When goods leave before you are paid,
you have extended credit.
For that same decision a bank reviews the accounts, checks for blocked accounts and sets a limit. You settle it with a handshake and the line that you have known him for years. One write-off eats the margin on ten clean deliveries.
Blockades and falling revenue do not mean this customer should be refused. They mean starting smaller, and raising the limit after two clean cycles.
Extract from a real assessment. Company data altered.
A check before you grant a limit
You send the registration number of the company you intend to ship to on terms. You receive a risk assessment, a recommended limit and payment period, and the reasoning behind both.
- 01The customer's financial picture from official annual accounts, with the trend over recent years
- 02Liquidity, leverage and the ability to settle obligations on time
- 03A recommended exposure limit and payment term that is actually covered
- 04Proposed security where the risk calls for it: a promissory note, advance payment, a shorter term
- 05A conclusion: approve, approve with conditions, or decline
You need no documents from the customer and the customer need not know a check is being run. Everything is derived from publicly available data.
Monthly monitoring of your customers
A check before the first delivery is a snapshot of one moment. A company that is sound today can be in blockade six months from now, and you find out from an unpaid invoice.
- 01A monthly report on changes across every customer on your list
- 02An alert as soon as an indicator that typically precedes non-payment deteriorates
- 03A proposed limit change, up or down, per customer
- 04An annual review of total portfolio exposure and risk concentration
Who this suits
Wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers who ship regularly on terms and carry between 20 and 300 active customers. Below twenty customers, individual checks are better value.
A credit policy for your company
If more than one person decides on limits, checking individual customers treats the symptom. A salesperson chasing a target will, as a rule, approve more than they should.
- 01Criteria for scoring a customer and a limit table by risk category
- 02Approval levels: what a salesperson may approve, what the director may approve, and what nobody may
- 03A dunning and escalation procedure with deadlines and named owners
- 04One working day of training for the sales team
Send a request
For a single check, the customer's registration number is enough. For monitoring and policy work we reply by email to agree the scope.
No access to your systems
We ask for no access to your ERP or accounting. A list of registration numbers is enough.
The customer never knows
Produced from publicly available data. Nobody contacts anybody.
No lock-in
Cancel monitoring whenever you like. The first month is free.