Our Services

Midas - the service

Head of service Steven Docherty

What is Midas Credit Management?
On this page, we briefly describe how our Midas Credit Management service actually works in practice. You will be delighted to know, though, that it is simplicity itself.

After you sign up to Midas Credit Management, whenever you issue an invoice to a customer, send a copy to us. We will input it into our dedicated computer system, and will automatically diarise its due date. If, by the due date, the invoice has not been settled (and we will check with you if it has been), we will immediately start chasing for payment.

We believe that the most important time for recovery of your ledger debts is the first 30 days after your terms have expired. More often than not, companies do little about their invoices during this period, and only start worrying and taking action after maybe 60 days have expired since the invoice was issued. By then, the trail can often be cold - the customer could have disappeared, or gone bust.

If the invoice is to be disputed, the company will have also wasted the period after the invoice became overdue, because the customer will only mention the dispute once pressure starts to mount.

When we start chasing for payment, we will initially write to your customer to “remind” them of the invoice. We can be as friendly or as threatening as you like - we recognise that, even though a customer may be a slow payer, you may still want to keep them as a customer, so we won’t step over the line when chasing payment, unless you want us to.

If the initial letter does not result in payment straight away, our team will swing into action by engaging your customer through telephone calls and other correspondence. We can make as many or as few calls as you like. We will deal with any queries raised by your customer, or any disputes about whether the invoice is due. Where necessary, we will refer these to you, but we will probably be able to deal with most queries which arise.

This is where we are different. Our experience is that it is the early engagement with customers which results in quicker and fuller recovery - the sooner the dialogue starts, the better. We find that better results are achieved this way than by the traditional lawyer’s approach of issuing a “pre-sue” letter and then just raising a court action. Most of our lawyer competitors still take the traditional route - we believe in doing things differently, and better.

Working to parameters set by you at the outset, we will chase your customer for as long as you wish, advising you the whole way on your recovery prospects and what the best “next step” should be. Again, we are unique in this way because we can offer a “one-stop-shop” when the time comes to taking the matter to court - when non-lawyer debt collection agencies run out of ideas or are simply unable to collect a debt, they have to send the papers to a firm of lawyers to raise court action. Because we are lawyers, but also have the resources to properly manage your ledger, you will only need to deal with us.

The critical advantage for you is that we engage with your customers early and often. Our team is trained to anticipate and deal with most disputes which might be raised, but even if they cannot deal with it without your input, the dispute will at least have been brought to your attention at a much earlier stage than if you had relied only on a “pre-sue” letter and then a court action.

Quite simply, therefore, we aim to manage your ledger, and obtain recovery within 30 days after expiry of your credit terms. If we cannot do so, we will tell you why, and will not charge you a penny (see our section on Costs for our affordable charges for successful recoveries). Even if we do not recovery the debt, the work done during the initial period will nevertheless turn out to be invaluable if you decide to go down the route of taking court action.


Flexibility Built in
As we explained on the Midas Credit Management summary page, we have designed our service to be as flexible as you need it to be. We do this by asking you to set parameters for us at the start (which you can change as you go along, of course), which define how we work for you.

These parameters include:-

1. How quickly you want us to contact your customer after the invoice becomes due.
2. What style of letter you want us to use when we write to your customer.
3. How many letters you want us to write.
4. How many phone calls you want us to make to your customer.
5. How regularly you want us to contact your customer to chase for payment.
6. How often you receive reports from us, and what those reports should contain.
7. When we should end our efforts and move to court action.

The aim of setting these parameters is so that we know that we are working to achieve exactly what you want, hopefully without ruining your customer relationship. Just give us your parameters at the time you are instructing us, and we will input them directly into our computer system, and get underway.

Our Costs
Our cost structure for Midas Credit Management is straightforward. Basically, if we don’t get your cash for you, you won’t have to pay us a penny.

Obviously, we have to be slightly more specific than that. So when we are signing our clients up for the Midas Credit Management service, we will always take time to explain how the charging system works.

For most clients, we will undertake our recovery efforts using our Midas Credit Management system for either the length of time set by you when you instruct us, or until you tell us to stop and raise a court action. If, by the time our efforts are at an end, we have been unable to recover money for you, we will not charge you a fee. This includes the situation where you instruct us to stop working under Midas Credit Management and to proceed instead to court action (although the court action fees described elsewhere on this site would apply in that event).

If our efforts come to an end because you have decided to accept a reduced sum from your customer, or you have decided to accept payment in instalments, we will charge a fee because you will have made a recovery.

Our fee is usually based on the value of the invoice we are asked to recover, and will either be a flat rate or will be a percentage. Below is an example of the type of fee structure we apply when we secure a recovery, although the fees we charge will depend on the client, and will be worked out specifically with you before we start:-

Invoice value Sample fee
£0-30 £6.00
£31-50 £9.95
£51-100 £14.95
£101-300 £26.95
£301-500 £45.00
£501-800 £70.00
£801-1,000 £90.00
up to £2,000 £170.00
up to £3,000 £255.00
up to £5,000 £385.00

The particular fee structure which we work out with you will be based on the volume, type and value of the invoices which you instruct us to recover, and you can be assured that we will not go ahead unless we have your agreement in advance about what the fees will be, and when we will charge them. Remember, if we are unsuccessful, we will not charge a fee at all.

More information on costs can be obtained by contacting us directly. Please follow the link on the right to the Contact page and get in touch if you require more information.

 

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