FREE Commercial Debt Recovery Agency
Your business receives 100% of the money it’s owed! Your debtor pays the debt collection agency fee in accordance with Late Payment Legislation!
FREE
- Advocate’s commercial debt recovery and debt collection agency service is supplied completely free of charge to the creditor.
- You will not be asked to pay any charges, commission or fees, and the debtor pays our costs in accordance with late payment legislation.
FAST
- Many of the invoices we are instructed to recover payment of are paid immediately, over 50% are paid within 7 days and over 80% are paid within 14 days.
- You will receive 100% of the invoice sums you are owed whether it takes us 1 day or 14 days to recover payment.
SIMPLE
- All we need to get started on recovering payment of your commercial debt is a completed instruction form and a copy of the unpaid invoices.
- You can instruct us in just a few minutes by completing our online debt recovery instruction form.
EFFECTIVE
- Advocate’s expert application of late payment legislation combined with our experience, persistence and professionalism produces an industry-leading debt recovery success rate of 84%.
How does free debt recovery work?
At Advocate Commercial Debt Recovery, we believe that you should not have to pay a single penny to recover payment of invoices that have not been paid for on time, and the Government agrees with us! Creditors are provided with a statutory entitlement to claim debt recovery costs under The Late Payment of Commercial Debts Regulations 2013. When you instruct our debt collection agency, we claim the debt recovery costs from the debtor on your behalf in addition to the principal invoice sums you are owed.
We claim Debt Recovery costs from the Debtor
The costs we claim from debtors are legally enforceable under current commercial late payment legislation. This enables us to offer a completely free of charge to the creditor service. Creditors are not required to pay any costs or charges to instruct us, and there is no fee or commission to be paid once we recover payment. Creditors receive 100% of the money they are owed and a free commercial debt recovery service, and debtors pay 100% of the costs and charges.
If your invoices have not been paid and the debtor is ignoring your attempts to recover payment or is making up excuses to delay payment, there will no doubt be other creditors who are chasing the debtor for payment and who are receiving the same treatment. In most cases, the reason for this behaviour is simply that the debtor does not at present have enough money to pay all of its creditors. The debtor will be prioritising which creditors get paid first and usually. They will be the creditors that are the first to take debt recovery action.
Your invoices will be first in the queue for payment
Advocate’s debt collection agency process is all about getting your invoices to the front of the queue for payment as quickly as possible. As soon as we contact the debtor, they will be in no doubt that you are serious and that you are no longer prepared to be ignored or listen to their excuses.
In the vast majority of cases, being put on Notice of intended legal proceedings by Advocate Commercial Debt Recovery will be enough to elicit a response from even the most unresponsive debtor. Experience has equipped us to deal with even the most sophisticated or fervent of excuses for non-payment, and our determination and persistence in educating the debtor on the serious consequences of legal proceedings results in payment in over 80% of the instructions we undertake.
Don’t just take our word for it. Read our independently submitted reviews and hear what our clients say about our free commercial debt recovery agency and the results we achieve.
What are the benefits of using Advocate Debt Recovery?
If you have supplied services on time or delivered goods on time, you should be paid on time. When you’re not, chasing for payment costs your business money in wasted time and effort, which ultimately impacts your business’s profitability. You have a legal right under late payment legislation to be paid within the agreed payment terms for the work you do. In accordance with the legislation, if invoices are not paid on time, the debtor is liable to pay the debt recovery costs.
We enforce Late Payment Legislation and get your invoices paid
Advocate enforces your legal rights, gets your invoices paid, and provides your business with a completely free-of-cost debt collection agency service.
The clients Advocate work on behalf of and represent benefit from:
- No more stressful chasing of unpaid invoices
- No more frustrating excuses from debtors
- Educating late payers that their invoices must be paid on time
- Receiving 100% of the invoice sums owed
- More positive cash flow and increased profitability
- A completely free-of-cost debt recovery solution
Chasing for payment of invoices that have not been paid on time can be stressful and frustrating. It also takes up time that would be better spent on growing your business. Sometimes, late payment can become a serious issue if a business cannot pay its suppliers on time. The excellent working relationships you have built with your suppliers could become strained simply because you have not been paid on time. Every week, businesses in the UK that cannot pay their overheads and suppliers are forced to close while being owed money by debtors who would have cleared their debts.
Advocate’s debt recovery process
Instructing us takes just a few minutes using our online account referral form. Enter your details and the debtor’s details along with a brief description on the nature of the debt and how it occurred. We will commence action as soon as we receive your completed instruction form and copy invoices. Initially, we will analyse the debtor’s credit profile and credit rating to determine the most appropriate course of action.
- Have any other creditors taken debt collection action against the debtor?
- Are there any County Court Judgments registered against the debtor?
- If so, have they been satisfied?
- Does the debtor have any mortgages or loans?
- If so, are they in Default?
- Are there any Debentures registered against the debtor?
- Do the debtor’s latest accounts indicate that they have the financial ability to settle your debt?
Don’t worry. We have access to the latest commercial debt recovery software and real-time information that will answer all of the above questions and more in just a few minutes, providing us with a detailed debtor profile and course of action to follow.
Negative cash flow is the cause of most late payments
Whilst we are proud of our information systems and search capabilities, we are also transparent. Therefore, we are pleased to advise you that in most cases of late payment, few of the potential questions we have highlighted above will be relevant. Late payment is almost exclusively due to cash flow constraints and debtors juggling their financial commitments.
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Taking legal action to recover a debt
In the unlikely event that it is not possible for us to recover payment, the information gathered during the 14-day process will allow us to recommend to our client the most appropriate and cost-effective further action. This could be the issue of County Court proceedings or Insolvency proceedings, in which case we would provide full details on the process and the costs involved. It is then our client’s decision on whether or not proceedings are issued.
In a small number of cases, the debtor will be insolvent and it will not be possible for them to settle the debt. With cases such as these where the debtor has no cash or assets, the costs involved in issuing legal proceedings would simply increase our client’s losses, and our advice would be to write off the debt and claim tax relief on the loss.
In cases where either it is financially unviable to pursue the debt through legal action or our client decides not to issue legal proceedings, Advocate will close our file in the matter. Whatever the circumstances, when we close a file without recovering payment, the debt recovery services we have supplied are free of charge.
Proceedings are issued by our specialist debt recovery solicitors
Should our client decide to issue legal proceedings, our file will be transferred to Advocate’s solicitors, who specialise in commercial debt recovery claims. They will issue proceedings in the name of and on behalf of our client, while Advocate will continue to be our client’s point of contact, working as an intermediary and updating our client as the proceedings progress.
Prior to issuing a claim in the County Court, the client would be required to pay both the Court fee and solicitors issue fee. The Court fee and solicitors issue fee to be paid are dependent on the claim value and are added to the total amount claimed in Court. Both fees would be included in the total sum awarded to the client should they be successful in obtaining Judgment.
Case Studies
Freight v Haulage Debt Collection
In the world of freight and haulage, subcontracting is nothing new. However, one of the pitfalls is that both sides…
Achilles’ Steel Debt Recovery
Advocate has successfully recovered £31K for invoices two months overdue. The debtor in question has a history with our client…
Picking Up a Taxi Debt after 4 Years
Advocate has recently recovered £800 on behalf of a telecoms provider who hadn’t been able to get payment out of…
Enforcing a County Court Judgment
A debtor’s credit rating and ability to obtain credit will be affected within days of a Judgment being registered against them. Should the debtor satisfy the Judgment within 28 of it being registered then they may apply to have the Judgment removed from the Register. If a Judgment is removed from the Register, then the debtor’s credit rating will be restored. If the debtor satisfies the Judgment after 28 days, it will be filed as satisfied. However, the effect on the debtor’s credit rating will last for six years.
Cost-effective Enforcement by High Court Officers
Despite the serious financial consequences of a Judgment, there is no guarantee that it will be paid. Unfortunately, many are not, and Enforcement may be required. Enforcing Judgment is the final phase of the debt recovery process. There are several options with the most often used and usually, the most cost-effective option being the instruction of Bailiffs or as they are now titled High Court Enforcements Officers.
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