I’ve warned many times of the dangers of running businesses like this and it seems from anecdotal evidence that some companies are finally having to count the cost of paying their suppliers late.

With the soaring cost of fuel and the general slowdown in the economy it seems that some transport company owners have decided that it will be more profitable to cease their transport operations and concentrate on collecting the outstanding debts accumulated under the late payment legislation.

The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 (see http://www.payontime.co.uk for further information) gives businesses a statutory right to claim daily interest from other businesses for the late payment of commercial debt. In addition businesses have the right to a compensation payment of between £40 and £100 for each invoice which is paid later than agreed terms. If no terms are agreed then the terms default to the later of 30 days from the day the service is performed (for pre-agreed amounts) or 30 days from the date the cost is confirmed.

Both the interest and the compensation payments are chargeable on each invoice paid late, are payable on demand and are claimable up to six years after the date they become payable – i.e. up to six years after the payment becomes late. They are payable even after the initial debt has been paid in full.

Companies are potentially storing up a time bomb by paying their customers late. As an example, a courier company which carries out 5 local jobs per week for a customer over a 6 year period, each one of which is invoiced on a separate invoice and each one of which is paid late, could potentially issue a claim after 6 years for £62,400 against that one customer in late payment compensation charges alone.

If a company issues just 25 invoices each week which are paid late then after 6 years they have ‘earned’ over £300,000 in late payment compensation charges, assuming their customers are still trading. For a transport company earning minimal profits in the current financial climate this is a tempting alternative income stream.

Of course many companies are reluctant to claim late payment charges, but the debt exists whether they claim them at the time or not. What seems to be happening at the moment is that companies are looking back at debts that have been paid late in the past and if they’ve not traded with the customer for a while, or they don’t really care if they lose the customer’s business, they’re putting in their claims under the late payment legislation.

We’ve recently received a claim such as this from an ex-supplier for 3 invoices which he believed were paid late in early 2006. The supplier actually ceased trading a few months after the invoices were issued but being a sole trader the individual concerned has chosen to supplement his current income by milking the customers of his previous business.

In our case he was unsuccessful – we’d settled all the invoices with his factoring company on the day they were received; we assume that the factoring company (as they often seem to) had applied our payments to the wrong invoices or the wrong account. We were saved from having to pay £121.17 purely because we’d both paid the invoices on time AND kept a proper record of the date the invoices were received and the date the invoices were paid. In the latter respect we were helped because we only ever pay our suppliers by BACS or online banking and always keep a proper record of the date the payment leaves our account.

I would suggest that anyone wishing to protect themselves against future claims under the late payment legislation takes the following steps:

1. Keep a record of all debts as they are incurred. Using a Purchase Order system will help achieve this but it’s not essential. When you receive goods or services from your supplier make a note of the date, the supplier’s name and the amount due and check off each invoice received against your list at the time of receipt. If you’ve not received an invoice within a couple of weeks of receiving the goods or service then contact the supplier to chase the invoice – fax or email is best because you can create an audit trail of having requested the invoice.
2. Record any invoices as they’re received. Date stamp every received invoice and check it off against your list of due invoices.
3. Pay the invoice within the agreed terms. If you didn’t agree terms at the time you ordered the goods/services then check if you were expected to have read and agreed to the suppliers standard terms before ordering. If no terms were agreed or specified by the supplier then pay the invoice within 30 days of either receiving the goods/services or the invoice date, whichever is earlier.
4. Notify supplier of queries or disputes. If the invoice is disputed or queried then inform the supplier at the earliest opportunity and keep a record of the date that the dispute/query was raised and the date of the response. If the dispute/query is resolved then pay within the original agreed term (or 30 days if no agreement) or within  a reasonable time (say 7 working days) of the resolution of the dispute. Keep a full record of all relevant actions, the date, time and the people involved.
5. Pay your suppliers by BACS or online banking. It’s easier to prove that the payment left you account on the right day than it is to prove that you didn’t  date all your cheques 3 weeks before you sent them. We save a screenprint of every online banking payment so that we can quickly check when payments were made without contacting the bank for confirmation. The screenprint doubles as a Remittance Advice for sending to our suppliers by email.
6. Agree payment terms in advance. If there’s an ‘understanding’ with your supplier that you will pay on terms other than 30 days from service (or 30 days from invoice) then ask your supplier to agree to the terms in writing before any work is carried out. Stick to the terms that you’ve agreed.

All this is a lot harder to write down than it is to do. It takes no real investment in time other than the initial planning of your system. Your list of invoices you’re due to receive should already be available in your booking or accounting system. If not then a simple list in Excel (or even in a notepad) of every purchase you make, will be a useful source of information for your business in any case. We run just such a list in Excel, revenue and cost recorded for each job, and the supplier’s and customer’s name. We can see profitability of a day by day basis, see which suppliers haven’t invoiced us and easily see which customers produce the most profit for us.

On a closing note, it should be noted that these late payment charges are assignable. Even if your mate Joe’s business doesn’t charge you when you pay late, the subsequent owners, or liquidators, of the business may chase you for late payment charges.

If it’s not happened already it seems only a matter of time before companies are set up to buy the rights to accrued late interest charges from failing businesses. When this happens there will undoubtedly be a lot of businesses whose bad payment record will come back to bite them.

You may be interested in this page, giving the specifics of a claim for late payment charges that we made against an ex-customer.

The ex-customer engaged a top firm of solicitors to avoid paying the claim, presumably at condiderable cost, but ended up paying our original claim plus court costs anyway.

I’m very confident that we would have won the case no matter what, but the notice about late payment charges on each of our invoices avoided us having to go to the trouble of actually proving the case in court.

To satisfy HMRC you need to include on your invoice:

The date of issue of the invoice.
A sequential number that uniquely identifies the invoice.
Your business’s name, address and VAT registration number.
The name and address of your customer.
Your customer’s VAT registration number (only if they’re VAT registered in another EU country and you’re invoicing without VAT).
The date of supply of services (the date you did the work).
A description of the services supplied (from a VAT point of view ‘Courier work’ would be OK – your customer may want more detail).
The VAT rate applied (normally 17.5%).
Total amount of VAT payable.
The total amount payable for the whole invoice excluding VAT.
The total amount of VAT charged at each VAT rate (normally just one entry for the 17.5% rate).
The unit price of the services supplied and the number of units charged for – if this is normal practice for your industry (as far as I’m aware it isn’t normal practice in the courier industry) or required by your customer. In practice you can ignore this unless you charge your customer by an agreed price per mile or hour worked AND they’ve asked you to include the figure on your invoice. For example ’200 miles @ 70p/plm’.

To satisfy Companies House and Trading Standards:

If your business trades under a name other that its actual name then you must include the actual name on your invoice, as well as the trading name.

If you’re a sole trader John Smith and you trade as ‘John Smith’, ‘J Smith’ or just ‘Smith’ then that is the only name that needs to appear on your invoice.
If you’re a partnership of John Smith and Alan Jones, and trade under any combination of the names (‘Smith & Jones’, ‘J Smith & Alan Jones’ etc) then those are the only details needed.
If your business is a limited company and it trades under its own name ‘S&J Courier Services Ltd’, then that’s the only name that needs to appear on your invoices.

In any other case, where the business trades under a name that is not its actual name, the full actual name of the legal entity behind the trading name must be shown on all invoices. So if John Smith trades as ‘John Smith Couriers’, or John Smith and Alan Jones trade as ‘J&A Couriers’, or even if S&J Courier Services Ltd trade as ‘S&J Courier Services’, then the actual name of the sole-trader, the partners or the limited company must be shown on the invoice.

To keep you customer happy

The date you did the job.
The collection and delivery details – I prefer the format ‘XYZ Semiconductors, London E14 – ABC Computers, Manchester M30′.
Any reference if you’ve been given one by the customer – otherwise use the name of the person who booked the job.
Any purchase order number supplied by the customer – if it’s the first job you’ve done for them it doesn’t hurt to ring them and ask them what they need to appear on the invoice.
The POD for the job – often not essential with end-users but other transport companies like to get their PODs. Also attach the original hard copy POD to your invoice, KEEP A COPY FOR YOUR OWN RECORDS THOUGH.
Your bank details. – Most companies pay by BACS or internet banking these days. Make the payment process as simple as you can for them and avoid any excuses for late payment.
Invoice promptly – if it’s a one-off job then don’t leave it until the end of the month, do it now.
Invoice accurately – only invoice for the agreed amount. if there are any additions for waiting time, call-outs etc then agree the charges with the customer at the time that the cost is incurred.
Don’t backdate your invoice. If you don’t get round to sending your invoices until the middle of the month then don’t date them at the end of the previous month. Large companies may not notice and you’ll be paid as and when your invoice is cleared, small companies may get annoyed at being presented with an invoice due for payment within a few days of receipt.

To avoid any problems in the future

Spell out your payment terms and the due date on the invoice.
Explain the methods of paying the invoice – “Cheques should be made payable to XYZ Couriers…etc” “BACS payments may be made to Account no……etc”
Don’t mention unreasonable and un-agreed penalties for late payment on your invoice.
Draw the customer’s attention to the Late Payment legislation – “WE UNDERSTAND AND WILL EXERCISE OUR STATUTORY RIGHT TO INTEREST AND COMPENSATION FOR DEBT RECOVERY COSTS UNDER THE LATE PAYMENT LEGISLATION IF WE ARE NOT PAID ACCORDING TO OUR CREDIT TERMS.”
Draw the customer’s attention to your Conditions of Carriage, Conditions of Trading, Terms & Conditions, or whatever “ALL BUSINESS UNDERTAKEN IS SUBJECT TO OUR CONDITIONS OF TRADING – A COPY OF WHICH IS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST – or go to www.quietlyefficientcouriers.co.uk/conditions.pdf” This won’t automatically mean that the job you’re invoicing on this occasion will be covered by those conditions, you should have agreed that in advance, but it will help you show that your Conditions apply to any future work you carry out for the customer.

www.payontime.co.uk/doctor/doctor_main.html

The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 gives you the right to claim interest and compensation for late payments.

This is a statutory right – your customer doesn’t have to agree to it, you don’t have to inform them in advance that you intend to charge them if they pay late and you are not permitted to agree in advance to waive late payment fees unless a suitable alternative form of late payment penalty is agreed.

For invoices up to £999.99 you can charge £40 PER LATE INVOICE. For invoices of between £1,000.00 and £9,999.99 you can charge £70 PER INVOICE. You can also charge interest on a daily basis, currently at a rate of 13% per annum.

You don’t charge VAT on the late payment or the interest and you don’t charge the late payment fee on a recurring basis.

You don’t HAVE to charge the late payment fee but unless you’ve specifically agreed to waive the fee the late payer still owes it to you EVEN AFTER THEY’VE PAID THE ORIGINAL DEBT. The late payment fee is like any other debt – you have up to 6 years to recover it from the late payer and remember that it’s chargeable on EVERY payment received late over that period.

You may find that it’s best to use the threat of the late payment legislation as a tool to get late payers to pay up. For example, our standard collection letter includes:

“As you may be aware, under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 we have a statutory right to charge interest on overdue payments. The current rate of interest is 13%. We also have a statutory right to charge compensation of between £40 and £100 towards our collection costs. You will notice that your statement includes an invoice for the late payment charges. IF WE RECEIVE PAYMENT OF ALL OTHER OUTSTANDING INVOICES WITHIN 7 DAYS OF THIS LETTER WE WILL NOT PERSUE THESE CHARGES.”

This at least gives the customer the chance to pay up straight away and avoid the extra charges. It’s worth mentioning that if you use this approach and they do pay up within the 7 days then you’ve lost your right to go back within 6 years and claim the late payment charges.

Thomas Higgins solicitors will do the whole thing for you for a small fee. Direct Route are often recommended for business to business debt collection but I’ve heard several reports that they seem unwilling to collect late payment charges.

Many accountants seem completely unaware that this option is available to their clients, despite it being prominently featured in the HMRC Help Sheet HS222: How to calculate your taxable profits.

Self-employed people with a turnover under the VAT registration threshold (whether they’re registered or not) are allowed to claim HMRC Approved Mileage Rates instead of actual running costs. The rates for cars and vans are 40p/mile for the first 10,000 miles then 25p/mile. For motorcyles it’s 24p/mile and for pedal cycles it’s 20p/mile.

Since the government haven’t raised the rates since the scheme was introduced in 2002 it’s not quite as beneficial as it once was but it can still be a very tax-efficient, and simple, way of claiming your vehicle expenses under certain circumstances.

It works best for owner-drivers with rented small vans doing very high mileages. 2500 miles per week equals about £650 allowance for £85 rental, £20 insurance & £250 fuel.

If you use the scheme you can’t claim any other expenses for ANY vehicle costs except for hire-purchase interest. You can’t claim fuel or vehicle insurance but you can still claim for congestion charge, tolls, GIT etc. You can only start to use the scheme when you change your vehicle, although off-hiring and starting a new hire agreement should be allowable.

You have to keep a full, accurate log of your journeys and mileages and be able to prove that you covered all the mileage on business. Records have to be kept for 6 years after the end of the tax year and the Revenue can and do check records randomly.

The allowance is charged to your Profit & Loss account as if it was a normal expense and can do a nice job of decimating your profits for both Income Tax and Tax Credit purposes.

While the people ‘moaning’ and threatening to ‘name and shame’ are widely lambasted as being unprofessional, unbusinesslike and not taking normal business practice into account, I can’t help thinking that maybe it’s the ‘old hands’ that have got it wrong.

Should it really be acceptable that new entrants to the business are forced to fall into line with the pre-existing sloppy practices of the courier industry? ‘Real’ businesses don’t allow elastic lines of credit to unchecked, untested and undeserving customers; why is the same day courier industry so different?

Why are the new entrants, at the bottom of the ladder, forced to accept late payments that are mainly caused by the slack credit control practices of the courier companies they subcontract to?

It’s not so much the late payment that’s a problem with some companies it’s the fact that when they take advantage of extending their suppliers’ credit terms they’re sitting on an enormous pile of debt. Lending your hard earned cash to anyone in this industry is a very risky step to take, more so now than ever before.

Even with its shaky finances in the recent past Nissan is a bit of a safer bet than Joe Bloggs Couriers with its ‘fleet’ of hired vans that set up business 3 months ago and is buying jobs from one site to sell on another with a 10% mark-up. 

Is it really the lack of business experience of the ‘moaners’ that’s the problem or the lack of a business plan, business sense and scruples on the part of the people they’re doing business with?

I’ve tried to get this point across in the past and some people have taken it as a personal attack on their integrity, it never was.

There’s a hell of a lot of difference between allowing TNT Express or DHL to take 90 days credit (not that they do) and allowing a 2 bob company like ours to take 90 days credit.

Our company, and most (probably all) of the companies on the exchanges, wouldn’t pass our own credit approval process yet we all trade on the fact that everyone else in the business is so inexperienced that they extend credit terms to anyone that asks with no checks.

If the same ‘inexperience’ and non-businesslike behaviour then causes these people to moan and bleat when they’re not paid on time then in my opinion that’s as much (or probably more) the fault of the people/companies that take advantage of this ‘inexperience’ as it is the fault of the moaner.

My own take on this is that we don’t deserve credit so we don’t take it. We’ve never tried borrowing from the bank, but I’d like to bet that they’d ask for some sort of security if we did. If the bank don’t trust us then why should anyone else? We’re relying on your (everyone’s) ‘inexperience’ in allowing us credit terms, if we don’t pay when we say that we’ll pay then name and shame us by all means.

Unless you only ever carry goods under your own ‘Terms and Conditions’ or ‘Conditions of Carriage’, which you make available to your customers before you carry out any work for them then you could be wide open to a claim for unlimited damages from your customer or even from your customer’s customer.

Your Goods In Transit insurance might well cover you for £15,000, but what if the goods you’ve collected are worth far more than that? A consignment of computer chips or a pharmaceutical sample can be worth many times that and if it was lost, stolen or damaged while under your control you would be liable for the full value unless your Conditions limit your liability.

That’s not the worst of it though. Most couriers’ Conditions quite rightly disclaim any liability for consequential loss. Without this essential restriction to your liability your losses are potentially unlimited should a late, lost or damaged consignment cause your customer any financial loss due to your ‘negligent act’. A ‘negligent act’ could be as simple as you leaving goods in your vehicle overnight and them being stolen, being late for a delivery because your cambelt broke due to being overdue for replacement, subcontracting your delivery to a muppet or just sending a document by overnight delivery and it being misrouted.

In the absence of suitable Conditions the only defence that you may have against a claim is to be able to prove that your customer’s loss occurred through no negligence whatsoever on the part of you, your employees or your subcontractors. In practice this may mean a delay or loss caused by an ‘act of God’ (exceptionally severe and unexpected bad weather for example) or a catastrophic and entirely unpredictable delay on the motorway system  – for example if you collect something the day before for 0900 delivery to London then a 1 hour delay on the motorway at Luton would not excuse a late delivery because it should be anticipated. If the motorway was closed for 4 hours because of an accident then it may be a delay that you could show that you were not able to anticipate.

What does ‘consequential loss’ mean and isn’t it already covered by your Goods in Transit Policy? Consequential loss applies not to the value of the goods that you’re carrying but to the financial loss that may be suffered should they not be delivered according to the customer’s requirements. By way of example, imagine a simple job where you collect an envelope from your customer for delivery across town within 2 hours. You leave the envelope on your dashboard and it blows out of the window without you noticing and it’s lost forever.

With proper Conditions you may be liable for around £15 for the loss of the paper and the envelope and you probably won’t be able to charge your customer for the delivery. Without any Conditions your moment of inattention could mean that the multi-million pound property deal that your client was about to seal with the contract that you were carrying doesn’t go ahead and YOU are legally liable for their entire financial loss. You’re a sole trader – so if they claim their losses you lose everything, all your savings and all your possessions.

Maybe that scenario seems a bit far-fetched, so how about that custom-made machine part that you’ve just collected from a freight forwarder for delivery to a manufacturer? The production line’s been down for 3 days at a cost of £20,000 per hour. You ‘thought’ that you’d strapped the pallet down properly but you take a corner too fast, the pallet slides and damages the goods. That’s say £40,000 for the damage to the machine part (only £15,000 covered on your insurance) and a further 3 days at £20,000 per hour (a further £1.44 MILLION in costs) for the stopped line while a new part is manufactured and delivered.

Without proper Conditions you are liable for losses like these. The good news is that it’s very simple to avoid the risk of being held liable for this type of claim. If you’re a CX member you have the benefit of being able to use their “Model Terms and Conditions”. If you’re not a CX member then the FTA allows use of their “Model Conditions of Carriage” by non-members as long as their copyright is acknowledged.

In my (non legally trained) opinion, neither sets of Conditions are entirely appropriate to the same day courier industry, but as a stop-gap measure they are better than no conditions at all. I hope to be able to point you towards some more appropriate Conditions in the near future.

In the meantime your main challenge may be to ensure that you can show that your customers have had the opportunity to view whatever conditions you may have before entering into a contract with you. If there’s a clear link on every page of your website and you’ve confirmed that your new customer has visited your website then you should be on fairly firm ground. If you’ve already carried out a job for someone without giving them the opportunity of viewing your Conditions then you can protect yourself in the future by simply adding a notice to the first invoice that all future work carried out will be subject to your Conditions. It doesn’t protect you from liabilities incurred during the first job but if you draw their attention to your Conditions at every available opportunity then you should hopefully be protected against future claims.

You must be able to provide receipts showing the VAT for anything that you claim the VAT back on in this way. Be warned that HMRC are very likely to ask to see all the supporting VAT receipts if you put in a big reclaim of VAT on your first VAT return. This is nothing to get worried about as long as you’ve stuck to the rules.

You can claim the VAT back on any ‘goods’ that you’ve purchased up to 3 years before your registration date as long as you still have the goods on the date that your registration starts. ‘Goods’ would include vans, computers, promotional material, uniform, fax, telephones and even the tank full of fuel you bought the night before your registration started.

You can also claim back the VAT on any ‘services’ that you’ve paid for up to 6 months before your registration date as long as the service wasn’t one that you ‘sold on’ before your registration date. So you could claim back the VAT on your accountant’s bill from 5 months ago but you couldn’t claim back the VAT that a subcontractor charged you last week if you’ve invoiced your customer for the job before your registration date.

The good news is that you can still claim back the VAT on these pre-registration expenses even if you’ve registered under the Flat Rate Scheme (FRS).

Normally under the FRS you can only claim back the VAT on purchases of ‘capital assets’ costing over £2,000 including VAT; so as far as couriers are concerned usually just on the purchase of a van. When claiming the VAT on pre-registration expenses however you can claim back the VAT on all the purchases mentioned above as if you weren’t on the FRS. So if you were to buy your new laptop 2 weeks before you registered for VAT on the FRS then you’d still be able to claim the VAT back on it. If you bought it just after registering for VAT on the FRS you wouldn’t be able to claim the VAT unless it had cost you £1702.13 plus VAT (£2,000) or more.

The only ‘gotcha’ with regards to the FRS is that if/when you sell anything that you’ve claimed the full amount of VAT back on using the above method (your van for instance) you have to account for the VAT on the sale at the normal rate rather than at the FRS rate. So if you’ve bought your van 3 years ago for £8,000 (plus £1,400 VAT) and claimed back the VAT, then when you sell it next year for £1,500 (plus £262.50 VAT) you’ll have to pay HMRC the full £262.50 VAT when you sell it, rather than £135 under the FRS.

Given that you’ll almost certainly be within a year or so of starting your courier business when you decide to register for VAT, it’s certainly worth going back and claiming all that you’re entitled to.

I know that quite a few people seem to reach this page when they’re searching for freelance same day courier work etc. Please read this page if that’s what you were looking for.

Ah, so Earnings = Income – Fuel Cost? You’re providing the vans and the insurance yourself are you?

These “standard business expenses” which “should be part of ur business model” are paid for FROM YOUR GROSS TURNOVER.

There’s no way around: Profit = Turnover – Fuel – OTHER EXPENSES.

Your mindless assumption that standing costs will disappear just because they’re already included in someone’s business plan are laughable.

Without wishiing to get too personal, your obvious lack of mathematical and business skills demonstrate admirably why an owner-driver would be exceptionally foolish to allow you £7000 credit.

I’d agree to an extent that it’s easily possible to make ‘a wage’ running at those rates. I just don’t think I’d personally be happy putting all my eggs in one basket by relying on one small, recently formed business for all my work while at the same time supplying them with a line of credit that no bank would agree to without security.

To put it bluntly, it’s one thing working for TNT or DHL at those rates, it’s quite a different thing working for you, or working for us for that matter if we offered those payment terms.

Did you get any written confirmation of your booking? If it didn’t have the full company details on it then you should have a good case for making the sender personably liable anyway.

Maybe I’m just an exceptionally bad judge of character, which means most of the people I’ve worked with on here are probably absolute c**ts and I’ve just not realised it.

I suppose there’s just a lot of courier companies and owner-drivers not making a go of it at the moment – with high fuel prices and the economic slowdown.

I’m surprised about Cotswold Couriers though – he seemed to be charging the right sort of prices to make a profit and he always seemed busy. It’s a shame.

wrote:
I think visit to the accountant is needed here

If you go to the accountant and they tell you not to register then get another accountant.

The only reason to even consider not registering for VAT is if you have a lot of customers that aren’t VAT registered.

Read this http://deliver-it.biz/couriers/2008/03/should-i-be-vat-registered/

Agreed that it’s a total ballache having the same company issuing two different invoices, pure stupidity really. If they’re going to send their own invoice then why raise the ‘Network’ invoice to start with? It’s easy to avoid the double payment problem though – just match the invoice against jour job reference or purchase order when the invoice comes in. You can only pay for each jon once, so the second invoice goes in the shredder.

I’m not sure what the “not technically legal” refers to, apart from the absence of correct business names on some of them. That’s just as common with companies’ own invoices though.
 

With up to TWO supplier invoices to handle a day we really don’t see why we should accept invoices delivered in any other fashion.

Oh and you can stick your £40 late payment charges where the sun doesn’t reach because in our opinion a message on a chat page is service of our notice to you that this is how we require our invoices delivered. Despite this it goes without saying that delivery of invoices by similar means is unacceptable.

lynyrd wrote:
what would be the fastest ever period going from starting a ltd company to shutting the doors?

last year 6 weeks, now another it seems?…..isnt it time the law got involved in this scam?

what actually constitutes “obtaining goods or services by deception”?

and if my booking form doesnt state “ltd” just who was I dealing with?…

This is exactly why recently formed limited companies, or in fact most limited companies now, are a bad credit risk. That’s why the banks demand directors’ guarantees before lending them money.

The Companies Act contains all sorts of get out clauses so that limited companies can act in a shonky way and get away with it – but if they get the basics wrong then the shield of limited liability is taken away from them.

If the booking form doesn’t contain their limited company details then they’re in breach of the Companies Act – which means that the directors should be held personably liable for any losses you suffer because of their breach.