Looking at creditors' lists is by its very nature a depressing experience, especially as the type of list I tend to spend my time looking at generally features a printing company or six. It's a rare business indeed that can be entirely immune to late payment and bad debt - those that have a model involving upfront or direct payment via web-to-print being the envy of printers tussling with 60 or 90 days, or beyond.

Until we have, say, some French-style legislation there is no silver bullet to cure this ailment, but while perusing such a list this morning I was reminded of a system implemented by one printco that has helped it to improve its own figures, so I thought I should share it. Having become fed up with the variety of excuses trotted out for late payment, the company in question has implemented a regime whereby invoice checking and chasing has become an intrinsic part of its operations.

Invoices go out on the day of delivery, then contact is made with the client immediately afterwards to check that the invoice has actually arrived and been entered into their system. The printer also confirms that the client is happy with the details on the invoice, and there are no queries about the content. By doing this, if there does happen to be a query, or a missing invoice, it can then be dealt with at an early stage as opposed to several weeks down the line when the whole process would need to start again.

A week before payment is due the printer contacts the client again, reconfirming that all is well and their invoice is on track for payment by the due date.

Laborious? Yes. Effective? Also yes. Of course this sort of tiresome admin overhead would be unnecessary in a more equable world. But given the realities of the world we do live in, this printer at least has found the resulting improvement in being paid - and paid on time - to be worth the hassle.