Having a debt recovery process in place is integral to the smooth running of any business and key to avoiding a long, drawn-out recovery process – important for your company bank balance but also for the emotional wellbeing of whoever is responsible for chasing that debt within your team.
Here we talk you through 4 simple steps to keep the process as straight-forward as possible…the timescales below can be flexible to suit you, your customers & your industry, but here’s a handy guide for best practice:
- Within 24 hours of a payment being overdue, send a clear, (but polite!) communication to the business that this payment is now late and request it is received the next business day.
- On day 7, if you have still not received payment, and have been emailing a generic email address such as accounts@, then this is the time to call the company and find the name and email address of a direct contact you can send the payment reminder to clearly highlight the amount of interest that will be added the longer payment is overdue.
- On day 14 it is time to get on the phone to the company, asking to talk to whichever individual they were previously advised as the best contact. Here, make it clear this payment is overdue and action will be taken if the payment is not received within 5 days. Follow this up with an email confirming what has been discussed and agreed.
- If no payment is then received in the discussed period, at this point, we would suggest bringing in an external specialist such Axis to handle it for you, here’s why:
- It makes a clear statement to the business that this has been escalated and serious action is being taken, hopefully resulting in swift payment after the first communication.
- It can be as simple as a different voice achieves a different reaction.
- It stops it being a drain on your internal resource. Debt recovery can be a frustrating and tiresome situation if it gets this far down the line – let your team focus on their job and the clients that are paying on time, while we focus on the sole purpose of recovering your debt.
- It is our job to know the legalities around debt recovery and the process for escalation, including taking the company to court if necessary.
Axis can oversee the entire debt recovery process with Axis TradePay, our pre-litigation letter/telephony commercial debt collection service, AccountSure credit management services and Simply Litigation, our debt recovery legal services. A letter before claim from our team can be the quick and cost-effective incentive that’s needed, but if further action is required we operate on a “no collect, no fee” basis and wherever possible we make use of the late payment legislation which can result in our services being cost negative.
