Your clients’ least favourite job could actually be a golden ticket UK businesses are owed billions – but the solution needn’t be painful.
@SatagoHQ
Leigh Stallard, Head of Accountancy, Satago Leigh has been in, around and serving the accountancy profession for over 20 years. From working in practice, to talking about marketing strategies over a dining table, to leading organisational change over boardroom tables and everything in between. Leigh is Head of Accounting Partnerships at Satago - where the team helps firms to support their clients whilst finding new opportunities to grow fees.
Great credit control could be the key to supporting your clients’ growth plans – as well as your own. This article is
I
t’s easy, especially after January, to forget that every business you act for represents at least one person on a journey. A person who once decided, for better
or worse, to go it alone and break free from the rails of employment.
It belongs to the Credit Controller. As unique as each person’s journey is – they all share one thing in common. Every single business owner must wear many hats to cover everything that needs to be performed on a daily basis. The hat they wear to do their main job is often the best fitting and most comfortable. It is, therefore, the most regularly worn. The sales trilby or the social media baseball cap can be worn-in with time. But in every business, there is a dark cupboard in a backroom somewhere that is home to one very particular hat. This hat is the least comfortable of all. More uncomfortable even, than the Bookkeeper’s green eyeshades. So uncomfortable that it feels more like an executioner’s mask. Suffocating and imposing to wear. And, like an executioner’s mask –
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is often considered most effective when paired with a Battle-axe.
Even when the sales trilby, the partnerships veil or the networking top hat are firmly back on – once worn, the credit controller mask threatens to continue casting a long shadow. And so, what happens? Invariably, it stays in the drawer until the stress of ever tightening cashflow outweighs the stress of chasing money. Only then is it brought out - with the same gravity and reluctance as an actual executioner – prepared to sever the relationship, if necessary. As a result, UK businesses are left waiting for around £50bn in late payments, according to a survey carried out by digital banking firm Tide. 50. Billion. Pounds.
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