Credit Control

Almost every business will have, at one time or another, been on the receiving end of a late payment. These business are at times being pushed to the brink of insolvency by customers who delay making payments.

A new approach to debt recovery

There are many organisations out there whose idea of ‘assistance’ in this area is to offer you advice on how best to chase late payments and ‘templates’ to help you. However, this still requires you to do the work and we know how time consuming this can be.

Credit Control

Our research indicated that overdue invoices was the primary concern for most small businesses yet many are not quite ready to appoint a ‘debt collector’ for fear of potentially jeopardising future business.

Our service has been specifically developed with this in mind and so we give you access to our experienced Credit Control team who will recover the payments for you, FREE OF CHARGE, in a professional yet courteous manner so as not to alienate your customer base which our members feel is an excellent alternative to a traditional debt recovery company.

Cost Effective

Not only do we offer a less ‘aggressive’ solution, the cost savings are also significant as typically these companies charge a fee of around 15% to recover your money. Recent research (see our news story) suggests that the average amount overdue to small businesses in the UK is £22,700 which would cost you in the region of £3,400 to recover.

Our unique service is all included in your monthly subscription. Simply forward us the invoices that need chasing, and the customers’ contact details, and we will take care of everything for you leaving you free to run your business.

Late Payment Fee Case Management

You may not be aware that a law was passed in 1998 that allowed businesses to apply late payment fees to any invoice that was paid late from another business, in order to deter companies from continually making late payments. The fees are preset by this law, as per the table below:

Invoice Value Late Payment Fee
up to £999.99
£40 per invoice
£1,000 – £9,999.99
£70 per invoice
£10,000 and over
£100 per invoice

You can even charge interest at up to 8% above base rate. Not only can this be applied to unpaid invoices prior to payment but also to any invoice that was paid late in the last 6 years.

Our experienced team will manage the whole process for you, from start to finish, by identifying any invoices which qualify, calculating the amount due and finally by collecting the fees for you.

This can generate a significant cash injection as the recent ‘real life’ case study below shows:

Company A, a small family run supplier had been dealing with Company X, a large corporation, for around 3 and a half years. Company A issued, on average, 2 invoices each week which, whilst all are now paid, most were paid late throughout the duration of their business relationship which had then come to an end.

Our specialist team investigated the 344 invoices that had been issued and paid, and identified that 327 of them qualified as ‘late’. We calculated the interest due on each invoice and applied statutory late payment fees (LPFs) to them.

We successfully recovered £22,117 in interest and LPFs from Company X and our member, Company A, received 100% of this amount.