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hi everybody welcome to our debt recovery uh seminar some advice on how to get your invoices paid my name's jody thompson i'm a practice leader in legal visions disputes team my name is simon julia i'm also in the disputes and litigation team um as a lawyer simon and i work a lot on different sorts of contractual disputes but including debt recovery so we've got a lot of experience in the steps to work through to for companies and businesses to get their unpaid debts recovered um we're going to take you through some of the preliminary stages so the things that you can do yourself as a business without needing a lawyer's help and without going to court um and a lot of that is a bit of homework to start looking at uh the debt and the other party involved and some early communications i'm and the structure of today's talk is um firstly we're going to talk about what you need to do to identify a debt the initial sort of processes and steps you can take to try and recover something quickly we're going to talk about legal demands and negotiations um and then at the end we'll touch a little bit on the court processes very briefly just so that there's an understanding of what comes next um and after that we've got some time to answer questions as well if you've got um an unpaid an unpaid invoice um and these sort of things can be a real cash flow problem for business whether you're big or small it's often difficult to know what options you should take and as we've said there's a lot you can do to start with the first thing we recommend before you do anything once you've realised that something's not being played on its due date is to step back and do a little bit of homework and investigation just to make sure you've got all of your information in order the first step is having a look at what the agreement is between the parties that doesn't have to be a formal signed contract it might be you might have a supply agreement or a more formal agreement you might have an assigned credit application but if you don't uh that's okay the agreement can be formed by an exchange of documents like a purchase order an invoice and in some cases it might just have been an exchange of emails or at worst a conversation uh there can still be an agreement form that you're entitled to claim money on and in terms of the you know what's contained in those agreements one of the the key things you need to look for is who actually are the parties um you know is it an individual who is a sales driver is it a company if it's a company with lots of different entities which entity have you actually entered into the agreement with um it's important to look at that first because any subsequent steps you take like sending a letter or ultimately going to court of you know this sort of last resort you need to be correct in identifying the legal entity that owes you the money and in a theory that should be covered off and whatever the terms of the agreement were um usually by way of vanadium or an acu um it sounds obvious but it we really stress the point because it's something that we see a lot of businesses either making mistakes in on just not being clear on and the fact is that if you want to pursue a debt and if you need to take it to any form of court proceedings this is really important because if you start going after the wrong legal entity then there's no way you can go we see for example a lot of businesses um accepting credit applications and and you might not ever have need to look at this closely until there's an unpaid invoice or a dispute but a lot of other parties might just write down their business name so you can't pursue legally a business name you need to know if it's an individual or a company that's actually operating the business and it's important to have that clear before you take any next steps um and another another thing to think about in terms of who owns the debt it can sometimes be more than one person or entity um a common situation that might arise in is if someone provides a personal guarantee so that what that is is if a company is entering into some kind of transaction but part of that deal involves the director of the company signing some additional paperwork says they're also liable for any debts that may occur so what that means from the outset uh you'd be able to pursue both parties at once and it's often can be a bit more persuasive going after an individual than the company that they could otherwise potentially sort of sit behind and be separated out from um this actually came up with me yesterday i was talking to a client he was trying to figure out why someone had put a caveat on his personally owned house and his company owed someone some money but we were looking at the contract we couldn't figure out or you know this concept doesn't give you the right to put a caveat on your personal property but then i told him to go ticketing and he did find some forms he'd signed a few years ago where he had guaranteed as a as the director of that company and it meant feel all these extra rights for for the other party but because he did they are able to you know secure um over his property so so there's all sorts of legal pathways available to you but it comes back to the documents and it's really clear to look at you know who signed what who can you make a kind of use because that really changes your strategy from the outset and if there is a guarantee uh now's the time to pull it out and put it on the table and from this point it's it's about persuasion um and a bit of pressure and leverage um once you've done that homework and you've got clear that there's an agreement and there's been an agreement for services and they haven't been paid for and you know the parties that you're dealing with and if there's a guarantee you've got them on board as well then you can start taking some steps yourself um look at our biggest advice at this stage and this is certainly something we recommend that businesses do themselves it it does of course depend on how big you are the number of of debts and what kind of resources you might have available but the same principles apply and that is firstly to keep the lines of communication open um we don't recommend even when things move down the track legally to take a you know an aggressive stance it's it's more likely to be resolved you're more likely to to get money if you can keep those lines of communication open and certainly keep civil and professional about it and follow up as a starting point whether it's by email telephone text whatever the relationship or practical option might be for your business um give parties the benefit of the doubt we're all a bit conditioned these days not to do anything until we get a reminder text whether it's a doctor's appointment or otherwise we see a lot of matters get resolved really quickly and easily because there's been an oversight or something missed in an inbox so it sounds obvious but it's a really quick and simple way to get things resolved from the starting point and something you can think about too is setting it up at your end so you've got a process to follow or your accounts team has a process to follow where the moment an invoice becomes overdue perhaps you know an automated email could go out and then five days later you could call them up or something like that so you're addressing a similar process every time so you can figure out early are any of these just there's been a delay with administration or an oversight due to someone not being organized or you know you take those steps this you're still not getting a response um and then you might need to look into sort of taking further escalated action um the other thing that might crop up at this stage is um we think about debts and disputes differently a d is just there's always an assumption that it's money that's owed and in contrast you know every day people will be arguing that actually the money isn't told and it's it's a whole separate question and process if you know you're chasing up someone for invoices and did they turn around and say actually i dispute the sum or i dispute the basis that you know your claim is owed at that point it's a contractual dispute essentially and it's not really what we're talking about today but part of the reason you want to be really rigorous and just following up your details is it's useful to gather information it's good to figure out whether or not if someone is just not paying because this lab or their type of cash flow themselves um or whether you know they're going to be in the bonnet and they want to actually argue about it so that you can then think about how you're going to approach it moving forward and what kind of resources you might want to dedicate to trying to recover if there's a bit of resistance um so yeah that's something that we deal with a lot in disputes and when we're talking to clients the early stages are very much about information gathering it's not so much going in with a sledgehammer to try and um and and scared a life out of the other side it's actually trying to find out what's going on um and in terms of differentiating between a debt and a dispute you could look at a debt there are two types of debtors the ones who can't pay and the ones who won't pay the ones who won't pay have some kind of issue and as simon said that falls into a dispute and that's a quite a different strategy and tactic that we're not really going to cover in the webinar today we're looking at ways to help you with the the other category which is the ones who perhaps can't pay um and maybe there's a financial issue what you want at this stage is to find out those reasons so you're not wasting resources for example running off to court if in fact there's a financial other reason why they can't pay in which case there might be an arrangement you can make and part of that information gathering process is you can do searches online the simple ones you can type someone's ac in into the asic website and you'll be able to see for example if their company's deregistered or in liquidation at which point you know you may have a genuine debt claim but if their company's gone under it just means there's nothing left in the park for you or um or a different process to follow to try and get that sort of small amount out of it um other searches you can do as property type searches ss searches if you can figure out that someone owns a lot of property then perhaps you know even if the company's choking you might still think it's worth putting pressure on them particularly if you've got personal guarantees to rely on um and even google searches about the business name you can often find a bit of gossip almost about what's going on about you know if a company's struggling on strife or you can see you know a lot of court uh court action will be sort of published online so you'll see because other people taking action against someone so it's always good just to do a bit of research and figure out um is it going to be worth chasing this debt or you know dedicating more of my resources knowing that balancing the spending of resources to sort of escalate it legally versus there may be a chance that there's nothing there's nothing there at the end of it you throw a good money after that type of thing usually what happens again debtors will do one of two things they'll either go to ground and put their head down and if they're really having trouble paying it's not uncommon to hear nothing from them at any stage you might find that they've gone quiet they're not responding to any communication and we see that sometimes once we do escalate things to legal action formal demands court claims not a peep from them and and that's how you go down the court part we'll touch on that briefly a little bit later but we're not going to go into a lot of detail in terms of what happens in court but for the other people who do come back to you in some way and give you some information this tends to happen probably in most matters that we work on most debt recovery matters in some way um the debtors put the head up and in more cases than not there's a reason why they can't pay now it might be a cash flow issue generally it might be uh that they're just not able to pay for some reason the full amount in one go and you're seeing a lot with you know the post-code economy a lot of companies are struggling so they've been sort of certain pauses on on certain court procedures so everyone's been hibernating for the last year and now everyone's you know starting to pass up those dicks and dinners are saying look you need to convince the breathing room i'm fighting off a lot of creditors so it's a question of thinking about well is it more of my interest to compromise here and accept at least a sum or accept a payment plan or something along those lines as opposed to you know going guns blazing and going all the way to court etc if there's not necessarily a great chance you'll get all the money back at the end we in most of the matters that we deal with i would say the majority end up in some form of negotiation um with debtors perhaps offering some kind of installment plan some kind of compromise offer and more often than not particularly for smaller debts you know we would urge clients to keep an open mind about that um because ultimately any money that you can get into your pocket is going to be worthwhile and it's generally going to be a better option than refusing any kind of offer or compromise and wanting to wait for the full amount and go to court because there's no guarantee you're going to get that full amount so again it comes back to that idea of keeping those lines of communication open find out what's going on find out what's the best they can offer you you can consider it you don't have to um you know make any decisions about that on the spot obviously a decision for your business and if you've got multiple debtors then that's might be something that your business can't afford to to carry so it'll be a case-by-case basis but as a general principle we'd urge to uh keep an open mind and hear out those type of negotiation discussions to see what might work for you and then especially if it's a bigger gift compromise you know you can be creative with a compromise it might be ultimately a good deal for you even if you're accepting at least some for example if you wrap it up and essentially a new agreement where um it's covered by a personal guarantee which i love to come back to because it's just so much you've just got so much more security if instead of just chasing a company which is financially in trouble you've got a new agreement that says you know the company will pay this installment plan or something on those lines and also there's a guarantee um so yeah it's always worth sort of thinking about is there a deal that suits everyone they're genuine about wanting to resolve it but they can't right now can you ask for something something is you know a further concession from them in exchange for you making a concession um so yeah there's always there's always i mean doing this work day to day it's very rare that we just either go all the way through the court system and get it like full payout um or yeah it's sort of you you might get paid when you're applying your oppression you might negotiate a deal which is perhaps involves some compromise and then it's very rare that um you go all the way through the court system it can be done against case by case um it depends on the size of the dish when you get to this sort of negotiation stage depending on the size of the debt and your business um and and what's involved um if you're prepared to consider some kind of settlement option and if it's a larger debt this might be the point where you want some legal assistance because we would recommend if you enter a new agreement we call it a deed of settlement um that you get a lawyer to help draft it it's a pretty simple document from our perspective it's not usually um complicated but what it means is that for example just say you've got a 100 grand debt that you've agreed they can pay it out over a year you want you want set repayment dates because you want to make sure that if they're going to if they default on any of that you've got a pretty simple uh legal process to follow them up you don't want to be caught in endless admin and chasing yourself and a deed of settlement can make that give you some protections possibly adding a personal guarantee um that's something that that we can help with and we we do a lot for clients to um just arrange payment of debts without having to go to court um something on a slightly different note that i want to touch on is at what point you might want to send a lawyer's letter of demand which i mean we talked about earlier you can have your own processes where you send out a demand when an account is overdue um i mean most people in business are probably senior lawyers that are a demand that just says you know here's the debt here's why the debt's going um 14 days 28 days otherwise we might sue you um it's it's it's an escalation tool if if you're a your attempts to sort of discuss things amicably aren't working you might just want to be a bit more to the point sharp about it um you might want to get lawyers in that letter because it carries a bit more weight in terms of the breach of the legal action um you know sometimes the leaders enough to to bring them to the table and get them to negotiate because they don't realize you're serious about it um i mean other times if you seem to deliver yourself that might be sufficient um but in terms of how we think about these things it's it's sort of step by step and you're always thinking what can we do to to escalate pressure to ratchet up the pressure so if you're not getting anywhere you see the legal letter of demand that opens the door to negotiation great if it doesn't you then potentially want to escalate to the next step which would be core action um and a formal letter of demand is is needed as part of any claim that you make you need to be able to show the court that you've given the other side a fair heads up and proper notice of the debt that's owed so again that's something that you might want to a lawyer to do we do find a lot of debtors who've been very quiet or gone to ground um will put their head up when they see a lawyer's letter that does make some difference um and you know it does refer to court proceedings at the end and it has a firm deadline so that's that's kind of the last step um that you can take really before uh before having to escalate to court proceedings and again whether you do that yourself or if you ask a lawyer to do it it is a fairly usually a fairly straightforward process and from that point um we then advise clients if we're engaged at that point um to have a look at all the information that's there and to consider whether or not to go to court and that's really the point where you then look ahead and see what might be involved next is it worth it for the the costs and the time and the likely outcome yeah and again we'll only touch on the core aspect of this relatively briefly but um something that's useful to think about is if it's if it's a genuine debt that's owing and there's no dispute as we sort of flagged as a bit of a different scenario there's no dispute going through court and getting a judgment is actually a really straightforward process it's just paperwork you you fill out paperwork you file it you serve it on the other side you wait some time depending on the court and then if they don't put into things which in theory that won't there's no argument that the money's not going then you basically get a rather stamped judgment from the court called a default judgment the key thing to note though is that's not the end of the story it's all sort of almost formality getting there getting a judgment then opens up a range of different options to you enforcement options which i won't get into all of them but for example you can try and garnish money from a debtor's a judgment debtor's bank account you can send the sheriff around their properties to try and seize assets um you can even get the ball rolling in a big low legal process that would have a company wound up insolvency or um bankrupting an individual so there's a whole sort of sort of complexity arises and bigger debt recovery matters is thinking about enforcement and thinking about how you can do that strategically as a way to continue to ratchet up pressure um and in our experience certainly in the context of smaller and medium business it's still usually worth settling even if you're halfway through a quick procedure and you're sort of dialing up the pressure um it's still probably better to get some kind of cinnamon deal that's workable than to kind of go all the way to the end and get a judgment and then you might actually have some difficulty in forcing that judgment if you don't have information about the bank accounts there's no money in their bank accounts or they don't personally own any assets that can be seized etc etc the other way we sometimes look at court proceedings if it's appropriate for a matter as issuing um the first application or claim which is usually a statement of claim it's a little bit different in different states but the same process applies and if it's if it's a straightforward debt it's usually a pretty simple matter to to draft and prepare and you can file that in court and serve it on the debtor in ance with the court rules um that process in itself can sometimes scare the life out of people we kind of refer to a lot of these steps in debt recovery is um like shaking an apple tree and you can shake harder at different stages and hope that some apples will fall out and we do see some clients have some success with um you know they'll have nothing from their early stages following up nothing from their own letter of demand nothing from a solicitors letter of demand but the minute the process service serves them with formal court documents they'll pick up the phone and see what kind of deal they can make or what they can do and you and you you have the option then of stopping those court proceedings court proceedings will get expensive and um unwieldy and out of control if the other party files a defense and says that the debt's not owed and that's when you move into dispute territory and again that's probably a another webinar yes um but going back to the initial thing we said about you know you're trying to flush out information early figure out if there is a sort of disputes or grounds for a dispute you can't guarantee even though you've never got a response that they won't suddenly turn around the dispute while you're in court so going to court can be inherently risky in the sense that they do get an opportunity to respond once you know once the trains leave the station with court that's hard to get off and you're not fully in control of the process and you know that's how costs add up there's all sorts of twists and turns and extra information you have to provide and argue about um you know at that point you legal fees add up and so that's all part of the calculus when you're thinking about the cost benefit of debt recovery proceedings um and it's very much very much depends on the individual circumstance because there's so many different variables but i mean there's some super ballpark because it's not that often that we go to court for claims under 10 000 even if they're not contested just because it's just not worth it often from a commercial point of view um but again it depends there are also some uh for example new south wales is the small claims division of the court um some of the tribunals in other states have a debt recovery um sort of jurisdiction so there are sometimes more user-friendly processes that have been designed to be um accessible for non-lawyers to try and recover a smaller debt um so that's yeah that's that's always worth exploring if it's a smaller debt there are kind of diy options um yeah look i think that's probably um as much as we need to cover talking at you we're happy to answer some questions now we've been sent a few yeah um first one can i recover debt going back a year or more yes um the the limitation period for for general dates is six years so you certainly plan for that and there's different statutes of limitations sensitive limitations in every state which sets up the rules of you know how long you can wait before going to court for something um some documents deeds which are different to contracts have a 12-year limitation period so often personal guarantees are deed so often you can rely on a personal guarantee for a very long time which is good to know that's why i like personal guarantees um second question to what extent can we use social media like facebook and chasing the ditch um good question good question um not not recommended in most cases um if you are posting anything about a third party and any public forum be it see any social media really um you might expose yourself to someone arguing that you've actually defined them we've got a matter on at the moment where that's actually going on it's a a debt claim and the person claiming the money has um arguably defined uh the other party by telling the world that they owe the money and um they just cop they copied in an email trail they were sending a you know pay-per-money email but then they copied a whole bunch of unrelated parties in and so that then said well you know if we dispute the debt then the what you've said in this public email wasn't true which gives us a separate legal cause of action and it's mystic let me tell you it's an easy situation so best to keep it um offline or private communications if if the way you deal with that party is by direct message by facebook then that's that's appropriate as long as third parties aren't able to view it as long as it's not a publication which is sort of anything that's in the public domain essentially or accessible by a third party um so this this question um is i sit on the other side whereby i'm interested to know how best to demand when suppliers have invoiced correctly or over built so i think for any business who's issuing invoices and they're not being paid the the the same issue applies if you if the other party says well hang on a minute i'm not paying that because i think you've invoiced me incorrectly our answer here is exactly what we said about keeping the channels of communication open um absolutely share information make sure those details are correct if you've been provided with any invoice that you think is incorrect then question it and make sure the details are correct we call that narrowing the terms of a dispute when it comes to us and that type of information sharing again when done um without any unnecessary aggro can resolve things really quickly because yeah it might typically be a dispute in the sense that you're disagreeing over what's up but if if it's something that you can actually get to the bottom of and figure out actually this line item on the invoice isn't quite right you know you may be able to resolve that dispute without uh um yeah escalating into sort of a legal dispute another thing to keep in mind as well as often if the debts are risen in relation to a contract or service agreement or something like that um there can be a dispute resolution clause which sets out a process that says you know if one party has a problem with you know what they've been invoiced the first thing you need to do is get in contact or send a formal notice or something along those lines so it'll often be the formal procedural part of an agreement that um encourages the party to resolve these things by way of communication and says that you actually can't go to court until you've you know followed through the agreed steps um so in the circumstance of you you think you're being overbuilt probably the first thing to do is look at your contract and see is there a dispute resolution process and if so follow up um there's a question is new south wales the same as queensland um no they're different um but in terms of the work we do they're similar enough um every you know there's different rules in all of the different courts but in principle that the systems operate in a really similar way and the the different nuances of the different state systems you know every place there's a lot of variables in terms of facts and and you know the size of the debt and the companies involved and the parties involved the difference between you know what jurisdiction the debt arises in is just another sort of variable to work through so pretty much everything simon and i have talked about today in terms of early steps and the general principles of knowing the parties and getting the contract right and initial communications that's all quite universal information um the jurisdiction part really comes into play past the letter of demand stage so if you're looking at going to court um the different states and that's not just new south wales and queensland but all of the different states have a different tribunal type arrangement um different some courts they're called all different things it is quite confusing they have different small claims type divisions to give an example there in victoria um v caps does the victorian civil and administrative tribunal covers debt recovery it's actually really user friendly you can kind of log a debt recovery claim just through the website it's really straightforward process lawyers don't need to be involved the new south wales the tribunal doesn't cover pure debt claims you'd often have to go to the small claims division of the local court so these are the sort of variables we're talking about you've got to work through an individual specific case but you know in principle it's going to be similar you're going to be looking at the contract you're going to be looking at where the debt came from you're going to be looking at who the parties are you're going to be thinking about how you can escalate those sort of general principles still apply another question here i'd like to know what my options are if i have a customer on a payment plan that i manage myself and they just don't pay i don't usually order the products or deliver it to them until full payment is made well there's a few things going on there and it sounds like mostly you're managing it very well yourself but it might be that you're prepared to draw a line and uh when the non-payment is a problem for your business you've obviously been able to manage and let them go for a certain period um i think it would be important to communicate clear deadlines so that you let them know that there'll be a point where you're drawing a line in the sand and give them a clear deadline for payment to let them know that you won't be able to provide any more services and perhaps a point beyond that where you depending on how much you want to escalate or add pressure that you will be seeking legal advice um that you might want to recover the full debt mode and you're not prepared to continue business on that arrangement or alternatively there's a large amount owed that you might want to make that payment plan more formalized and you might want to get some advice about a deed of settlement type arrangement that spells it out and makes it very clear rather than a moving feast of ongoing uh you know dates and emails which can get a bit confusing and can be a lot of work for a business to keep track of yeah next question what can be done after getting a vcat judgment and still not being able to recover from clients so this is what we touched on earlier um getting the judgment can be somewhat a formality if the other side is not going to argue about it but then yeah there's a whole range of of steps you've got to take after that with vcap the first thing you have to do is register it with the magistrates call and victoria and then you need to potentially see the statutory demand alongside the judgment which says if you don't pay this judgment in three weeks you've committed an active insolvency which then means that you could if they don't apply to the company you wound up an insult which is a sort of you know two three month of court procedure and so on that's just one option so it's it's if it's a significant debt this is probably the point not to sort of spruce our services but this is the point you probably want to have a chat with a lawyer what are my missions and and what's something what can i strategically do that's commercially sensible to try and recover this this judgment because it's not the end of the story unfortunately in some regards it's the start of the story the other thing to keep in mind if you do end up in tribunal or court proceedings and you end up with a judgment so a judgement in it as someone said a smaller tribunal like bcat or the new south wales version which is ncat can be formalized and registered in another court but a judgment can be quite [Music] a hefty tool in and of itself because once a judgment presented against a company or an individual then it affects their credit rating the credit ratings agencies have means of monitoring court judgments and they will apply that automatically so your your debtor if you might not have your passion you might have just got to the point where you've been able to get a court judgment against them but they might find that they're not able to get any additional finance for their business as a result uh so a judgment in and of itself can really stop some businesses in their tracks if they're still trading or if they're having some financial difficulties and wanting to get more um to get more finance we we do find that in in many cases but otherwise it's a question of those enforcement options and um we've been on the other side of that affair about where companies have got judgments against them and then they say hang on i i this is damaging my credit walkman so that then turns into a process if you need to negotiate with the other side and say well i'll pay the debt if you agree to have a judgment on it which they don't necessarily have to do so it is actually a good leverage point if um question we have a few small debts ranging from 150 to 500 from about 8 to 10 people is it worth going to a debt collection agency um well it's good to talk about debt collection agencies actually because they're different to what we do they'll usually you can sell them your debts or they'll work on a commission basis so it can be a really low cost way to have someone act as your agent to do those early follow-up steps of calling and emailing and they can be quite persistent and annoying um the thing is with a debt collector if you're not successful at just chasing someone they usually you know what they'll usually do is refer to a lawyer to actually take it through the court system like they don't have any sort of additional powers that that ultimately have to follow the same process um so what that means in terms of cost benefit is smaller debts unfortunately often there's no commercially viable way to pursue them i mean you might be able to outsource it to a to a debt collector on a no one no fee basis or something where they sort of keep the majority of it um if they recover it but yeah from from a pregnant point of view debts of their silence 150 to 500 are often considered bad debts just because the sort of resourcing you'd need to pursue them isn't worth doesn't work retirement money so i guess it's a commercial decision for your business if there are enough of them that doing any of the initial chasing that we've talked about today is just an administrative burden that your business doesn't have the resources to cover then um a debt recovery agency depending on the type of fee arrangement that they're offering you know might be a good outsourcing option for you um but they can you know they can come with their own hidden costs so it's worth having a good understanding of how they charge and yet they're not really going to be able to do any magic that you probably couldn't do yourself all right next question i often structure my project fees as 50 up front and 50 on completion and what potential issues should i be aware of when structuring this way well i think in an ideal world you'd get paid up front and then you'd never have to do any deep recovery um you know getting 50 up front it's also better than getting nothing up front um what you can charge how you can structure your payments is something you know it'll depend on your sort of bargaining position and industry standards some industries you just might not be able to get away with payment upfront other industries you might be able to do it um the more you're uh having paid after that the services of goods are delivered the more exposed you are to a dealer not paying you and then you having to invest time and resources into pursuing it um so it's just it's a balance of commercial considerations really should i make it all upfront and perhaps have at least sort of sweet deal for the client um or should i you know allow them to pay some afterwards but put a bit of you know i accept a bit of risk there because i might have to take steps to recover you know flowing from that say you your service is a 500 job and and you know that chasing 250 isn't going to be worth it commercially that might mean that it's smarter to give payment up front for a transaction of that size on the flip side if it's 50k job you know short pay the payer pay balance pay 50 percent balance on completion and if you don't pay you know it's probably worth pursuing 25 grand court system if need be we see a lot of those sort of um contracts that end up in disputes between the parties um obviously lots of construction type contracts and software design type contracts will have staged payments like that and very often the disputes are around what work was provided and when because what seems to happen for a large scope of work is that there are often changes to that scope there are variations so this is probably lesser debt recovery issue more of a contractual and avoiding disputes type arrangement but from the type of disputes we see um our advice from the beginning would be uh to try and make sure you've got things documented very clearly that your any invoices that you're issuing very carefully reflect any initial contract and scope of work that any variations or changes are very clearly documented so that the person receiving the invoice won't get a surprise all of those things will increase the likelihood that the person receiving the invoice well if it's not clear that they're going to dispute it and get into a payment dispute so it's more a question of having your paperwork in order and really clearly really clearly spelt out and documented good cool we're done yeah looks like we're um backpacks at the time um a couple of couple of housekeeping things we've got a deep recovery guide a nice pdf you can download circulated in the browser and if anyone has any other questions about debt recovery um or that our team might be able to help with there'll be a link coming through and a survey i think following the webinar with a link for a complimentary consultation um with a team at legalvision that we can help with all the sorts of questions and information that we've given today but thanks for your time yeah thank you good job give you some some tips to get started and get some some of that cash rolling in