Some old business debts are written off in the accounts at the end of each financial year, but there remains a chance that these debts can still be recovered, and if recovered they go straight back on to the bottom line as profit.
You may have contact with a debtor years later, who wants to do business with you again, and you are then able to recover the historic debt. If the customer is a lapsed customer you may choose to instruct us to recover monies owed on a no win no fee basis.
Did you know? We can also add on Late Payment Compensation, Interest and Recovery Costs. In addition, if a debt was repaid in full but was received after the due date, we can also go back and recover the late payment charges (assuming they were not collected at the time).
Often we find that debts, particularly, owed by individuals and partnerships can be collected and occasionally we are able to recover fortunes from limited companies.
If the written off debt is over 6 years old we can attempt to make contact with the debtors for payment but we may not be able to issue any Court Proceedings. We can however still look to add on the costs as mentioned above.
Case Study
Value: £600 (4 year old written off debt)
Debt owed to: Alexander Accountancy
Process for recovery: There were two invoices and we applied two £40 Late Payment charged plus 8% interest (over the Bank of England base rate) and the sum of £50 for legal costs.
Outcome: Payment was recovered in full resulting in £600 profit returned to Alexander Accountancy’s bottom line.
David Alexander, Managing Partner at leading firm of Burton accountants commented that:
“This debt had been written off in my firm’s books. When Chris Else raised the question as to whether we had any written off debts to collect on a no win no fee basis, I felt we had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Indeed this proved to be the case and in fairly short order Chris’s team collected the debt.
Upon receipt the money came in and, in accounting terms because it was written off the cash came back into my business as pure profit straight to the ‘bottom line’. I recommend all businesses to look at their ledgers and whether debts are written off or not I strongly recommend Else Solicitor’s excellent services. Not only did they collect the full debt plus interest and Statutory administration fees, they recovered solicitors costs which they are entitled to do under the Late Payment rules. A classic case of “making the debtor pay”.
Else Solicitors have a dedicated team with a wealth of experience helping businesses recover bad debt. For more information and an initial discussion please contact Chris Else at Else Solicitors via email or phone: chris.else@elselaw.co.uk / 01283 526200.