Excuses That Aren't Really Just Excuses

The fact that your customer is having problems getting paid by its own customer isn't an excuse for non-payment - and neither is the fact that your customer company is running at loss - but these days you can't (or at least you shouldn't!) write off any of those factors as being 'not your problem' and press for payment regardless.

If your customer's customer has gone into Administration, for example, or you did sub-contract work for a customer which has not been paid by its own customer, or or your customer's company is running at a loss, then your customer may simply be unable to pay the whole of your oustanding account immediately - or even in the short term. If that is the case, then the only reasonable answer is to compromise - and to try to help your customer to get all its other creditors to compromise also.

Nothing is gained - and much can be lost all round - if one single creditor refuses to be reasonable and insists on immediate payment or takes legal proceedings rather than agreeing to accept settlement over a period, however long that period might be.

Everyone's best option now is to try keep any troubled business active, and trading, and in the land of the living rather than condemning it be yet another 'gone goose' company - out of which nobody, believe me, will get anything at all.