Its not a good position to be in, on one hand you're owed money on the other hand a customer that pays up on 30 days now is hard to find. I dont think I have any that dont need a nudge from time to time.

If you come on too strong you run the risk of losing the customer, if you can afford to pick and choose your customers then that isnt really an issue.

Chasing money is a full time hassle job, as in you have to become a pest to get anything sorted. I have never tried to place an interest charge on an overdue invoice as if it takes the customer 120 days to pay the invoice how long will it take for them to sort the additional lot out?

Personally I'd suggest finding out who authorizes payments, get on first name terms with them and phone them up continually until the account is settled.

If this becomes too much of a time constraint then you need to think about putting this customer on pro-forma, but as with the interest charges you're running the risk of them telling you to bugger off.

The other trick is that if you work for someone who has a PA then get loved up to them. This can be gold dust in getting invoices processed.

just been talking to chap who owns company next door. not too small aplace has 3-4m turnover.

As soon as he gets an invoice a cheque is raised within 1-2 days and popped in a filing tray, so that on his ledger the account is up to date.

however, he wont send the cheque untilhe gets chased for it. If you chase in two days it gets sent even if he is on net30. If you dont chase it doesnt get sent. He still has two cheques raised in 2008 when he has never been chased for payment!!

possibly a bit sharp practice but he is finding customers delaying payment to him as well, so seems to be coming the norm these days with cashflows being scrwed up the bankers not lending money.

^^ 666 posts & named scarey :eek:

I also knew a chap who did that albeit stuck them to a pinboard until people chased him. He always paid at the last minute though ie left as late as possible.

TX.

i didn't ave time to read the whole thread so sorry if it's been covered but I think the law allows for you to charge a fixed percentage above B of England base rate. This is on a daily basis and you also need to be careful as if you do decide to employ collection action then you need to have done things by the book :)


If you need some further help then drop me a pm and I'll try and dig out thedetails !

Jai

Just resurrecting this to stress another reason to keep chasing payments.

Last month we had a company go into administration owing us £5,500. Worked for them for 5 years, always been a bit late paying especially at year end.

Keep chasing your debts list ;)

Well to keep this updated. The client did eventually pay the invoice but only because they had another load of 'urgent' work they needed me to do for them. Funnily enough when I'd completed the work and phoned the director up asking about the late invoice and jokingly saying about holding on to these latest drawings until I was paid... the invoice was paid the same day..

Still, I'm back in the same boat now waiting on payment for the urgent work I held ransom......