This is a tricky one in that the USA Administration seems to be ignoring the claims from BP that the USA firms that performed the initial drilling and fitted the well head should also be held accountable for the oil leak disaster. This ends up with BP as being seen as the only enterprise responsible, so any other firms that BP had employed for other parts of this project could well be losing out in some way. By far the biggest losers could be the shareholders, of which pension funds are in the majority and depend on the dividends to keep their funds viable. As for small firms which have completed projects or supplied goods for any of the other, larger firms on the project, it seems unjust if any of them are left with late accounts. For any small enterprise that is left with an late account beyond the agreed completion date their best move could well be to call up the large enterprise concerned to find out when it will be cleared. If they don’t get a satisfactory result and the large enterprise doesn’t seem like it is going into administration, their best bet could well be to look into Debt Collection to get the account cleared.

The small enterprise could not want to spend any time on the Debt Collection project and so could simply hand it over to one of the usual Debt Collection services; solicitors or Debt Collection Agencies. However if the small enterprise wants to economise and has time, then they could be better looking into taking on the Debt Collection project themselves by using Debt Collection Software. The cost difference between solicitors and Debt Collection Agencies, and Debt Collection Software can be large, depending on the account value, since solicitors and Debt Collection Agencies charge around 10% to 20% or more of the account value. Debt Collection Software can cost around ?40 for a decent system, but in reality it does demand commitment and resources from the small enterprise to make Debt Collection Software work.

The small enterprise will need to designate resources of time and members of staff if they are to make efficient use of the Debt Collection Software, but the members of staff will not be effective if they don’t know what the job entails. When finding out about the Debt Collection Software packages, the small enterprise should look at the instructions to see how good the training section is. They will need to be training on both the Debt Collection process itself and then the role played by Debt Collection letters. There should be training on appropriate legislation and also any useful sentences that Debt Collection Agencies use. The members of staff selected to create the Debt Collection letters should have a good understanding of English so that there are no spelling or grammatical mistakes in the Debt Collection letters or this could have a detrimental effect on the Debt Collection process, as well as possibly harming the commercial relationship between the two firms.

However with sufficient training and dedication the small enterprise should be able to use the Debt Collection Software system to get the large enterprise to pay the account, at a cheaper fee than solicitors and Debt Collection Agencies charge.