Harvest Credit Management Limited works with Hong Kong businesses on the money they are owed. The uncomfortable truth of this trade is that recovery is a function of time, and almost every firm calls us months later than they should have.
The shape of this curve is not controversial and it is not ours — it is how commercial debt behaves everywhere. Chart is illustrative and shows the pattern, not a promise about any particular account.
Most of the value in credit management sits before anything has gone wrong. By the time a debt is genuinely old, the work is damage limitation.
Checking who you are about to extend terms to, and setting a limit that reflects that rather than what the salesperson hopes. A search costs a fraction of an unpaid invoice.
Payment terms that are written, signed and consistent, with interest on late payment and costs stated. A dispute is won or lost by the paperwork agreed before the goods left.
A defined ladder of reminders and calls beginning the day a payment is late, not the month after. Consistency does more work here than firmness.
Negotiation, payment arrangements, and where recovery is not achievable, an honest recommendation to write off or to instruct solicitors rather than to keep paying us.
It costs us business to say this, because early engagement means smaller instructions. It also means our clients get paid.
A company that is late on your invoice is usually late on others. Where there is not enough cash for everyone, being early in the queue is worth more than being loud in it later.
Delivery notes go missing, the person who agreed the variation leaves, and an account that could have been proven in a fortnight becomes a dispute about recollections. Documents age worse than debts.
A supplier who does not chase for four months has taught the customer what their terms actually mean. The next invoice will be paid on the schedule you demonstrated, not the one you printed.
Legal claims do not stay available indefinitely, and limitation periods run from dates you may not have noticed. Where a debt is genuinely old, take advice on where you stand before spending anything chasing it.
Recovery work has a bad reputation and a portion of it is earned. These are commitments, not aspirations, and they hold regardless of what a client instructs. A client who wants any of the following done on their behalf should instruct somebody else.
No. We act as agent for the creditor on a recovery instruction; the debt remains yours throughout and any recovery goes to you less our agreed fee. Firms that purchase debt at a discount have a different set of incentives — worth understanding before you sell a book to one.
Fees depend on the age, size and complexity of the ledger and are agreed in writing before we contact anyone. What we will not do is take an instruction we expect to fail simply because a fee is payable either way. If a file looks unrecoverable, we will tell you at the outset.
No, and treat any firm that does as a firm to avoid. Whether a debt is recoverable depends mostly on whether the debtor has money and whether the paperwork supports the claim — neither of which any agent controls. What can be improved is the speed and consistency of the process.
Handled early and consistently, usually not — a firm that chases politely on day one is simply a firm with a credit policy. The relationships that get damaged are the ones where nothing is said for five months and then everything is said at once.
There is no dedicated licensing regime for commercial debt collection here, which is precisely why the conduct section above is published rather than assumed. Harassment, intimidation and criminal damage remain offences whoever commits them, and a lack of licensing is not a lack of law.
Send an aged debtor listing and the underlying documents for the accounts that concern you — invoices, purchase orders, delivery notes and your terms of trade. We will tell you honestly which of them are worth pursuing, which need a solicitor, and which you should write off.
An aged listing plus the documents behind two or three of the worst accounts is enough for a first conversation. There is no charge for it.