The cheapest moment to manage a bad debt is before it exists. Run the full check on new customers: registration, accounts, judgments, petitions, charges, people and filing behaviour. Seven areas, five minutes, all on the public record.
Decide the maximum amount any one customer can owe you at any time, and set it from their capacity, not their appetite. The suggested credit exposure on a Black Flag Alert profile is derived from the company's own financials. When the limit is reached, no further supply until the balance clears.
Terms are the dial. A company rated Very Low or Low can have normal terms. Moderate risk earns shorter terms and a lower limit. High risk earns payment on delivery or up front. The exposure shrinks in proportion to the terms.
For material exposure to a weak counterparty, a personal guarantee, a charge over assets, or retention of title moves you up the payment order if the company fails. Unsecured creditors sit near the bottom; secured creditors are paid from the asset charged. The difference is often everything.
The risk events happen on the public register: CCJs, petitions, overdue filings, charges. A watchlist surfaces them when they appear, so you can tighten terms while the company still trades rather than join a queue when it does not.
A late payment is information. Chase it the week it is due, not the month after. The sequence in the invoice recovery guide applies the moment a debtor shows strain: negotiate while solvent, formalise the demand, register fast.
None of these controls is difficult. What separates businesses that rarely eat a bad debt from those that do is consistency: every new customer checked, every limit respected, every watchlist read. The tools to do all of it are on the public record, and free.
Check new customers, set limits from real capacity, and monitor existing ones with watchlists. All free on Black Flag Alert.