Summary
If you're a small business, how are you affected by clients who pay late or don't pay at all? The Federation of Small Businesses estimates that around 50,000 firms go bust each year because of cash flow problems mainly caused by late payments. This is also a problem that also affects many of the UK's 5 million self-employed who find themselves out of pocket because clients can't or won't pay. So what can you do to recover the money you're owed? And how can we change the culture of late payment?
Join Louise Cooper and a panel of guests with their own experience of poor payment practices and their solutions. Email moneybox@bbc.co.uk or call 03700 100 444 from 1pm to 3.30pm on Wednesday 27 February 2019. Standard geographic charges from landlines and mobiles will apply.
Guests: Ailsa Fairchild, debt recovery manager, Girlings Solicitors Jess Pinhorn, specialist adviser, Business Debtline Paul Uppal, Small Business Commissioner Craig Beaumont, Federation of Small Businesses David Clarkson, credit controller, Wilmington plc
Presenter: Louise Cooper Producer: Sally Abrahams
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In Northern Ireland, from the late 70s to the early 90s, the IRA killed over 40 alleged informers. |
| 0:08.0 | But the man who often found, tortured and sometimes killed these people on behalf of the IRA |
| 0:12.0 | was himself an informer, a secret British army agent with the codename Stakeknife. |
| 0:18.0 | Who gets to play God? And why me? Why my family? |
| 0:21.3 | When lies are still being told to this day, who do you believe? |
| 0:25.1 | I wouldn't even know where to start, and I'm with the IRA. |
| 0:28.5 | Steakknife. |
| 0:29.7 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.8 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:37.5 | Welcome to the download of Moneybox Live, the program about your money. |
| 0:42.4 | Today is all about chasing bad debts and late payments. |
| 0:46.9 | There's a great quote I learnt early in my career. |
| 0:50.6 | Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is king. |
| 0:56.5 | Or you can go with Sir Richard Branson's version. |
| 0:59.6 | Never take your eyes off the cash flow because it's the lifeblood of a business. |
| 1:03.6 | And this is why late payment can be so catastrophic for small firms. |
| 1:10.1 | The Federation of Small Business, the FSB, estimate that around |
| 1:13.2 | 50,000 smaller firms in the UK go bust each year because of late payments. It's not that the |
| 1:21.9 | firms aren't successful or profitable. It's just they cannot get the cash out of their customers. And the FSB has |
| 1:29.2 | launched a campaign for changes to the law to make payment faster. And of course, it's not just a |
| 1:35.4 | small business problem. There are five million self-employed people in this country, and many of them |
| 1:41.0 | also have problems getting paid for work completed in good faith. |
... |
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