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With many businesses facing short to medium term cash flow problems due to the current crisis, good credit control practice has never been more important - both to assist with your own cash flow and to make sure that you have done all you can to get outstanding invoices settled by other businesses who are perhaps in trouble.

It might be that a letter from a solicitor on your behalf will encourage some of those outstanding invoices to be paid, or perhaps at least for contact to be made about a realistic installment plan that works for both businesses.

Where the debtor is a private individual who hasn't yet paid in full for goods and/or services, the same logic applies. Although the current crisis is going to have an impact on household incomes, the government schemes for funding 80% of incomes to both the employed and self employed – combined with readily available mortgage holidays – should mean that there is no good reason not to be paying you. A timely letter from a solicitor on your behalf chasing payment might be the difference between yours getting paid or the other outstanding bill that they have sitting there.

What if the letters don't work though?

At the time of writing this the civil court system in Scotland is in a state of semi-lockdown. Only urgent cases are being progressed - and debt recovery actions aren't likely to be considered that by the court, even though they might very well be urgent to your business.

It is often the case however that a debt recovery court action serves its purpose by being raised and served on the debtor - especially if there is no defence to it. Although the situation is constantly changing, at the moment we can't send new debt recovery actions to the courts for warranting. What we can do however is to send the debtor a copy of the papers that are going to be lodged in court on your behalf as soon as those are being received again. The debtor will see that you have your solicitor fully instructed and that if they don't pay you they will shortly be having those court papers formally served on them.

There is another fairly obvious practical reason to do that. One can easily imagine a huge backlog of new cases that the Scottish Court Service will need to deal with once business returns to normal – you will want your action lodged with the court at the earliest time possible so that yours is at the front of that queue rather than at the back.

Whether you are an individual, a small business or a large business, we know how important payment or recovery of possesions is for you and how time-consuming it can be. As experienced debt recovery specialists, we offer a structured, efficient debt recovery service, delivered by expert staff who will guide you through the process.