For Joiners and shopfitters · England and Wales
The shop opened six weeks ago. Your final account has not.
They traded from it the week you finished. It is full of customers. And the final ten per cent is still outstanding because of a snag nobody will come and look at, on a list nobody will close.
What we do about it
We chase every overdue invoice in your name, add the interest the law already says you are owed, and escalate through a regulated firm when somebody takes the mick.
Or one debt as a 60-day trial, with nothing charged unless we get it back.
The one that actually stops you
You already know which invoice this is about.
The snagging holdback is the one that defines this trade. A small defect, real or invented, holds a large final account. The longer nobody inspects it, the more it looks like a payment strategy rather than a quality concern, and the harder it becomes to raise without souring a client you would like to work for again.
Where you stand
You are probably covered by the Construction Act
Not legal advice
Most commercial construction work in England and Wales falls under the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. It exists because Parliament decided cash flow down the supply chain mattered enough to legislate for, and it gives you rights your contract cannot take away.
- If nobody served a valid pay less notice by the final date for payment, the notified sum is payable. Not arguable, payable.
- Pay-when-paid clauses are outlawed. Being told the client has not paid the main contractor is not a reason you do not get paid.
- You can refer a dispute to adjudication at any time, and a decision normally follows within 28 days.
- Where a notified sum has not been paid, you have a right to suspend performance, on notice.
We are not solicitors and this is not legal advice. Hound is credit control: we chase, we add the statutory interest and compensation the law already gives you, and we assemble the evidence. Anything that needs a letter before action, a claim or an adjudication goes to a regulated firm, on your instruction, and only after you approve it.
The bit almost nobody claims
A £6,000 invoice at 68 days is really £6,201.34.
Statutory interest runs at 11.75% a year on a commercial debt, plus fixed compensation per invoice, under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. On that invoice it is £201.34 on top, and it is yours, not ours. Most trades never claim a penny of it, because claiming it means writing the letter that says so and then meaning it.
How we chase for joiners and shopfitters
Same machine. Not the same letter.
This is where a genuine dispute and a stalling tactic have to be told apart, and we do not guess. Anything your customer actually disputes never enters a sequence at all. What gets chased is the undisputed balance, in your name, politely, with the record building quietly behind it in case it ever needs to go further.
Start
Hand us the worst one and see what happens.
Nothing is charged unless we get it back. If we have recovered nothing by day 60 we cancel it ourselves and you are charged nothing at all.