If your business is suffering from late payments, there are vital steps you need to take to help you recover your debt as quickly as possible.
In the second of our four-part guide, we outline what you need to do if you didn’t receive a response to your Letter Before Action and want to take the matter further.
If your debt is under £10,000, the next step is to issue a claim through the small claims court. To do this, you will first need to complete a complete a few checks to ensure you have all the information to issue a claim, including:
- Debtor/debtor company’s name and full address (registered office if company) – this must be a residential or full postal address as you can’t issue proceedings at a PO Box Address
- The amount of outstanding debt
- How much interest you can claim in addition to your outstanding debt. This can be calculated from the date that the invoice is due up to the date on which you are drafting the claim form. This is usually at a rate of 8.5%.
- Your Late Payment Compensation fee – you are entitled to claim this for each outstanding/overdue invoice if you have several
- That payment has definitely not been received
- The date on your Letter Before Action has expired
- That you sent the Letter Before Action to the correct postal address or email address
- That you don’t have any outstanding correspondence from the debtor or Debtor Company that has not been replied to.
After you have carried out these checks you are then ready to issue proceedings. You can submit your claim online via the Money Claims Online Centre. However if you are claiming an ‘unspecified’ amount you will need to complete a Claim Form referred to by the court as an N1 form, this can be found here.
When issuing a claim to the Small Claims Court there are fixed court fees that the court charge for you to issue the claim, depending on the amount of debt being claimed. You will need to check the court fees required, which can be found here.
Once you have submitted your claim to the court, you’ll be given a court claim number by the court, which is a reference number for you to quote if you want an update on your case or have any queries/ questions. The debtor/debtor company then has 14 days to respond to your claim.
For further information or assistance with issuing a small claim, please contact us.
Keep an eye on our website for part three of our guide, which will advise you how to request a judgement.
