One of the most important things a business needs to survive and grow is its revenue. That’s the money that actually supports the needs of the business. It isn’t enough to just have enough billable accounts. Instead, the company has to actually receive the money that it’s due. Sometimes, businesses have to apply a little pressure to get clients or customers to pay up.
A primary issue that small business owners face is that the past due accounts can start to take a lot of time away from running the company. Having a plan to handle these unpaid invoices can help to minimize the amount of hands-on time you have to spend on collections.
In many cases, the company you invoiced may have simply forgotten to pay the bill or maybe overlooked the invoice. Because of this, a gentle reminder is usually all that’s needed to get the money to your company.
Of course, there are times when that gentle reminder isn’t going to work. In those cases, you might have to step up the collection efforts. While you can’t spend all your time trying to collect on one account, you should make as much effort as possible before you escalate the collection efforts even more.
When you’re still met with no response or with failed payment promises, you may need to start legal action. This is usually a final resort, but working with an attorney who is prepared to take this step is beneficial. The last thing that you need is to have your business suffer because another company or individual won’t pay their bills.