The return of late payments in France

The return of late payments in France is confirmed. A few months ago, a large majority of business customers returned their payment means quickly or executed their transfers on time. This is no longer the case and credit managers are seeing an upsurge in late payments. It is currently necessary to invest a lot of time in the raises to keep the treasuries afloat. Whether the company is profitable or not a solid cash is an essential element to its sustainability.

Good repo management consumes a lot of time, and this thankless but indispensable work does not always fit into the planning of the accounting and financial teams. To master payment late payments one of the keys is not to leave the payments initiative to the debtor. A tool that should be used en masse is the electronic letter of exchange raised called LCR. Easy to use it allows to present at the due date an electronic transaction to the customer’s bank account. This requires of course that the commercial team obtains when opening the account of each client a bank account or IBAN complete.

Entrusting late payments to salespeople is a mistake. There is a real loss of credibility to one day aggressively claim a payment and then come back to try to get a new order. Late payments must be handled by the credit managers or by the accounting and financial departments.

Avoiding late payments is a matter of educating customers. If the customer finds a laxity of his supplier he will not miss to take advantage of this free credit and without guarantee that this one grants him. The supplier customer relationship must be a partnership with benefits for both parties; if the supplier has delivered an irreproachable merchandise on time, his customer must avoid any late payment and pay his bills in due time.