September is a busy month for our firm: many businesses who were content to let receivables age over the summer turn the page on the calendar and think “gotta get that fixed before December 31”. This leads to a lot of demand letters and claims flying out the door of our firm.
If you’re looking to collect from a customer, these are the important pieces of information we need to get to work quickly for you:
1. copy of your contract, if you have one;
2. copy of your invoice(s);
3. copy of the credit application, if you have one;
4. copy of any emails promising to pay or saying why they are not paying;
5. copy of any cheques used to pay earlier invoices.
We usually conduct a writ search to see if there are already judgments against your customer before recommending whether to sue or not. If you believe the customer owns property, we recommend a property search as well to see if there really is a pot of gold at the end of the lawsuit rainbow (or if the spouse of the customer owns the property).
Many times a demand letter and follow up phone call from our firm is all it takes to get payment, but there are also times we have to move quickly to obtain judgment or prevent assets from being moved out of Ontario.
If you need help getting paid, give us a shout, we are happy to help.