A culture of non-payment

[Yvonne]

Surely you are not responsible for other peoples moral values.

Tell us any way you see fit! but please tell us. "Pre-warned is pre-armed".

I presume that you might be referring to something in the Credit Control Act?

Yvonne Symons

[Dave A]

Firstly, thank you everyone who has taken the time to add to this thread. With your input and some time to think it through, I've pretty well worked out what seems the best way to do this.

"Pre-warned is pre-armed".

I'm hoping to pre-warn and pre-arm.

the only viable defence against this gambit is to not provide any service or goods until they are fully paid for in advance, or to have a contract in place no weaker than what banks present us with when supplying us with a credit card.

I'm going to try to compile some standard clauses we should all include in our documentation and have the customer sign before we allow casual credit. And with it I'll release the details of the gambit; hopefully sufficient motivation for business owners to actually take the time to implement it within their business.

In the meantime, it might be insightful to answer a couple of questions now if you have the time:

Do you insist your client sign a contract before you commence providing goods/services, or a delivery note, or anything else?

If yes, what sort of fine print is included in that documentation?

[duncan drennan]

Do you insist your client sign a contract before you commence providing goods/services, or a delivery note, or anything else?

Sometimes I sign their document (or a modified version) and sometime we sign mine, but I have no consistent "terms of engagement." What the process that I'm going through at the moment has taught me is that it is time to have an attorney set up a good and fair contract for me to use.

[Debbiedle]

I don't believe I am the one to be helping here, as we have a strict cash upfront 21 days in advance policy! It changed my life!

[Dave A]

I don't believe I am the one to be helping here, as we have a strict cash upfront 21 days in advance policy! It changed my life!

Way to go, Debbie

[Yvonne]

I have to confess that our company operates on a Pre-authorisation form, but this hardly has any "credit" information, other than contact details, and names of contact person for accounts. It is more a "provision of information" regarding the correct identification and instructing us to carry out the work.

We have discussed a specific "credit information" form taking all the requirements of the credit act into account, but so far have not done anything.
Due to the type of business we operate it is not feasible to do a credit check on a one off payment of approx R4,000. Where possible we attempt to get paid on completion. I was discussing this with our directors over the weekend, and came to the conclusion that we might be forced to make use of a credit bureau. I was told that they charge as much as 5% of total accounts receivable?
We don't clear that much profit on turnover as it is, and a price increase to cover any additional costs is not feasible.
So perhaps we have to accept the financial exposure! at this point we are not sure of the best course of action.

Yvonne Symons

[Dave A]

I think many of us are in the same position. My thoughts of what needs to be covered at this point are:

Identification
Full name and ID number of person signing
Registered name and registration number of legal entity if representing another entity (company/cc)
Nominated domicilium citandi et executandi (need English translation)

Authorisation
Signatory confirms authority to sign on behalf of legal entity

Debt recovery issues
Proof of debt
Service of notices
Consent to summary judgement in the event of debtor failing to make payment as per agreed terms (hints).
Interest on overdue amounts
Debtor liable for all legal and collection costs on an attorney client scale.

From a process point of view, I have an instruction form that must be completed by the client before we commence any work. I just want to fix the fine print so that legal collection after failure to pay is a really simple process.

[Spencer]

The tone of this post is quite concerning. In our business' frame of reference we have our terms and conditions printed on the bottom of every job sheet. Now the idea is to have the client sign the job sheet therefore accepting the terms of service. However most of the smaller clients seem to ignore this agreement. The maximum we allow for payment is 30 days in terms of credit. The concerning thing is that 3/4 of our clients defer payment upto 120 days in some cases. ... Legal threat doesn't seem to make a difference. We have one client that has consistently refused to pay for services rendered for over 2 years now. She's costing me a fortune just in phone calls. Turns out she's already under administration and refusing to furnish us with the administrator's contact details...

I agree pre-warned is pre-armed...

[Dave A]

We have one client that has consistently refused to pay for services rendered for over 2 years now. She's costing me a fortune just in phone calls. Turns out she's already under administration and refusing to furnish us with the administrator's contact details...

Write it off on your books, hand it over for collection, and sue only if it's worth enough money.

I'm afraid those are the ones you have to sniff out in advance somehow.