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There comes a time, when dealing with unpaid accounts from a client, when a business has to consider taking legal action to recover the debt. If you have a longstanding legal relationship with a firm of solicitors, they can probably advise you when that point has been reached. But for most small firms, there is a balancing act to be performed. Luckily, going legal does not necessarily mean launching court action. As

I have, as Baldrick would say, a cunning plan for the next government of whatever political hue they might be. It’s to sort out the continuing scandal of late payment that bedevils small firms in this country. Now, I may be doing myself out of some business here, because when small firms don’t get paid, they can get into debt and even go under. And that’s when SJ Collections are called in by creditors to assist in ge

The politicians seem to have been under starter’s orders for months now, but the general election chase is now under way with living standards being raised by Labour as a key issue against the coalition government. It looks as if earnings are beginning to grow, and household finance may just be improving for many people, though statistics suggest we’re only about back where we were before the financial crash. If ther

Mayor of London Boris Johnson is being urged to use his high public profile to help the half a million Londoners with problem debt obtain the right advice to help them get out of trouble. A report from the London Assembly’s economy committee says his backing for a money advice week could help reduce the stigma of problem debt. The committee’s chair, Jenny Jones, says: ‘We were particularly concerned to hear of the im

I was intrigued to read that a northern council is mulling over the idea of setting up an in-house debt collection agency to chase outstanding council tax. The council involved is Redcar and Cleveland and the plans, while at an early stage, will be discussed by councillors before the financial year ends. The story was broken by the Northern Echo, after the newspaper received a letter from a whistleblower who was conc

If you don’t work in the collections industry, you might be surprised to find out that you could be forced into bankruptcy for owing as little as £750. To be frank, forcing someone into formal bankruptcy, with all the legal red tape and consequences involved, is a path that fewer and fewer creditors have been taking since 2010. Much better to make an arrangement for payment by a debtor with a realistic plan that sati

  Cash flow is the lifeblood of business. Without money coming in, there’s no money to pay the bills you are running up for marketing, any staff or premises you’ve hired, keeping the lights on and the water running. It’s that basic, and that vital. But when you provide a service or goods without being paid up front, you’re extending credit to your customers. Then, if you have to buy in raw materials, credit may

If I told you that small and medium-sized companies were owed nearly £40 billion as a result of late payments, I think you’d be rightly shocked. But the figure of £39.4 billion comes from the latest research by BACS Payment Schemes, the direct debit company. Such is the scale of the debt burden on SMEs, up from £30bn last year, 60% told BACS they were experiencing late payments with the average company waiting for £3

  Business minister Jenny Willott held the threat of legislation in reserve this week when she announced plans to clean up pre-pack insolvency deals intended to ‘make sure that businesses and customers get a better deal from failing companies’. She said the government would implement in full the recommendations of regulation expert Teresa Graham’s review of such deals. This was ordered by her boss, business secr

In the collections industry, there’s always a balance to be struck between enabling creditors to receive the money due to them and helping debtors to get back on their own two feet. That’s a point made in an editor’s letter in CCR Magazine that suggests one obstacle to this is the cost to individuals of entering bankruptcy (remembering that companies in trouble go into liquidation, a different process). It followed n