A fresh approach to collections
Some sectors naturally pose more of a challenge to a commercial debt collection agency than others.
The fresh food industry is notoriously difficult given that proofs of delivery are difficult to obtain due to the fact that orders are often delivered in the early hours of the morning, before customers typically arrive for their day’s work. Debtors will often also dispute goods due to quality reasons as many of the goods are of a perishable nature.
Hilton-Baird worked on behalf of one of the high street clearers to assist in collecting money after their client, a supplier of fresh fruit and vegetables with a particularly large sales ledger, went into administration. Aside from the difficulties in obtaining PODs and the necessity for swift action given its financial situation, the ledger consisted of many small invoices across a high number of customers, meaning each one required a great deal of care and attention.
By working closely with the funder, our collections team was quickly able to upload all available paperwork, including purchase order forms and copy invoices, to substantially increase the collectability of the ledger.
Using this information we could then begin the process of contacting each customer’s accounts teams – which itself proved to be a challenging process with most being local pubs and restaurants. However, the team’s extensive experience and award-winning approach allowed it to liaise with the customers and implement suitable payment plans that not only satisfied our client’s needs, but also suited each customers’ finances so to maximise the funds recovered.
As a result, the full ledger was collected on behalf of the bank and collections were continued for the Insolvency Practitioner, which meant that the surplus was available to satisfy the business’ wider creditors.
