Customer reminder: our advice for an unpaid invoice 

The customers of the VSEs/SMEs and independents are often customers with whom very privileged relationships have been established. The customers are often relativesformer business partners but also people co-opted by acquaintances.

Finally, as a result of a new professional orientation, clients may even be former colleagues or bosses from a previous professional life.

Unfortunately, 1/3 of the companies created today will be at risk of going bankrupt in 3 years because they will have had trouble getting their customers to pay their bills.

LegalCity, the Debt Collection Agency, gives you advice on how to manage your customer payment cycle and improve your cash flow with an efficient customer reminder.

In this article :

• 1. Be attentive and present with your customers
• 2. Take your phone
• 3. Follow up your client in writing
• 4. The formal notice, an effective ultimatum

Be attentive and present with your customers for a better customer follow-up

When you are a small eWhen you are a small company or a self-employed person, an unpaid invoice can have long-lasting consequences for your treasury.

Losing your nerves and spending them on dunning a debtor is certainly the last thing you should do. Even if you know your debtor, the first thing to do is to send a small reminder e-mail and/or a simple letter to remind you that your bill is overdue.

This simple reminder is often intended to remind your debtor that he is late and that he must regularize his payments quickly.

For an amicable collection, the basic principle is to remain courteous, polite and available to your debtor client. It may be a simple oversight, in which case it would be a shame to create a bad atmosphere between you and your customer. The next time he will be more careful and will know that you are attentive to the payment in time of your services and invoice.

Customer reminder: pnd your phone

A direct contact with your interlocutor is imperative and can even be considered before sending an email or a letter.

The telephone is your instrument of choice if you know the person in your debtor's home who can get your unpaid bill paid.

When your client is a large organization, you may need to perhaps patience and perseverance with your client. This exercise will nevertheless allow you to know the decision circuit for the next reminders that you will have to undertake. A contact at a supplier's accounting department or in a shared service center of a larger customer is very useful information to obtain.

For your phone call, and this depends on how close you are to your customer, you must respect some very simple rules in order not to waste time and to correctly qualify and formulate your request:

• First, remind yourself who you are and what you are calling about.
• Be diplomatic about getting the name and contact information of the person who has "control who has "control" over the processing of invoice payments.
• Specifically indicate the invoice(s) that remain unpaid by providing the total number, date and amount.
• Get whether there are any problems with the payment of your invoices and whether there are any disputes or disagreements that could jeopardize the payment of your invoices.
• Validate that your bank details are registered and go to the expected date of payment of your debt.

Showing empathy will also be a good way for you to speed up the payment of your debt.

Remind in writing to your client who owes you money

A phone call that is not followed by a reaction from your debtor may justify a more formal letter to the debtor.

When we say formal we should say factual.

Include in your letter the details of the unpaid debts so that your debtor can have a clear and certain view.

Remain at this stage very courteous and resume, if your general conditions specify it, that you could be able to apply late payment penalties of 40 Euros per overdue invoice as specified in the LME Law in its article L 441-6 of the Commercial Code.

There is no written rule and it all depends on the strategy you wish to put in place on the different amicable collection actions you wish to implement.

So, after this first letter you can consider sending a warning letter (in LRAR) through which you will set a date for regularization to be respected.

After the last granted deadline you indicate that you will discharge this amicable reminder to a bailiff or an amicable collection agency.

The use of a Cabinet is to be preferred for VSEs/SMEs and iwho wish to preserve their customer relationship because the recourse to the bailiff can have a very negative a very negative effect on your future commercial relations!

Don't forget that you are still in the process of amicable customer recovery!

Customer relaunch the last resort last resort the letter of formal notice

Despite all your efforts you still haven't collected your debts? The registered letter of formal notice is the last solution offered before being able to initiate a legal collection.

This letter can be sent even before the warning letter and must contain a number of elements and legal references so that your debtor who discovers himself to be indelicate cannot find legal means to contest its form.
This is your last chance to recover your unpaid debt in an amicable manner.
If you wish to send it yourself before any legal action, we at LEGALCITY invite you not to use the models you may find on the internet.

However, here are the essential and mandatory elements that this letter must include:

• The title of the registered letter must clearly state: "LETTER OF URGENT".
• A deadline for payment
• A clear explanation of the purpose of the unpaid invoice and/or service
• The date of the sending of the LRAR
• Your address and the address of the legal entity of your Debtor
• The signature of the person with authority to act
• The name of the Court that will have jurisdiction in the event of a proposed legal action

It is common to say at this stage of your action to contact a lawyer or a bailiff in order to organize, in case of persistence of the unpaid amount, the recourse to a judicial recovery procedure.

Customer relaunch: theexperience LegalCity

From experience, LegalCity knows that amicable collection is always preferable to legal action.

Thus, the use of a ccollection agency often proves to be a lifesaver and will allow you to save on the costs of legal proceedings that you do not control. you do not control.

In fact, all the steps you have taken have been taken on your own behalf and the intervention of a cThe intervention of a specialized collection agency will change your debtor's attitude.

The latter will understand, as soon as he receives a letter, a call or a text message from a professional in charge of collecting your debts. LegalCity and its agents are specifically trained in intermediation to obtain amicable settlement of unpaid invoices.

The psychological dimension is important and the primary legitimacy of the Collection Firms lies in their ability to convince and handle all the actions on your behalf. You concentrate on your activity and your Collection Agency as for You concentrate on your activity and your Collection Agency relieves you of all these tasks while preserving your customer relationship.

With LegalCity you have a SAAS platform from which you can manage and track all your cases.

Continue to follow up on your invoices upstream but do not waste your time following up on unpaid invoices with tools and software that are not adapted to your activity. 

As a true strategist in the management of your receivables and the improvement of your cash flow, LegalCity Collection Agency also has a network of bailiffs and lawyers partners. The LegalCity collection agent has the particularity of being able to accompany you in your collection strategy by privileging amicable solutions in order to go faster in the resolution of the files but also to avoid you long and expensive legal procedures.

Conclusion: preferreder amicable dunning for your unpaid invoices

The company manager who has understood the importance of a healthy treasury will pay close attention to the payment terms of his customers.

They will attempt to tailor their intervention with debtor clients based on the advice contained in this article.

Finally, he will easily understand why Legalcity has quickly become the reference 100% online firm in terms of amicable and judicial debt collection. The time spent on debt collection is not time that allows the business to grow. LegalCity has also adapted its pricing to the success of its of its actions by offering the lowest commission rate on the market and by putting and by putting customer satisfaction at the heart of our business as TRUSTPILOT.

To go further :

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000005634379&idArticle=LEGIARTI000019294314

https://www.service-public.fr/professionnels-entreprises/vosdroits/F23211

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injonction_de_payer_en_proc%C3%A9dure_civile_fran%C3%A7aise