Leaving your late paying customers unchecked and without proper handling may make them believe that it is “Okay” to pay their invoices late, or in some cases not pay them at all. In order to keep a positive balance it is essential to use a professional credit control service and get your money on time.
Clearing and avoiding the recurrence of business debtors
This example is with one of our larger clients, an international payment services provider. Following a recommendation our cooperation with them began when they were looking for ways to improve their credit control process as late payment had become a growing problem. From the use of professionally trained and managed proactive credit controllers from Sterling Credit Management working on a daily basis on their sales ledger, immediate results were obtained improving customer relations, response times, query resolution and the Days Sales Outstanding (DSO). Employing Sterling’s services also quickly brought a significant reduction of exposure to future debtors.
Escalating late payers to debt recovery
Sterling Outsourcing has separate specialist teams for credit control, debt collection, and accountancy services. When using our outsourced credit control service, our clients can additionally choose to use our no win no fee debt recovery service. Using our credit management service greatly reduces instances of ageing debts, however existing delinquent debtors sometimes do not respond positively to contact from credit control and so need further attention. These B2B debtors are quickly identified and escalated to Sterling Debt Recovery in accordance with a pre-agreed process with our client. Seeing a clear escalation from client credit control (all contacts made using our client’s brand) to an external debt recovery company (debtors are contacted under the Sterling Debt Recovery brand) brings the debtor back to discussing payment with our business debt recovery specialists.
Many of the pre-existing late paying customers on this client’s ledger had become accustomed to getting away with paying late, mostly due to a lack of consistent credit control effort. When involving our team to clean up the outstanding amounts our client had made us aware that should their debtors pay all of their overdue amounts up to date, that they did not want us to impose the collection of any late payment fees on top of original invoice amounts, which can be done using The Late Payment Act.
Improvements from engaging Sterling’s services
During the first few weeks of service many of our client’s customers noticed a massive improvement in query resolution and response times as well as a more professional experience overall dealing with invoice payment and related matters, between them and our client.
Our client received a cash boost from many of the long overdue payments being collected, due to the immediate escalation of those to our debt recovery team and their professional handling of the matter. Almost all of the accounts with an outstanding balance were brought into line and within acceptable payment terms for the client within the first 2 months of service. Our collection teams professional business approach along with our client’s choice not to impose collection of late payment fees, allowed most of the business relationships to continue unharmed with payments being made on time from that point on.
An easy solution for your business
Maintaining a consistent service is now key to allow our client to remain focused on their core business. They know that should any of their accounts begin to show warning signs of late payment or run overdue, that our team of professionals have the resource and experience to effectively manage collections on their behalf.
If you want to learn more about getting your invoices paid on time let us know!
