Blog Network Association Review

Make no mistake; it must be an emotional situation for a small organisation to find itself in, here in the current economic situation. Alarm bells could be ringing, around fears of any of the large organisations going into administration and the small organisation having to lose their bill payment.

If they have had no joy in talking to the large organisations to try and get them to pay up without hassle, then they could well visualise their only next step as Debt Collection proceedings. Their first thought could be to go down the accepted route of legal practices or Debt Collection companies that can handle the Debt Collection for them and it is here that they could see a problem. The legal practices or Debt Collection companies that are reputable can do a good job in Debt Collection for clients, even to handling court proceedings if the Debt Collection activity needs to go that far, but there is a price to pay for this service. Each debt that they handle will be seen as a different Debt Collection project and so will be charged for accordingly. A typical pricing method is for the small organisation to agree to a surrender of maybe 10% of the bill value at recovery, but some could also want a starting charge, or perhaps even some sort of surety in case one of the large organisations goes into administration. These figures could not include incidental costs and if the Debt Collection activity leads to court then the costs could be high.

An alternative to the accepted Debt Collection methods is for the small organisation to buy a Debt Collection Software application and tackle the large organisations with their available resources. Given that Debt Collection Software can be had for prices in the region of £40 to over £100, on a price basis it looks attractive for bill values of £1000 or more when just taking into account the 10% charge alone. But what must not be omitted is that the work that would have been done by the legal practices or Debt Collection companies must now be done by the small organisation itself. While this could seem like a weighty task, the Debt Collection Software should come with a decent instructions that will explain how the Debt Collection activity works, how to write convincing Debt Collection Letters and what to do if the Debt Collection activity leads to court.

Where the accepted Debt Collection organisations could well assign different workers to individual debts, the small organisation has to handle them all, so the Debt Collection Software should have some database functionality in that each debt should be stored as a individual record in a database. In this way when Debt Collection Letters are created, once the debt record is identified all of the relevant details of the large organisation and the current debt can be inserted in the correct places in the Debt Collection Letters so that it looks professional. The Debt Collection Software instructions should have a individual chapter on Debt Collection Letters as they are so significant and are at the focal point of the Debt Collection activity, so things like what Debt Collection companies use would be good to know. If the Debt Collection Letters fail to get settl;ement and court is the next step then the Debt Collection Software can help here because the court officials will want to see proof of efforts in Debt Collection prior to court otherwise they will not allow the case to proceed. The database functionality should include reporting of a debt progress, which should show when Debt Collection Letters were created and sent, replies received, phone calls and any other actions that took place.

All in all, if the small organisation can make a success of this then they will not only have recovered money owed, but will also have equipped themselves with the tools to take on more Debt Collection in the future.