at 4% it is 12%. On a 40 000 kr invoice that spread is a difference of about 4.40 kr a day. Small per invoice, real across a year, and free to collect once your wording is right.

The consumer 30-day rule that catches everyone

Here is the one most trades firms get wrong. Under räntelagen 3 §, interest normally runs from an agreed due date. But that rule does not apply where the debtor is a consumer buying for private use. In that case 4 § applies instead, and interest runs from 30 days after you sent the invoice, regardless of the due date printed on it.

So a 10-day payment term on a private customer does not start the interest clock on day 11. It starts on day 31. You can still send the reminder on day 11, and you should. You just cannot charge interest for those 20 days. Against a business customer, the agreed due date governs and interest runs from it.

Chasing unpaid invoices: the ladder, and the timings that work

1. Day 1 after the due date: påminnelse. One page, 60 kr if you agreed it. Send it the day after, not the week after. Most invoices are unpaid because of admin, not refusal, and a same-week reminder collects most of them.
2. Day 10: inkassokrav. A formal demand under inkassolagen (1974:182), 180 kr, giving at least eight days to pay. You do not need a licence to collect your own claims. You do have to follow god inkassosed: no threats, no pursuing a claim you know is genuinely disputed.
3. Day 25 or later: betalningsföreläggande. Only once the eight days have run out and there is no dispute.

What an inkassokrav must contain

• The creditor's identity, in full.
• The amount, split into capital, interest and fees, and what the claim is for.
• A clear payment deadline of at least eight days.
• A statement that collection measures follow if it is not paid.
• A way to prove you sent it. This is the document a court asks about.

Betalningsföreläggande: what it costs and what it does

You file it through Kronofogden's e-service at kronofogden.se, in about fifteen minutes. The application fee is 300 kr, and you may claim 380 kr for preparing it yourself. Both land on the debtor if the claim survives. Kronofogden does not judge whether you are right; it serves the papers and waits.

If the customer stays silent, you get an utslag, which is enforceable like a judgment. If the customer files a bestridande, the process stops. A dispute costs them nothing and takes one sentence, and they need to prove nothing to file it. You then have a limited window to ask for the case to be moved to the tingsrätt, where the fee is 900 kr for smaller claims and 2 800 kr above that threshold, and where your photos, your signed quote and your written ÄTA approvals decide the outcome.

Two limits worth pinning to the wall. A claim against a private customer normally lapses after three years; against a business, ten. And an utslag against a private individual produces a betalningsanmärkning, while for a company the credit agencies can register the application itself, which is why B2B claims often get paid the week the papers land.

B2B: the 450 kr, and the 30-day payment term

Against a business or a public-sector customer, three extra rules apply.

• Förseningsersättning of 450 kr is automatic, with no agreement needed.
• It absorbs the 60 kr, 180 kr and 170 kr fees rather than stacking on them. You claim those only to the extent the total exceeds 450 kr. Most single claims never get there, so in practice the 450 kr replaces them.
• An invoice must be paid within 30 days unless a longer term is genuinely agreed, and against a public authority that 30 days cannot be extended at all.

Reading this outside Sweden

The structure is near-universal; the names change. In the UK, commercial debts carry statutory interest at 8% over the Bank of England base rate plus fixed compensation of £40, £70 or £100 by debt size, under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, and undefended claims go through Money Claim Online. In New Zealand, a demand letter precedes the Disputes Tribunal, where lawyers are not permitted. In Australia, a letter of demand precedes a state tribunal, with security-of-payment legislation often faster for construction work.

The transferable lesson is the Swedish one: a floating statutory rate beats a number typed in your template, fees you never agreed are fees you cannot charge, and undefended debts are cheap while defended ones are decided by paperwork made on site months earlier.

The workflow to adopt this week

• Put the reminder fee and the interest term into your quote template today, worded as referensräntan plus 8 procentenheter, never as a fixed percentage.
• Delete any hardcoded interest rate from your invoice template.
• Reminder day 1. Inkassokrav day 10. Betalningsföreläggande day 25.
• For private customers, remember interest starts 30 days after the invoice was sent, whatever the due date says.
• Check the current referensränta each 1 January and 1 July. It takes a minute and it is the only maintenance this system needs.

Want the terms, the signature and the job evidence to sit on one record instead of three? Start a 14-day free trial of OdinTask and run your next job with the quote, the e-signature and the photos in one place.