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.

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.

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.

If you maybe know a large customer of theirs that’s likely to owe them a lot of money you could get a third party debt order and claim your money direct from their customer.

Your best bet’s to get some proper legal advice.

Alliance Boots has said that it will pay its suppliers up to 105 days after billing and (if that wasn’t enough) will then charge a 2.5 per cent “settlement fee”. It’s enough to make the eyes water, and despite Alliance Boots claiming that their procurement standards “are in line with those of other groups of similar size and scale”, the news will come as a hammer blow to suppliers who are coming under increasing pressure as times get tough.

I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that if it’s been agreed to before the supplier sets their prices, at least they’re up front about it.

I don’t think that I’d be rushing to do business with them, but they’re a better credit risk than most and presumably their suppliers factor in the extra costs caused by slow payment when they negotiate their rates.

If you think of it as more like a discount for payment within the agreed terms then it seems more acceptable.

As I say, providing the suppliers have agreed the terms and set their prices accordingly then I don’t see a problem with it.

I’m thinking of going into Boots and asking if they’ll offer the same terms to their customers as they require from their suppliers.

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.

Proper T&Cs should establish a general lien (rather than the special lien described above) and the right to dispose of or sell the goods. The customer doesn’t necessarily need to have signed (or even read) the T&Cs for them to apply – it’s enough to be able to show that the customer should have been aware that the T&Cs existed and that they were available to examine.

Personally I’d keep hold of the stuff, continue charging her for storage at the agreed rate and tell her you’ll sue for the full amount plus a late payment charge and the court costs. She’ll soon decide that she’s got the money.

What’s more common though – jobs being done to such a low standard that you could legitimately withhold payment or people paying late?

I reckon that half the people posting jobs on here today will be out of business by this time next year, so Dave’s probably got the right idea.
 

Having said that, it would be a civil matter anyway and the only recourse the customer would have would be to sue you for any losses incurred by your wrongful detention of their goods.