Every business leader knows the feeling. You’re looking at your aging debtor ledger, watching tens of thousands of pounds sit in the “90+ days overdue” column.
Your cash flow is taking a hit, and your team is spending hours sending polite follow-ups that get completely ignored.
The immediate reaction? “Call the solicitors. Let’s sue them all.”
But pause for a second. Before you start paying court fees and hourly legal rates, ask yourself one critical question: Are these debtors actually “good for the money,” or are you about to throw good money after bad?
The Pre-Litigation Trap
In Northern Ireland, launching into debt recovery without a strategy can be an expensive mistake.
If you take a debtor to the Small Claims Court (for debts up to £5,000) and win, you generally cannot recover your solicitor’s hourly fees from them.
If a debtor is secretly on the brink of insolvency or already has multiple active judgments against them, a court decree is just an expensive piece of paper.
Chasing every single overdue invoice with the same aggressive legal stick isn’t just inefficient – it’s bad business.
Introducing: Our Debt Portfolio & Ledger Review Service
We don’t believe in blind litigation.
That’s why we’re changing how businesses handle outstanding debt in Northern Ireland.
Instead of just processing invoices one by one, our team comes directly to you to conduct a comprehensive Commercial Ledger Review. We sit down with your finance team, audit your aging debtor book, and separate the quick wins from the lost causes.
Our Process
1. Solvency and Asset Mapping
Before a single letter goes out, we run background searches on your debtors to understand who actually has the means to pay.
2. The Worth It Assessment
We sort your ledger into a traffic-light system. Green means they have the assets to pay. Amber means a structured payment plan makes sense. Red means insolvent risk, not worth your legal budget.
3. Process Health Check
We can also review your terms of business and credit control habits to stop slow payers slipping through the cracks going forward.
4. Stop Guessing. Start Recovering
Stop wasting internal resources chasing ghosts. Stop paying legal fees on debt you are never going to see.
Contact KReavey@excellolaw.com to find out more
