Getting payment out of companies for work done

Diydebs said:

Apologies re late reply. It's all different some a month, some longer. So is a month a reasonable time to wait ?

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TonyMitchell said:

Companies that pay outside terms generally fall into three camps.

Camp #1 - those that you give say 28 or 35 days account facility, but because they do a single month end accounts payable run, some invoices "just miss" last month's run and are therefore are circa three weeks overdue by the time they're paid. Normally best to accept this, if they are a regular customer and their month end run happens automatically like clockwork, they represent a very low risk of bad debt.

Camp #2 - those that want ridiculous terms, eg: 90 or 120 days from month end, or simply have no intention of paying until they've been chased multiple times and threatened with legal action. Ensure your T&Cs are tight, if they are a one-off, charge them any overdue penalty/interest as per your T&Cs, or if they are a regular customer, increase your pricing by 20% and offer them a 5% settlement discount, should they opt to pay within x days. As a last resort, to avoid issuing a court summons, a full email history & copy invoice/T&Cs sent to a few senior people (group finance director, UK managing director, etc) found using Linkedin often yields results.

Camp #3 - generally multi site / larger businesses - where you need a purchase order number to get paid, although the person placing the order omitted to tell you this at the time of ordering and you find out once the invoice is well overdue. However if you're patient, you may be able to turn this situation to your advantage, by filling out the long winded supplier application form and becoming an "approved supplier", subsequently receiving more work from other business units as you're now "on the list". This customer then moves from Camp #3 to Camp #1

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