A delay email works when the client can rebuild their week from it. That takes a new date they can rely on, one plain sentence about what changes for them, and as much of the reason as makes it credible. Send it the day you know the date has gone.
- The message is worth most before the original date. Sent early, it’s an input to somebody’s plan. Sent late, it’s news about a failure they spotted already.
- You’re handing a client a fact they have to plan around. So the new date goes in the first two sentences, and the explanation goes after it.
- The reason is there for credibility. One sentence buys you the benefit of the doubt. Four paragraphs spend it.
- Moving a date twice costs far more than moving it once. Pick a second date you’d bet the engagement on.
This is the message for when the clock is running on your side. When you’re the one waiting, that’s a different message, and it’s written differently in following up on a missing document. What you promised about ordinary turnaround in the first place belongs to your response time policy, along with how to publish a number you can hold in March. Everything below assumes the work is late and somebody has to say so.
The day you know, not the day it shows
One decision here does more than every wording choice put together. It’s when you press send.
Picture the same delay written twice. On the 3rd you tell a client that the statements promised for the 15th will now be ready on the 24th. They have nine days to move a bank meeting, warn a partner, or push a decision. They can also tell you the 24th is a problem and something has to give. Your message is useful to them. It’s information, and they can spend it.
On the 16th you tell the same client the same thing. The facts are identical and the message is a different object. They spent the 15th waiting, wondering whether to write, deciding to hold off rather than chase you. Whatever plan they built on your date has already failed quietly at their end. The news arrives too late to act on and just in time to resent. You’ve turned a scheduling problem into a character question.
So the rule is sharper than “tell them promptly”. Send the message at the moment your confidence in the date drops, not at the moment the date arrives. Ask yourself today whether you’d stake the client’s own plans on that date. If the honest answer is no, the date has already moved. What’s still open is whether the client hears it from you or from the calendar.
Two habits get in the way, and both feel responsible from the inside.
The first is waiting until you have a fix. The instinct says bring a client a problem and a solution together, so you hold the message while you look for a week, chase the third party, or see whether Saturday can be made to work. Meanwhile the client is planning on a date you privately gave up on. A delay message needs a date, and that’s all it needs. Where you genuinely have one still to find, it needs a date for the date, which is covered further down.
The second is waiting until you have certainty. A firm holds the message on Tuesday because the date might still hold, then writes on Friday when the date is clearly gone. The risk sat with the client for three days, out of their sight. A message sent on the wobble is easy: “your file is at risk of slipping past the 15th, I’ll know by Thursday, and I wanted you to have that now rather than later.” Almost every client takes that message well. Many of them tell you something useful in reply.
One narrow exception. A slip you can absorb inside a day, on work that stays inside the office, can go unsent. Telling a client that a draft will reach them at four rather than at eleven manufactures a problem out of a Tuesday. The test is whether anybody outside your office would have to change something, including their own state of mind.
The client should hear it from you. The worst version of this message is the one that stays unwritten. The second worst is an invoice, a portal status, an out of office reply, or a receptionist saying Nadia is very busy this month. Every one of those tells the client the firm knew and stayed quiet.
What the client is actually rebuilding
Most delay emails are written from the sender’s week. The good ones are written from the recipient’s calendar.
Your client is holding three questions, in this order. Most delay emails answer a different set.
Is it still happening? More clients than you’d expect carry a low-grade worry that the work has stalled, been forgotten, or been pushed behind a bigger client. Your first sentence answers that one either way.
When? A date. A day on the calendar, rather than a duration, “shortly”, or “early next month”. Duration language makes the client do arithmetic against a start point they can only guess at.
What do I have to change? This is the one firms leave out, and it’s the only part of the message the client acts on today. Sometimes the answer is nothing, and saying so out loud is worth a sentence of its own. “There’s nothing you need to do differently” earns its place. It closes an open loop the client would otherwise carry for a week.
Where there is something, it’s usually one of three things. They have to move something on their own calendar, make a decision they were planning to defer, or tell somebody else. That third one deserves attention, because clients resent it most. A person who has to call their lender, their board, their buyer or their spouse to relay your delay is doing your work in a conversation you’re absent from. Give them the words. A sentence they can forward, or a line saying you’ll speak to the lender directly, changes the whole shape of the message.
Which leads to the sentence most delay emails are missing, and it costs seven words. Ask what the new date breaks. “Tell me if the 24th causes a problem at your end.” Your date was holding something up, and the client is the one who knows what. Asking turns a broadcast into a conversation, and the worst news arrives while there’s still room to act on it. If they answer that yes, the 24th is a problem, you’re hearing something that was already true whether or not you asked.
The four parts, in order
Strip a working delay email down and it’s four things, in this sequence.
The new date. In the subject line and again in the first two sentences. Give it once, in one form, and leave it alone after that.
What it changes for the client. One or two sentences, including the case where the answer is nothing.
Why, in a sentence. Enough to make the date credible. Stop there.
What happens next, and who moves first. The next action, whose it is, and when they’ll hear from you again. A message that ends with the client wondering whether to reply has ended too early.
The apology sits inside the first of those or immediately before it. It has its own section below.
That order earns its place. It’s what survives being read as a preview on a phone, while somebody walks to a car, which is where a good share of your client mail lands. A message that opens with two paragraphs of context and reveals the date in the sixth line has buried the part that matters.
Here’s the shape at its plainest, on an ordinary slip where the waiting is the only cost:
Subject: Your return: drafted the week of the 22nd, not this week
Hi Ellen,
I told you your return would be drafted this week and it won’t be. It’ll be with you for review the week of the 22nd. I’m sorry the date has moved.
Nothing about the filing changes, and there’s nothing you need to do differently in the meantime. If the 22nd is a problem for any reason at your end, tell me and I’ll see what can be moved.
Claire
Four lines, and no explanation, because nothing turns on it. Inviting scrutiny of a non-event is how a two-day slip becomes a conversation about capacity. A client reading that has everything they need. The last sentence is what makes it a message rather than an announcement.
How much of the reason to give
The reason exists to make the new date believable. That’s its entire job. Once a client believes the date, more explanation makes things worse, because readers take the length of an explanation as a measure of how bad the thing being explained is.
One sentence is the working default. Two if the cause is genuinely unusual. Stop well short of a paragraph, and well short of a chronology of your month.
Five kinds of cause turn up, and they cost different amounts to say.
Capacity. The most common by far and the hardest to say. “We have been slammed” is true and it lands badly. The client hears two things you meant to keep out of it: that other clients came ahead of them, and that the same thing happens again next March. If capacity is the honest reason, name it as a specific failure rather than as a condition. “The week we had held for your file went to a filing emergency, and I should have told you at the time.” A firm that had one bad week is credible. A firm that has apparently rediscovered that spring is busy is something else. Where this runs across the client list rather than on one file, the repair lives in the operations rather than the writing, and inbox zero during busy season is where the underlying arithmetic gets worked out.
A person. Somebody left, somebody is out, somebody is covering two desks. Safe to say once, with the name and the story left out. Keep a named junior out of it entirely: the client engaged the firm, and a partner who points at a staff member has told the client that the firm’s work is only as good as whoever happened to pick it up. Say it in a way that closes the question of whether the same gap is still open. Where the person has gone for good, say what you’ve done about the file rather than about the vacancy.
A third party. A partnership still holding a K-1, a brokerage reissuing a corrected statement, a payroll provider, an agency. This is the one cause that genuinely belongs to somebody else, which is exactly why it needs discipline. A firm whose delays are always somebody else’s doing reads, over a couple of years, as a firm with a loose grip. Say who you’re waiting on, say what you did about it, and say when you’ll push again. That last part makes it a message about your management of the problem rather than a shrug.
The client. The hardest one, and it has its own section below.
An error at your end. You found something in review and the work has to be redone. This is the one case where the reason matters more than the date, and where saying less does damage. A client told plainly that a check caught something before it went out has been shown a working control, and that reassures more than the delay unsettles. Say what the error was in one line, say it was caught internally, say what it changes for them. Where the error already reached them, or already reached a filing, you’re past a delay email and into a phone call.
One more decision belongs here. Sometimes the right amount of reason is none. The four-line example above gives no cause and is better for it. Ask whether the client needs the reason to believe the date. On a routine two-week slip on a file that stays inside the engagement, they believe it already.
When the delay is partly theirs
Firms either avoid this message or write it badly, and both failures are expensive.
Avoiding it produces a delay email that reads as entirely your fault when the fault was shared. That’s generous once and corrosive over a few years. The client builds a picture of a firm that is slow, and keeps the picture of a client who is late out of it. Writing it badly produces a message the client reads as a counterattack, and then the argument becomes the subject instead of the delay.
Four rules make it possible.
State it as a fact with a date on it, once, in the past tense, with no adjective. “The bookkeeping file reached us on the 12th.” Leave out “we finally received”, “as I mentioned three times”, and “unfortunately we were still waiting on”. Each of those carries the same fact plus a grievance, and the grievance is the part the client answers.
Give it the share of the reason it actually holds. The client’s file arrived three weeks late, and by then your capacity had gone elsewhere. Both are true, and one of them is theirs. Saying both is more credible than either half on its own.
Pair it with what you should have done. Almost always, that’s telling them sooner. “I should have written to you when it arrived and told you the date was at risk” is accurate, it’s a real failure, and it takes the temperature out of the paragraph while staying true.
End on what’s outstanding now. Where nothing is, say so clearly. A client who reads a delay message and is left unsure whether they’re still holding something up will sit on it, and will feel accused anyway.
Subject: Rockridge statements: new date is the 30th
Hi Ray,
Your statements will be ready on the 30th rather than the 18th, and I’m sorry the date has moved.
The bookkeeping file came through on the 12th, three weeks after the date we had planned around. By then the week we had held for your file had gone to other work. I should have written to you when it arrived and told you the date was at risk, rather than leaving it until now.
Nothing is outstanding at your end. If the 30th causes a problem with the bank, tell me today and I’ll look at what can move.
Marisol
The client’s contribution is in there, dated and plain. The sentence after it is the firm taking the failure that’s its own. That combination is what keeps the paragraph from reading as a defense.
Where the pattern repeats with the same client every year, the fix lives in a scoping and onboarding conversation rather than in the delay email. The mechanics of getting documents in on time live in managing client document requests.
Sizing the apology
An apology in a delay email is earned, and that sets this message apart from most client mail. In a chase for a document, “sorry to keep bothering you” is a mistake, because asking for the papers you need is the work rather than an imposition. Here it’s the other way round. You said a thing would happen and the date passed, and the sentence that acknowledges it is load bearing.
It has four properties.
One sentence. “I’m sorry the date has moved.” “This is late and that’s on us.” Whichever fits your voice.
Early. In the first paragraph, next to the date, well before the sign-off.
Unconditional. “Sorry if this causes any inconvenience” is a hypothesis rather than an apology, and the “if” tells the client you left the question alone. Where you’re unsure whether it causes a problem, ask it as a question.
Once. An apology in the opening and another before the signature reads as anxiety, and quietly asks the client to reassure you. They’re there for their own file, and the week is yours to carry.
Leave out every version of how busy things are, how hard the season has been, and how much everyone is carrying. It turns operational news into a request for sympathy, and the person reading it has a return sitting inside the pile you’re describing. Their next thought goes to the quality of the work rather than the timing of it. Writing any of this warmly while you’re the one under water is a separate skill, and it has a guide to itself.
One situation asks for more than sorry, because an apology arriving on its own reads as an attempt to settle the thing cheaply. That’s the delay with a price attached, below.
Choosing a date you will actually hit
The new date is the only promise in the message, and you’re making it to somebody whose last promise from you broke. Build it rather than estimate it.
Three things go into it, and firms routinely count the first one alone.
The work left. Hours, honestly counted, with the review and the sign-off in the total alongside the preparation.
The queue it sits in. Those hours sit behind whatever you’ve already committed. Most second dates fail because the first one was calculated as though the file were the only thing on the desk.
What somebody else controls. A signature, a corrected statement, an answer from an agency, a client’s own confirmation. Where the date depends on any of these, the date belongs to them, and the message should say so.
Then add the buffer while you’re writing the message, before the date goes out. If your honest best case is the 20th, name the 24th. Delivering on the 21st against a promised 24th is a firm recovering. Delivering on the 21st against a promised 20th is a firm missing twice. The client lives those two identical days completely differently.
Two details make the date mean something.
Say what the date is a date for. Drafted, reviewed, in your hands to sign, filed, and confirmed by the agency are five different days, and they can be weeks apart. “Your return will be done on the 24th” leaves the client to guess which one you mean, and they’ll guess the last one. Naming the state costs one extra word. It saves the second delay conversation that follows when the 24th produces a draft rather than a filing. Writing dates in a form somebody can act on straight from the screen is covered alongside asking for a document by a date, and it applies here unchanged.
Where the date is still coming, give a date for the date. “I’ll know by Thursday and I’ll write to you on Thursday either way” is a real commitment, it’s keepable, and it beats a soft estimate you’ll have to move. The phrase that ruins it is “as soon as I know more”, because it commits you to nothing and leaves the client with no point at which silence becomes a signal. Write to them on Thursday even when Thursday brings nothing. A message saying there is no news yet is what makes the next promised date believable.
And then the rule the whole section exists for. Move the date once. The first slip costs a little credibility and a paragraph repairs it. The second one changes what the client thinks your dates are, permanently, and the third message repairs nothing. That’s the reason for the buffer, and the reason to build the date rather than reach for the one that sounds easiest to write.
When the delay costs them money
Delays fall into three classes, and the third one changes the shape of the message.
It costs them nothing but the waiting. Most of them. Short message, plain date, no ceremony. Adding weight to one of these teaches the client to brace every time your name appears.
It costs them convenience or a decision. They reschedule something, reopen something, or make a call earlier than they wanted to. Name the specific thing rather than leaving them to find it: “this means the payroll decision we were going to take in June has to be taken in May.”
It costs them money or a position. Interest, a penalty, a covenant test, a closing that moves, a window that closes, an offer that expires. This is a different message, and it gets written differently from the first two.
For the third class, four things.
Say the number, or say when you’ll have it. A client told there “may be some interest” imagines a figure, and the imagined one is nearly always worse than the real one. Where you can compute it, compute it. Where the figure is still coming, say when you’ll have it.
Say who is paying it. Put it in this message, ahead of the invoice and ahead of the client asking. A firm that names the cost and then names who carries it has had a difficult conversation once. A firm that waits has it twice, the second time in worse conditions.
Name exactly what the delay costs. Where a filing date is genuinely at risk, an extension moves the filing and never the payment, and the arithmetic behind that decision is set out in tax extensions. One figure is worth knowing before you write. For a return filed late with tax owing, the late filing penalty runs at roughly ten times the monthly rate of the late payment penalty, which is why filing on time without full payment is usually the cheaper side of that fork. Give the client the recommendation and the number, and keep the mechanics.
Put it near the top. A cost mentioned in the fifth paragraph of a message that opened warmly is the fastest way to lose a client’s trust in your other messages. They reread the opening and decide it was managing them.
Subject: Your statements will miss the 14th. Can I call you this morning?
Hi Tom,
The year end statements won’t be finished by the 14th, which is the date you gave Meridian. They’ll be done on the 21st. I’m sorry, and I know the 14th wasn’t a soft date.
Two options, and I’d rather talk them through than write them. I can send the drafts, clearly marked as drafts, on the 12th, which lenders often accept as an interim while they wait for the final set. Or I can call Meridian with you today and give them the 21st directly, which is usually better received coming from us than from you.
The cause is at our end. The reviewer on your file left in April and the work went back into a queue it shouldn’t have gone into. I’m not billing the review time.
I’m free between 9 and 11. Tell me a time and I’ll call.
Marisol
Notice what it leaves out. No account of the firm’s spring, no request for understanding, no reflex discount on the whole engagement. The one concession is specific, and it’s connected to the thing that went wrong.
On the fee generally, reduce the bill in two cases. The delay cost the client something measurable, or it cost your own firm work you would not have billed anyway. Leave the bill alone on a delay that cost nothing, because an unrequested discount tells a client the work was worth less than the number on the invoice, and that idea is hard to take back next year.
The ones that need a call first
Four situations ask for a phone call, with the email following it the same hour.
- The delay costs the client money.
- It misses a date somebody outside gave them.
- It’s the second date you’ve moved on the same file.
- The relationship is strained enough that tone will struggle to survive being read cold.
The call is the opening, and the email is the record. Send the email with the date in it, because a conversation leaves two memories, and because the client usually has to forward something to somebody else. Everything the delay means for them has to exist in writing, in a form they can send on as it stands.
The reverse mistake is worth naming too. Some firms call so that the date stays unwritten. A client can only plan against a date they can read, and they notice the pattern long before they mention it.
Two smaller decisions. Who sends it is the person whose name the client knows, rather than the preparer who is behind, because a delay delivered by somebody the client has never dealt with reads as the firm distancing itself. And give it its own thread. A delay announced in the fourth paragraph of a message about next quarter’s estimates has been hidden, and the client reads it that way when they find it. Where the two things are genuinely related, the delay still gets its own message and its own subject line. The scheduling of the call itself deserves to stay one short exchange on top of a delay, rather than three days of one.
Two harder ones, written out
Still waiting on a date, because the delay belongs to somebody else.
Subject: Your return is waiting on the Harborline K-1. Update on the 19th either way.
Hi Ellen,
Everything on your return is done except the Harborline K-1, which hasn’t been issued yet. I don’t have a date for it, and I’d rather tell you that than give you a guess.
I asked Harborline directly on Monday and they said the second half of September. I’ll push them again on the 19th and write to you that afternoon whether or not I have news.
What this means for you today: nothing. The October 15 date is safe so far, and the payment you made in April covered what we estimated you owed, so as long as that estimate holds nothing is accruing while we wait. If Harborline goes past the end of September I’ll tell you the day I know, because that’s the point where we would need to talk about filing on the figures we have.
Claire
The message carries no delivery date and it still works, because it carries three other dates. When you last pushed, when you’ll push again, and when you’ll write regardless. That’s what a date for the date looks like in practice. It also answers the thing the client most wants to know and would have left unasked, which is whether the clock is costing them anything while it runs.
The second slip, which is the hardest message in this set.
Subject: I have to move your date again. The 6th, and here is the arithmetic.
Hi Ray,
I moved your date once already, from the 18th to the 30th, and I’m going to miss the 30th as well. The work will be finished on the 6th.
You shouldn’t have to take a third date on trust, so here’s what’s left. The reconciliations are done. The depreciation schedule needs a day, which Jonah has blocked for the 2nd. My review needs half a day, and I’ve blocked the afternoon of the 3rd for it. That leaves two business days of margin before the 6th.
The 30th was a date I wanted to be true rather than one I had checked against the calendar, and that’s on me.
If the 6th doesn’t work, tell me today and I’ll tell you plainly what’s possible instead of what’s comfortable.
Marisol
What makes it work is that it stops asserting and starts showing. The client’s trust in your dates is the thing you spent. So the second message replaces it with something they can inspect: the remaining tasks, who is doing them, which days are held, and where the margin is. It also concedes the real failure, which was the estimate rather than the work.
Two things that message deliberately leaves out. A second apology, and a promise to make it up to them in some unspecified way. A third date, kept, is the only apology available at this point.
After the date moves
Sending the message is the easy half. The date you named is now the one thing the client remembers about the engagement this month.
Put the new date somewhere that comes back to you a few days ahead. A date you rediscover on the morning it’s due has already failed, because the room to act on it has gone. The general form of this covers everything you’re owed and everything you owe, and it’s set out in what to do with the emails nobody answered.
Write two days before the date. One line confirming you’re on track is worth more than the delivery itself, and it costs you a minute. It also gives you somewhere to put a second delay if there has to be one, while there’s still room for the client to react.
Deliver, and let the apology stand. The repair happens in the delivery. Reopening it in the covering note asks the client to relive something they’d already closed. Send the work, say what it is and what happens next, and stop. What that message should contain when the work is a filing is its own subject.
Let it go afterwards. A delay referred back to in November, even lightly, even as a joke, restores it to the client’s memory of the year. Leave it where it ended.
Then the pattern question, which is the one that sits outside the writing. Two delay emails to the same client in a season, or three across the client list in a week, point somewhere else. They point at a capacity problem, a scoping problem, or a promise made in January that March was always going to break. Whose morning it is, and who is watching the dates that have been promised, is the operational half of it, in running a firm inbox. The number you should have published in the first place is in setting client expectations with a response time policy. Where the delay is really about a figure the client will dislike, the timing is different again, and that message is explaining a tax outcome.
What Point does when a date slips
The judgment here is yours, and it stays yours. Firms wrote good delay letters by hand for a century. What a tool changes is when you notice a date is going, how much of the message you build from a blank page, and whether the new date survives being made.
The specific problem with delay mail is where you find out. You discover you’re late at the moment you sit down to do the work, which is the moment with the least room in it. So the message gets written last, or on the day, or after. Moving the noticing earlier is worth more here than any improvement to the wording.
Point reads the mailbox ahead of you and orders it by what needs you today rather than by what arrived last. So the reply to your delay message sits at the top at 8:30 in the morning, above the software renewal. That’s the reply that might say the 24th is a problem because the closing is the 18th. How that weighing works has a guide of its own, and important versus urgent is the distinction that matters most on a week where several dates are moving.
The part that touches this page most directly is what happens to the date once you’ve named it. A commitment made in an email becomes a dated item on its own, without anyone retyping it, and it comes back to you before the date arrives. That’s the entire difference between one delay message and two. Where the delay depends on somebody outside, you describe the trigger and the next step in one sentence, and a watch covers the arrival you’re waiting for. It’s quick, visible, stoppable. So the corrected statement that lands in July reaches you against the promise you made in May.
Before you write this particular message you want one fact. What date you last gave this client, and where you gave it. A one-line summary sits on every thread, so finding it is reading rather than excavating. Contradicting your own previous date is a small error that costs more than the delay itself. Replies come back already written in your own hand, so the message you’ve been putting off is something to correct rather than something to start. You stay the sender. Where the delay wants a call first, Point runs the back and forth to find the slot, and writes the event into the calendar you already keep.
Every type of action has its own setting, from suggest-only through to fully handled. They all start at review, so the work gets prepared and then waits for you. The setting worth moving on this subject is the noticing. The watch, and the reminder that arrives while there’s still room to write something. Leave the delay message itself where it sits. It carries a new commitment and an apology, and both belong to whoever’s name is at the bottom of it, at any setting. Work done for you is logged as it happens, timed and in order, and that log is where you approve it, refuse it or reverse it. One limit holds across every mail product ever built: a message already on somebody else’s server is past pulling back. That’s an argument on its own for reading a delay email twice before it goes.
Starting is one sign in against whichever mailbox the firm already runs, Google or Microsoft. Everything stays where it is and your address stays yours, so the client who wrote to you last week writes to the same place next week.
The part this page is mostly about stays with you. Whether the 24th is honest or hopeful. Whether this particular client should hear it on the phone first. Whether the reason is one worth giving, and what the delay should do to the bill. Those four are yours to judge. Everything Point does do is listed on the benefits page, and AI email for accountants works the buying decision through a small practice. If the doubt underneath all of it is whether client mail should be going near an AI product at all, start there instead, with is it safe, which takes that question apart properly.
Common questions
What should I say when a client’s work is going to be late?
Four things, in this order: the new date, what it changes for the client, one sentence of reason, and what happens next. Put the date in the subject line and again in the first two sentences, and give it once rather than three times in three forms. Where the delay changes nothing for them, say so plainly, because “there’s nothing you need to do differently” closes a loop the client would otherwise carry. Then ask whether the new date causes a problem at their end. Those are the seven words most delay emails are missing, and they’re how you find out what your date was holding up.
Should I tell a client about a delay before I have a new date?
Yes, and this is where most of the damage gets done. Firms hold the message while they look for a fix, and the client spends that time planning against a date the firm has privately given up on. Send it when your confidence in the date drops rather than when the date arrives. Where the new date is still coming, give a date for the date: “I will know by Thursday and I will write to you on Thursday either way.” Then write on Thursday even when there is no news, because a message saying there is nothing yet is what makes your next date believable.
How much should I explain?
One sentence, two if the cause is genuinely unusual. The reason is there to make the new date credible, and readers take the length of an explanation as a measure of how bad the thing being explained is. Leave out the account of how busy the firm has been. It turns operational news into a request for sympathy, and the client’s next thought goes to the quality of the work rather than the timing of it. On a routine slip that stays inside the engagement, the right amount of explanation is none at all.
What do I say when the delay is partly the client’s fault?
State it as a fact with a date on it, once, in the past tense, with no adjective attached: “the bookkeeping file reached us on the 12th.” Give it the share of the reason it actually holds, where your own capacity was the other half. Then pair it with what you should have done, which is nearly always telling them sooner that the date was at risk. Finish by saying clearly whether anything is outstanding now. That combination reads as an accurate account rather than a defense, and it’s what keeps the delay conversation from turning into an argument about the delay.
Do I have to reduce the bill because we were late?
Only when the delay cost the client something measurable, or when it cost your firm work you would not have billed anyway. An unrequested discount on a delay that cost nothing tells the client the work was worth less than the invoice said, and that’s a hard idea to take back next year. Where there is a real cost, whether that’s interest, a penalty or a rushed closing, name the number or say when you’ll have it, and say who is carrying it in the same message. Raise it yourself, in this message, ahead of the invoice and ahead of the client.
How do I write the second one, when the date has to move again?
Stop asserting and start showing. The client’s trust in your dates is what the first slip spent. So the second message gives them something they can inspect: what work is left, who is doing it, which days are held for it, and how much margin sits before the date. Concede the real failure, which is usually that the second date was one you wanted to be true rather than one you had checked. Apologize once, leave out any promise to make it up in some unspecified way, and pick a date you’d bet the engagement on. A third date kept is the only apology still available.
The short version
A delay email is a planning document addressed to somebody else’s calendar. Send it the day your confidence in the date drops, because the same facts are useful before the date and merely embarrassing after it. Lead with the new date, in the subject line and the opening sentence. Then say what it changes for the client, including when the honest answer is nothing. Give one sentence of reason and stop, since explanation length reads as severity. Apologize once, early, and unconditionally, whatever the inconvenience turns out to be. Build the new date from the work left, the queue it sits in, and the parts somebody else controls. Add the buffer while you’re writing rather than after you miss, and say what the date is a date for. Where the date is still coming, name a date for the date and write on it either way. When the delay is partly the client’s, state it once with a date on it, and pair it with the thing you should have done. When it costs them money, call first, say the number, and say who is paying. Afterwards, put the date where it reaches you two days early, deliver, and leave it there.