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You may or may not have had call to put a contract on stop before, especially work providers but this does also relate to manufacturers and insurers.
When someone doesn’t pay you, or doesn’t pay you on time it can easily cause a cashflow problem, two or more don’t pay on time and you may have more than a slight headache or if one account is a major part of your business it can jeopardise payments to suppliers, staff or even for normal consumables. So how do you handle putting someone on-stop?
First of all decide if it’s the best course of action for your business, in some cases it isn’t but only you can decide that. Usually I reckon that if I am repeatedly under-paid, not paid on time or partially paid then it’s time to do something about it irrespective of the consequences and this includes excessive quantities of rejections, which is just another way of avoiding payment in many cases.
Experience has taught me that you have to be just as ruthless as the company that you wish to put on-stop and that means no more Mr. Nice Guy!
The “on-stop” procedure I now follow goes thus:
All work stops for that account immediately.
No information on any work in progress is divulged, even to a third party client.
No reports or updates on calls are given.
No information is given to customers.
No “recalls” are made.
This may seem harsh but believe me, it’s the only way to get through to some of these people, cut off their information and *their* cashflow as they cannot then bill the calls for work that *you* have done at your expense. Apart from which you are maximising the impact of your action as well as letting clients and customers know that you are not dealing with the call, not because of any inefficiency on your part, but because of the company that requested the work’s inability or unwillingness to pay for the service.
Obviously some of those conditions, in particular to third parties, can be left as negotiable but that’s down to your own personal circumstances and your relationship with these companies.
The object of the exercise here is not just to attempt to recoup any outstanding debt but to also avoid getting further and further into it! Letting accounts that are bad, slow or just plain arrogant about paying for your services run on will just serve to put you in more danger the longer you let it go on and you have to reach a point where you say “no more”. Where that point for you lies is your own personal decision but I wouldn’t let it go on for too long lest your business be adversely affected by it.
As ever just an opinion, but you have been warned.
K.
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