O Little Town of Debtlehem...

Debt: hardly glad tidings and great joy, but as seasonal as Scrooge. And, with the economy faltering, it’s casting shadows over the coming Yule. As liquidity freezes up in the chill, creditors will weep for the good old easy days of squeezing blood from stones: how do you recover your money?

Simple; you call me, and critically you do so sooner rather than later!

Consider a man chasing debts over a year old, some totalling thousands. Some of his debtors already face bankruptcy while others are regularly repaying small sums but will be bankrupt before they finish. Even without bankruptcy, repayments will continue until as late as 2014. Isn’t it obvious that debts of 30 or 40 days are easier to resolve than aged debts?

However, let’s nuance this example. One of my man’s clients appears to owe £120 representing four 2009 invoices. Before paying, this lady insists on checking her own records. What might she come up with?

In other similar cases I’ve been told

1. apologies, but I had no reminder,
2. no, I paid, so check your own records,
3. no, this debt relates to the previous owner, and
4. no, these are the chef’s debts, and he ran his own business from inside mine.

The chef, of course, is long gone, hard to find, maybe bankrupt and maybe about to return to Australia...

The point to be noted here is that in debt cases it’s often not apparent whose the fault truly is; there’s a definite need to investigate rather than merely point the finger.

Just consider another individual, a highly successful paragon of business virtue in whose office, however, I find three months’ unopened mail. No wonder he’s doing well...he pays no bills! He has parking fines accruing penalties like billy-o (one for £320) while his VAT correspondence (including threats and gross overestimates) names sums that dwarf the national debt!

This complexity is a truth that businesspeople often fail or refuse to grasp. As a creditor, for example, you should remember that government departments and large companies routinely take 90 days to pay you. As a debtor, never assume that government bodies such as HMRC will delay taking action.

Don’t forget, too, that people who owe you are very often owed money themselves; you as creditor may even owe your debtor!

So for a merrier Christmas, contact me, now - and let me make it all better...!

To learn more, contact me, Keely Taylor at keely@ktss.co.uk