I've talked to dozens of freelancers and small business owners in Nairobi over the past few months, and the same problem keeps coming up: nobody has a system for tracking who actually paid.

Most people are still sending invoices via WhatsApp screenshots or Word docs, with M-Pesa till numbers typed into the message. It looks unprofessional, and worse — there's no way to know which clients still owe you money until you manually scroll back through chats.

A few things that fixed this for the businesses I work with:

1. Put your M-Pesa paybill/till number directly on the invoice, not in a separate message. Clients pay faster when there's zero friction.

2. Track paid/unpaid status somewhere other than your memory. Even a simple spreadsheet beats nothing.

3. Follow up on unpaid invoices after 3-5 days, not 3-5 weeks. The longer you wait, the more awkward — and less likely — it is you get paid.

This is exactly why I built Haraka Invoice — professional invoices with M-Pesa details built in, and automatic paid/unpaid tracking, so you're not chasing money in your head. Free tier is live if you want to try it.