The Problem of Later Paying Customers

It is a sad fact of business in the UK today that many customers simply don't, or won't, pay on time. They ignore the payment terms that they agreed to when they placed the order. You feel uncomfortable chasing them for the money. So the money sits on your ledger looking older and older each month until its so old and you feel so uncomfortable chasing them, that you either write off the amount or decide to sue them for it.
The fact is that late paying customers are paying late because you let them. Many many businesses now have a payment procedure that starts with 'don't pass this invoice for payment until the supplier chases for it'. So f you are embarrassed to chase for it, you won't even make it onto their payments list at all. Ever.
If you don't ever ring them up to politely ask when you can expect to be paid, you'll never find out if they actually have a good reason for not paying it - like the delivery was incorrect, the invoice was added up wrong, or the invoice never even got to them because you sent it to the goods delivery address and not their invoicing address.
If you want to get ahead of your late paying customers, you need to give them that polite phone call to tell you if they've any problems with the invoice. If you don't ring them, the invoice will sit on their query pile until you sue them. At which point they will answer your solicitors letter with 'but we haven't paid the invoice because its incorrect'; you'll then have to work through the dispute with them, issue a new invoice for them to pay, and you've wasted the solicitors fees for something that you could have found out from a quick phone call.
A good customer who hadn't paid for a genuine reason, may be so cross that you sued them, they will go elsewhere! So you've incurred bank charges on the amount he owes you, solicitors fees to sue him, and now you've lost a good customer. All because you were embarrassed to ring him.
Making those quick phone calls though, is something that many small businesses or their owners find uncomfortable or they simply don't have that time to sit in one place for the time it takes to ring round everyone who owes them money. Larger businesses will have a credit controller or a whole team of them. Its the credit controllers job to contact all their current customers. Make sure all the current invoices are ok to be paid this month, and if not, why not, and sort out any problems so that the invoice can be paid.
For a business, having a credit controller is as vital as having a sales team. There's no point having a brilliant sales team if all the sales they make are paid either late or not at all because no one follows up the money side of things after the sale is made!
Many smaller business owners have never heard of credit controllers, they just rely on bank borrowing to bridge the gap between the sale being made and the customer finally paying.
Some smaller businesses will use freelance credit control. Someone who just comes in on a regular basis for a small amount of time each week or month to make sure all the customers are happy and paying on time.