Debt & Credit World

There cannot be much doubt that the economic downturn has either generated a late payment mentality on companies or has provided a simple excuse to withhold payment as long as they feel they can, no matter what their financial situation is. When a small firm realises that a large firm, which it has worked with for many years, doing important jobs or furnishing key items and has always paid on time, is now withholding payment of the latest invoice, they might well be troubled about their future. The first important step might well be to make contact with the large firm and ask why the invoice has gone unpaid beyond the final payment date. The late payment mentality might be exposed here if the large firm uses delaying tactics and this might drive the small firm into thinking about pressing the large firm to pay up by using Debt Collection procedures.

The small firm might well be caught out by the economic downturn and might have other bills out there for payment, so their options for Debt Collection could work out expensive for multiple debts. Usual Debt Collection solutions such as solicitors or Debt Collection businesses make their money on a per debt basis and this fee can be 10% of the invoice value or more and possibly plus expenses, all plus VAT. If they were to consider a different approach to Debt Collection they could save a lot of money, by purchasing a Debt Collection Software package. Of course they will have to use this with their own resources and so they will have to consider the resources they have available to make the Debt Collection Software work for them. The most important resource of course is the personnel who will be given the opportunity to work on the Debt Collection Software and those who will be creating Debt Collection Letters, if they are different. The small firm might not have enough personnel to split these two parts of the Debt Collection Software so they will need to have personnel who are both computer literate and have good English language knowledge.

The Debt Collection Letters are really the heart of the Debt Collection process because these are the contact point between the small firm and the large firm and they will be seen as not just a request for payment, but also as how professional the small firm looks. This means that any spelling or grammatical errors must be discovered before the Debt Collection Letters are sent out, so this means that multiple personnel are best for making the Debt Collection Software work best. Multiple personnel are also very valuable for holiday coverage and also to enable the small firm to have personnel employed part time on the Debt Collection Software and Debt Collection Letters means they don’t have to take on a new worker. If the current Debt Collection project goes all the way to court then the small firm will need to show the court officers that they have made good efforts to get the large firm to pay the invoice and have been unsuccessful to date otherwise they case will not be taken forward. The easiest way to be sure of this is for the Debt Collection Software to have database ability, either internally or by being able to link to an independent database package, such as Access, Oracle or SQL Server as examples.

In this way the small firm should be hopeful in being able to persuade the small firm that they are serious about the late invoice and need to have it paid.