Paja Debt is delighted to announce a brand new partnership with PaymentCheck, an online tool that lets businesses and contractors check out the payment habits of prospective clients.
As business debt collection specialists, chasing late commercial payments is a big part of what we do. Quite frankly, we wish we didn’t have to. We see first hand the hassle and distress it causes when small businesses don’t receive money they are owed on time. Prevention is better than the cure on this issue and we always advise businesses to be scrupulous in doing your background checks on prospective clients.
PaymentCheck is a great addition to the arsenal of tools available to help SMEs do their due diligence. It’s relatively easy to run a credit check on a business and find evidence of financial stress, a red flag that you might end up not getting paid. But businesses that routinely pay suppliers late either by policy or negligence are harder to pinpoint. That’s where PaymentCheck comes in.
Run by a team that combines 25+ years of experience in online software development, data services and small business management, PaymentCheck is built on a database of payment records from more than 7,000 UK businesses. You simply type in the name of a company into its search bar, and get a detailed breakdown of payment behaviour.
By SMEs, For SMEs
What we love about PaymentCheck is that it is so obviously built by people who get the problems late payments cause for SMEs. Co-founder Alastair Campbell is a seasoned online entrepreneur with multiple digital businesses to his name. He’s been around the block more than enough times chasing money owed. His business partner Mitch Eccles, a software engineer, has experienced the same pain from the contracting side. PaymentCheck is a passion project for both.
Their search tool leverages the fact that, depressingly, the majority of late payments experienced by SMEs come from large companies. Big businesses are also notorious for imposing lengthy payment terms on small suppliers to maximise the amount of money they can earn on interest before having to part ways with money owed. The fact that so many then miss deadlines of 60 or even 90 days is just an added insult.
But large corporations also have to publish detailed financial reports by law. This puts payment data into the public sphere. PaymentCheck scrapes this data and presents the figures small business owners most want to know before accepting a contract – the average time a company takes to pay suppliers, typical payment terms, what percentage of invoices are settled within 30, 60 and 60+ day timeframes, and what percentage count as late (i.e. after agreed terms).
Along with the company search tool, PaymentCheck also features a handy late payment calculator that works out statutory interest and late payment penalties you are permitted to add to overdue invoices in just a few clicks.
Oh, and we should also mention – the payment data checker and late payment calculators are completely FREE to use. On top of these tools, PaymentCheck also offers a range of premium paid-for services, including API access to its database for up-to-the-minute insights, AI-powered custom payment reports, payment performance analysis of existing clients via your own accounting software, and automated payment reminders.
We’re looking forward to working closely with Alastair, Mitch and the team in helping more small business owners and contractors beat the scourge of late payments. In the meantime, we’d strongly recommend giving their free tools a spin. You might find out something interesting about a current or prospective client!
