Building a good credit control process means figuring out what works for your business, not just following well-meaning advice from other business owners.

“We send them a reminder, then we go legal after five days.”

“Just automate it all, there’s software for that.”

“I mention it when I’m talking to them about the next job.”

When you’re surrounded by advice like this, it can feel overwhelming. Everyone has an opinion about what you should be doing, and half of it contradicts the other half.

What works for one business doesn’t necessarily work for another. There are too many unique elements to your situation for someone else’s approach to slot neatly into yours.

Why Your Business Context Actually Matters

Before you even think about building a process, you need to understand what affects how that process should work.

How long are you prepared to wait for your money? That depends partly on what your terms are with your suppliers. If you’re paying them on 14 days but allowing your clients to take 60 days, you’ve got a problem. If you’ve got breathing room on both sides, you might be able to take a more relaxed approach.

What level of risk are you prepared to take? Sometimes businesses don’t put a priority on chasing because they’re not feeling the pinch. They’ve got money in the bank, so they can afford to wait.

Just because you can afford to wait doesn’t mean you should. The longer you leave it, the riskier that debt becomes. More time means more chance of something going wrong for your client, which decreases the chances of you getting paid. I’ve seen clients who could comfortably afford to wait end up writing off debts because someone went into administration while they were being relaxed about chasing.

These aren’t minor details. They’re fundamental to what your process needs to achieve.

Why Most Processes Fail

The most common reason credit control processes fail isn’t because they’re the wrong process. It’s because you don’t do them consistently.

You send a reminder. Then you get busy. Then you forget. Then you send another one three weeks later. Your client learns that your deadlines don’t really mean anything, and suddenly, you’re training them to pay late.

Processes also fail because they’re not responsive enough. Leaving a long gap between chasers might feel polite, but it just means the invoice gets further down their priority list. By the time you chase, they’ve already spent the money on something else.

They fail because you don’t follow up when you say you will. If you say you’ll send a copy invoice, do it straight away. If you say you’ll call back in three days, call back in three days.

By not doing what you said you’d do, you’re educating your clients that timeframes don’t really matter to you. And if they don’t matter to you, why should they matter to them?

The other big reason processes fail is letting the client dictate what happens next.

“Yeah, I’ll look into that and give you a callback.”

“I’ll sort it.”

You still haven’t really got an answer because you don’t know when they’re going to sort it. You don’t know when they’re going to call back. Without a specific commitment, you’ve achieved nothing.

If someone’s being vague, ask for specifics. If they won’t give you a timeframe, you put one on it. “If I haven’t heard from you by Friday, I’ll give you another call.” That keeps you in control rather than waiting indefinitely.

What Actually Makes a Process Work

A good credit control process needs to be reasonable. You don’t want to be following up every two minutes because that puts an unnecessary burden on you and it’s likely to annoy the client. But it does need to be timely.

Match How Your Clients Communicate

It needs to fit how your clients actually communicate. Some clients are responsive to email, so use email. But if they don’t respond to email, don’t just keep sending more emails. Pick up the phone.

I once worked with a business whose clients were farmers. Email didn’t work because farmers can’t easily check emails when they’re out in a field. Phone calls didn’t always work either because they couldn’t hear the phone ringing over the tractor. Text messages and WhatsApp? They could deal with those in the field. Understanding what makes it easier for your clients to respond makes your job so much easier.

Keep Control of the Conversation

The process needs to keep you in control of the conversation. That means getting specific commitments. Not “I’ll sort it” but “I’ll process it on Friday and it’ll be with you by Monday.” Not “I’ll look into it” but “I’ll check with accounts this afternoon and call you back at 3pm tomorrow.”

Stay Consistent (Especially at the Start)

It needs to be consistent. Your clients learn from how you behave. The critical piece is that first chase. If you always chase at the same point after the due date, they learn when to expect it. If it’s sometimes two days after and sometimes three weeks after, they learn it doesn’t really matter.

After that first chase, things become more fluid depending on what they tell you. If they say it’ll be on Friday’s payment run, you follow up after Friday if it doesn’t appear. If they say they need to look into it and they’ll call you back by Tuesday, then they don’t, you call them on Wednesday.

If they don’t respond to your first chase at all, then you’ve got your standard follow-up. Maybe that’s seven days later with a phone call. Maybe it’s three days later with another email and then a call.

You’re also learning as you go. If one client never replies to emails on the first chase but always answers the phone on the second chase, then you know to switch the first chase to a phone call for them. It’s about learning what works for your clients and what works for you.

The Mindset Problem

A lot of credit control struggles come down to not wanting to chase. Not wanting to upset the client by asking them to do what they’ve agreed to do.

Think about how silly that sounds.

You’re worried about potentially upsetting your client by asking them to honour their agreement. But you’re quite happy to upset your supplier by not paying them on time because your client hasn’t paid you.

Your supplier, who you’re relying on to be able to continue delivering for your clients in the first place.

Which relationship are you actually protecting?

Building Something That Fits Your Business

A good credit control process doesn’t need to be complicated. It needs to be appropriate for your business, your clients, and your capacity.

If you’ve got three major clients and you speak to them regularly anyway, you don’t need a formal escalation procedure with template letters. You need a reminder in your diary to mention it if it hasn’t been paid by day X.

If you’ve got 50 smaller clients and limited time, you need something more systematic for that initial round of chasing. But you still need to track what everyone’s told you. If they all say different payment dates, you need to know when to follow up with each of them. You might prioritise bigger invoices over smaller ones, or older debts over newer ones if time’s tight, but you can’t just cherry-pick which responses to remember.

The key is understanding what you’re trying to achieve, being realistic about what you can maintain, and then actually doing it consistently.

When You Need Help

Sometimes you know what needs to happen, but you don’t have the time or the headspace to do it consistently. Sometimes you know there’s a problem, but you’re not sure what the solution is for your specific situation.

That’s when expert help makes sense. Whether that’s someone reviewing what you’re doing and helping you build something that fits, or outsourcing the whole thing so you can focus on what you’re actually good at.

Whether you do it all yourself or get expert help, the point is to have something in place that works, gets you paid, and doesn’t leave you stressed about cash flow.

A good credit control process isn’t about following some magic formula. It’s about understanding your business, your clients, your capacity, and building something you’ll actually stick to.

If you need help figuring out what that looks like for your business, get in touch.