Small Business Information

Debt Collection Techniques


Here are some sound debt collection techniques that can be followed by businesses to mitigate the bad debt crisis:

Sending a pre-collection letter.
Hiring a collection agency.
Doing it yourself.

Sending A Pre-Collection Letter

Most businesses don't want to "play the bad cop" with their clients, so they approach a collection agency, which for a nominal fee sends a notice to the defaulter asking him or her to pay up.

Remember, a notice from a collection agency is much more effective than the notice from your company itself. It tells the defaulting customer that you have now hired a professional help to collect the dues and, thus, it increases chances of customer paying up the debt faster. The 'fear factor' of credit rating damage is associated with collection agencies.

Hiring a Collection Agency

A collection agency under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is one that recovers debt on behalf of others. It employs various methods to recover dues from errant customers:

Collection calls are a necessity in debt recovery. Handling the collection call in a calm and professional manner can make the difference upon which collections are made or lost.

Skip tracing is a detection method adopted to find a debtor who has absconded either intentionally or unintentionally. Forwarding occurs when a collection agency forwards a debtor's account to another collection agency, possibly because it does not have the authority to conduct business where it is currently located.

Flow Forwarding is a novel concept in which a collection agency contracts with a business to purchase all its bad debts on a periodical basis. Doing It Yourself

As mentioned earlier, most businesses suffer from bad debts because of a lack of a clear debt management policy. Most organizations would minimize their debt management if they had clearly defined credit policies. Moreover, a clear understanding of the law needs to be had before a business drags its clients to court. This is the tedious bit and therefore businesses need to be very sure with their preparation.

Collection Agency Services offers you a wealth of information on how to select the best collection agency for your business.


MORE RESOURCES:

UPDATE 1-HBOS to provide small business support package
Reuters - 1 hour ago
HBOS also said it would guarantee pricing on Bank of Scotland small business customer overdrafts for 12 months from the date of arrangement for new loans ...


PR Web (press release)

Intuit Aligns Organization to Strengthen Small Business Ecosystem
MarketWatch - 16 hours ago
today announced it has formalized the structure of its small business ecosystem by aligning three business units under one new division. ...
Special Delivery to bring $5000 to One Lucky December Baby MarketWatch
all 24 news articles


RE2, Inc. Named 2008 Army Small Business Innovation Research ...
MarketWatch - 13 hours ago
RE2 was selected based on the Company's Small Robot Toolkit (SRT) Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and innovation provided to the ...


Small Business Owners Shouldn't Fret Over Stocks
BusinessWeek - 13 hours ago
But for most of us small business owners, this loss doesn't matter as much as people may think. My company sells business software to small and midsize ...


What a Guest Worker Program Means to Your Job or Small Business
Associated Content, CO - 14 hours ago
By Sylvia Cochran, published Dec 02, 2008 The United States Chamber of Commerce gears up to lobby for a guest worker program that affects high tech sector ...


NASA Awards Contracts to 382 Small Business Research and ...
Trading Markets (press release), CA - 2 hours ago
The awards are part of NASA's Small Business Innovation Research Program, known as SBIR, and the Small Business Technology Transfer program, known as STTR, ...


World Trade

Small Business Takes to Export
World Trade - 2 hours ago
And now is the moment for small business—the little guys who have typically shied away from export—to get into the action. Exporting is critical to EJ Ajax ...


Women of color emerge as new face of small business
Diverse, VA - 4 hours ago
Some colleges and universities work in collaboration with small business centers, Blockson says. “But most of these centers provide more general resources ...


New Zealand Herald

Open letter to John Key - from small business
New Zealand Herald, New Zealand - 8 hours ago
John, currently small business is funded without discipline or support. Start-ups get borrowing secured against their property, then have to try and make it ...


Metro reports working with more small, minority businesses
Bizjournals.com, NC - 13 hours ago
Metro’s office of Minority and Small Business Assistance reports the number of approved small businesses registered to compete for city contracts has ...
Small businesses eligible for Metro contracts skyrockets Nashville City Paper
Eleven named to Ritter’s small biz panel Bizjournals.com
all 11 news articles

Small-Business - Google News

home | site map
© 2006