Practice
Supplier liabilities
A supplier does not file a protest over money. He files it over silence.
Debt with a supplier has a physics of its own: it does not grow through interest, it grows through embarrassment. While there is a conversation, the deadline stretches. When the call stops being answered, collections takes over, the instrument is protested, and what was a commercial matter becomes a credit restriction that closes credit, blocks clearance certificates and reaches every other supplier in the same week.
The most common error is treating all creditors alike. In a book of a hundred suppliers, five can stop the operation and ninety-five merely make noise. Whoever pays in order of insistence tends to settle the noise and leave the site idle. The first thing we do is separate the two groups — and negotiate with whoever sustains the operation before he discovers he holds that power.
Then comes the part almost nobody sees: there is currency for this debt that is not cash. Recognised tax credit, accumulated state VAT balance, receivables brought forward, court-ordered payments. Well structured, the supplier is paid, the operation is unblocked, and the bill was settled with money that already belonged to the company — it was simply kept in the wrong place.
There is a signal that precedes the crisis by weeks: the day the critical supplier starts demanding payment in advance. That is not collection, it is a risk reclassification — he has stopped financing your operation. Whoever acts at that moment negotiates; whoever waits for the protest negotiates with his legal department, which has different instructions and no memory of the relationship.
Monthly fee for the negotiation desk and a percentage of the discount actually obtained, calculated on the difference between the original balance and the agreed amount. An agreement that is not honoured generates no success: the basis is what was paid within what was agreed, with the supplier back to normal supply.
Official sources, at the exact point — the article of law, the service or the search you can use today. None replaces analysis of the specific case, which is our work.
Say in two lines what you need to resolve. An account manager replies personally, in business hours, and the conversation starts where it makes a difference.
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