Owning a business is always a risk. Will you fail or succeed? Will your business succeed with the constantly changing business climate, or will you find yourself falling flat when you can’t keep up?
What’s the risk in opening a business in which you provide services to your customers and bill them for the work you’ve done? You’re doing the work, but you have no way to know if they’ll pay you for it when you send that first invoice.
Business ownership is a challenge every day, but it’s not always a terrible thing. You have every chance to succeed, and you have the power to take your business to the next level if you put yourself out there and worry about your success rather than everyone else around you.
When it comes to collecting debts owed to you, most of your clients are going to pay when they receive a bill in the mail. If the invoice is a small one, you might not worry too much if they don’t pay right away. You might not even worry if they never pay at all as long as everyone else pays.
However, when you invoice your customer a large amount of money for work you did for them, you want them to pay. Your business cannot succeed if your customers aren’t paying their bills when they’re due. One of the most stressful situations as a business owner is realizing you have a customer who seems to want to avoid paying you for the work you’ve done.
What do you do when you’re involved in a situation like this? You hire Texas collection attorneys to work for you to collect your debts.
Find the Best Attorney
The first thing you’ll do is find the best Texas collection attorneys to help you with your case. You’ll ask for referrals, you’ll talk to past customers, and you’ll consider the fees they want to charge you to do business. You want to be sure the attorney you’re working with has all the power to handle your case without causing you further financial harm by charging too much or not effectively handling their job. Ask other business owners for suggestions, talk to the attorney you want to hire and know what you want when you speak to potential collection attorneys. Being prepared is critical.
Provide All the Facts
No attorney wants to work with a business owner who only sent one invoice to a customer two weeks ago and is in panic mode because they’ve yet to receive a check. Most people provide two weeks to a month to send a payment to the company, and an attorney is going to tell you your case should not be considered for legal action this early. You want to be able to walk into your attorney’s office with copies of at least three letters or emails requesting payment. It’s best your case is at least 60 to 90 days old or even older by the time you contact an attorney. Some people wait years.
When you walk into the attorney’s office with the facts, you need to have a timeline in order. This should include the following:
- The date you were hired
- The date you began working for the customer
- The date you finished work
- Copies of all invoices, documents, signatures, and anything else the customer signed
- Copies of each invoice you sent
- A record of how many times you called the customer to request payment and whether you spoke to them or left a message
This information is helpful to the attorney because they might use it to win your case for you.
What Happens When You Hire an Attorney
Before anything else, your attorney is going to issue one final letter to your client. This letter will be printed on the attorney’s office letterhead, it will be very legal and official, and it will offer the customer a few options. These usually include paying now to avoid any further collection efforts, a timeline for payment, and a deadline before the attorney considers the debt valid and pursues further legal collection action.
Your client will probably pay at this point. Receiving a letter from Texas collection attorneys is one of the scariest things anyone will go through in their life, and they’re too afraid to find out what happens when legal action is taken. On the off chance they don’t respond to your attorney with payment, you might take the case to court. This is going to be small claims court if the debt is less than $5,000. If it’s more, it’s a more serious court case. You have the right to ask that the debtor take responsibility for all the court costs and attorney fees if the case goes this far.