30 Years of Commercial Disputes - What I've Learned About Recovering Business Debt
Hi, my name is Jodi Tierney. I have been dealing with commercial disputes for more than 30 years. Working with businesses and individuals in Ashford, across Kent and in London.
I am a Consultant Solicitor at JPP Law and the founder of B2B Debt Recovery Solutions. I have also held several senior legal positions during my career, including Partner, Head of Litigation and Managing Director. Those roles have given me experience of commercial disputes at every level, from early negotiations through to complex High Court litigation.
I have seen relatively straightforward disagreements resolved with one sensible conversation. I have also seen disputes run into years of litigation, substantial legal costs and the High Court.
An unpaid invoice does not automatically belong in the second category. Far from it. But experience changes the way you look at these things.
When somebody tells me they have not been paid, my first question is not necessarily: How many times have you chased them?
I want to know: Why haven’t they paid you?
Because that is normally far more useful. There is a difference between somebody who has overlooked an invoice and somebody who is buying themselves time.
There is a difference between a customer experiencing a temporary cash-flow problem and a business in more serious financial difficulty.
And there is a very big difference between an unpaid debt and a genuine commercial dispute.
Until you know what you are dealing with, you do not really know what the next step should be.
Why hasn't my customer paid the invoice?
There could be a perfectly straightforward explanation. There could also be a much bigger problem. Your job is to find out which.
That sounds obvious.
Yet I regularly see businesses spend weeks sending reminders without getting any closer to answering the question.
An invoice becomes overdue.
Accounts send an email.
Another email goes out.
Someone phones.
The customer promises payment on Friday.
Friday comes and goes.
They promise next Wednesday instead.
Another reminder is sent.
Before you know it, a month has disappeared and absolutely nothing has changed.
If somebody has not paid, start looking at what they are actually telling you through their behaviour.
- Have they acknowledged the invoice?
- Have they agreed that the amount is due?
- Have they explained why it has not been paid?
- Have they promised a payment date?
- Have they already missed one?
Most importantly – Are they still communicating with you?
Has a complaint about the work suddenly appeared, despite never having been mentioned before? These things matter.
A broken payment promise gives you information. So does silence. So does a dispute that only materialises after somebody asks for the money. It does not necessarily tell you the whole story, but it tells you far more than sending reminder number six.
When should I stop sending payment reminders?
When they stop achieving anything. There is no magic number. I cannot tell you that three reminders are acceptable but four are too many. Every debt and every commercial relationship is different.
What I can tell you is that repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result is not a recovery strategy. If a customer has forgotten an invoice, a reminder may solve the problem. If they are waiting for authorisation, a phone call to the right person may solve the problem.
If they have promised payment on a specific date, it may be entirely reasonable to give them until that date. But if every deadline moves as soon as it arrives, you need to pay attention to that.
Another seven days becomes another seven days remarkably easily.
At some point you have to stop repeating yourself and change the strategy. That does not mean immediately issuing proceedings. It may mean:
- Speaking to somebody more senior.
- Establishing whether there is a genuine dispute.
- Formalising what has previously been informal chasing.
Or it may mean handing the debt to somebody whose job is to take the conversation forward. The point is that something has to change.
Does giving a customer more time protect the commercial relationship?
Sometimes. But being reasonable does not mean being indefinite. This is where businesses often become stuck.
You have worked with a customer for years. They place substantial orders, and have always paid eventually. You do not want to create a problem where there isn’t one.
I understand that.
Debt recovery takes place in the real commercial world. Customer relationships matter. But so does being paid.
If somebody says, “We need another week,” and you decide commercially that another week is sensible, fine. If the same conversation happens every week for two months, you are no longer making the same decision.
You are allowing the position to drift.
There is also a tendency to think that asking firmly for payment will somehow damage an otherwise good business relationship. I would turn that around. If one business has supplied the goods or carried out the work it agreed to provide, and the other is repeatedly failing to pay what it agreed to pay, the commercial relationship is already being affected.
Wanting to preserve a customer relationship is sensible.
Allowing another business to use yours as an unofficial source of credit without any proper agreement is something else.
What documents do I need if an invoice hasn't been paid?
You need the documents that show what was agreed, what was supplied and what happened afterwards.
Again, straightforward.
But often neglected.
Depending on the transaction, that might include:
- the contract;
- your terms and conditions;
- the quotation;
- the purchase order;
- the invoice;
- delivery or completion records;
- correspondence about the work;
- emails agreeing changes;
- payment promises;
- and correspondence relating to any complaint or dispute.
Why?
Because memories change very quickly when money is involved.
“We never agreed that.”
“That wasn’t included.”
“The work wasn’t completed.”
“That wasn’t the price.”
“We raised this weeks ago.”
If you have clear records, you can deal with those statements properly.
If you do not, what should have been a straightforward recovery can become considerably more difficult.
And no, this does not mean you should prepare every invoice on the assumption that somebody is going to take you to court.
It means running a business properly.
Do not wait until a dispute starts before you go looking for the evidence.
When does an unpaid invoice become a commercial dispute?
When the issue is no longer simply that the invoice hasn’t been paid, but whether the money is actually due.
That distinction matters.
Some businesses call every unpaid invoice a dispute.
It isn’t.
“We haven’t got the money this week” is not a dispute over liability.
“We are waiting for one of our customers to pay us” is not a dispute.
“We’ll pay you at the end of the month” is not necessarily a dispute either.
A dispute arises when somebody challenges the basis on which you say the money is owed.
- They may say the goods were defective.
- They may say the work was incomplete.
- They may challenge the agreed scope.
- They may say the price was different.
- They may rely on a contractual term.
- They may claim they are entitled to set off another amount.
Some of those disputes will be perfectly genuine.
Others may be considerably less convincing.
Either way, once the issue becomes why they say they do not owe you the money, simply sending progressively firmer reminders is unlikely to get you very far.
You need to understand the argument.
- What exactly are they saying?
- When did they first raise it?
- What does the contract say?
- What does the correspondence say?
- What evidence exists on either side?
That is the point at which debt recovery and commercial dispute resolution begin to overlap.
What if the customer only raises a dispute after I chase for payment?
Take it seriously, but look at the history. I have dealt with commercial disputes for long enough to know that timing matters. If there was genuinely a serious problem with work carried out three months ago, you would normally expect there to be some evidence of it.
An email.
A phone call.
A complaint.
A request for remedial work.
Something.
That does not mean a late complaint is automatically invalid. It does mean you should look carefully at what has happened.
Ask what the complaint actually is.
Ask when the issue arose.
Look back through the correspondence.
Do not get drawn into an angry exchange because you believe the complaint is an excuse.
Equally, do not assume that because somebody has used the word “dispute”, your invoice has somehow ceased to exist.
Establish the facts.
Then make a decision.
Should I threaten court action for an unpaid invoice?
Only if you understand what you are threatening and are prepared to decide whether to follow through. I have seen plenty of emails saying:
“Pay within seven days or we will issue proceedings.”
Then seven days pass.
Nothing happens…
Another email arrives.
“Pay within 48 hours or we will have no option but to issue proceedings.”
Nothing happens again.
A month later another “final” warning is sent. By that point, the threat has achieved precisely the opposite of what was intended. The debtor knows you are not doing what you said you would do.
Court proceedings are not punctuation for a strongly worded email.
Before contemplating legal action, you should understand the position.
- Is the debt due?
- Is it genuinely disputed?
- What evidence do you have?
- Does the debtor appear able to pay?
- What has already happened?
- Is there another commercially sensible route to resolving it?
And if proceedings are necessary, what are you actually trying to achieve?
Frustration is not a reason to litigate.
There needs to be a commercial decision behind it.
Does every serious unpaid debt need to go to court?
No. Absolutely not. Perhaps surprisingly, one of the things decades of litigation teaches you is not to litigate unnecessarily.
Court proceedings have a purpose.
Sometimes they are entirely justified, but there is no realistic alternative.
But litigation costs money. It consumes management time whilst creating uncertainty. Even where you have a strong case, you need to think commercially about the outcome you are trying to achieve.
There are other ways of resolving commercial problems.
- Direct negotiation.
- Debt recovery.
- Payment arrangements.
- Mediation.
- Settlement.
- Formal legal action where required.
The appropriate route depends on the circumstances.
The objective should not be to make an unpaid invoice as confrontational as possible.
The objective is to recover the money using the most sensible route available.
Why does litigation experience matter in debt recovery?
Because knowing where a commercial dispute can end up helps you make better decisions much earlier. I continue to work in complex commercial litigation alongside my work with B2B Debt Recovery Solutions.
Most recently, in my capacity as Consultant Solicitor at JPP Law, I led the defence strategy for three non-executive directors in Garden House Software Limited v Marsh & Ors [2026] EWHC 2184 (Ch).
It was a long-running and complex matter which proceeded to a three-week High Court trial.
The claims against JPP’s three clients included allegations that they were de facto directors who had breached duties owed to the company and its creditors, together with allegations of conspiracy and dishonest assistance. Those claims were rejected by the High Court.
The wider proceedings involved insolvency, directors’ duties, creditor interests and the transfer of valuable intellectual property.
Most businesses will never find themselves involved in a dispute of that scale (that is a good thing). But you do not need a High Court dispute to benefit from somebody who understands what one looks like.
Commercial litigation teaches you to look ahead.
- What happens if this point is challenged?
- What evidence supports it?
- What is the other side actually saying?
- Is this position getting better or worse?
- What is the sensible commercial outcome?
Those questions are just as relevant when dealing with an unpaid invoice worth thousands of pounds, as they are when dealing with litigation worth millions.
The scale changes, good commercial judgement does not.
When should I hand an unpaid debt over to somebody else?
When your internal process has stopped moving the matter forward.
That point is different for every business.
It might be obvious.
The debtor has stopped answering.
Promises keep being broken.
A payment plan has failed.
A dispute has appeared and your finance team is spending hours trying to untangle it.
Or it may simply be that somebody in your business is spending an unreasonable amount of time chasing money that should have been paid weeks ago.
There is also something else that happens when a debt is handed over.
The conversation changes.
The same customer who has ignored five emails from your accounts department may respond very differently when an independent recovery specialist contacts them.
Sometimes the next step is not another email.
It is changing who is having the conversation.
What has 30 years of commercial disputes taught me about unpaid debt?
Quite a lot. But if I had to reduce it to the things I would want businesses to remember, they would be these.
Find out why you haven’t been paid.
Do not spend weeks chasing without establishing what is actually happening.
Keep your paperwork in order.
You cannot control whether somebody challenges an invoice. You can make sure you are able to show what was agreed.
Pay attention to behaviour.
One missed payment date may mean very little. Repeated broken promises mean something.
Do not confuse being reasonable with doing nothing.
Giving somebody time can be a perfectly sensible commercial decision. Letting the debt drift indefinitely is not the same thing.
Do not make threats you are not prepared to act upon.
Especially threats of legal proceedings.
And know when your internal credit control process has done what it can.
There is a point at which another reminder is simply another reminder.
B2B Debt Recovery Solutions – Bringing a Fresh View
I founded B2B Debt Recovery Solutions because businesses should be able to access commercially experienced debt recovery before an unpaid account becomes an unnecessarily complicated problem.
We are commercial, not confrontational. We are also there to get the conversation moving again. If you are owed money and your usual chasing is getting you nowhere, talk to us.
We will look at what has happened, what has already been tried and what the sensible next step is. If an unpaid account is starting to take more time, attention or energy than it should, it is worth getting a fresh view on it.
