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- 21/1/2025

Debt collection: valuable help for entrepreneurs from the SDI!

3 min

Your new business is taking off, as are your revenues and profit... unless your clients don't pay! How can you collect the money owed to you without incurring significant costs when you're just starting out as an entrepreneur? Xavier Leblanc – who’s been a consultant for four months and is an SDI member – explains how.

"I didn't expect to find myself in this situation: despite several reminders and even though I did a great job, my €425 invoice remained unpaid. Worse still, this dishonest client told me that I wouldn't have the guts to do more than send reminders, because taking legal action would be too expensive," explains Xavier. It’s easy to understand what an unpleasant dilemma this was for Xavier: either give up on the money he was entitled to, or start proceedings that could end up costing more than the amount he would recover.

What to do without incurring excessive costs

But what this dishonest client didn't know was that, as an SDI member, Xavier would be able to take action to collect what was owed to him without incurring excessive costs. "Potential lawyer's fees seemed disproportionate to me at first compared to the €425 I was owed. But at the same time, it didn’t seem right to give up on it. And when you're just starting out, every euro counts! So I was delighted to learn that my SDI membership gave me the right to have a judicial officer take action to collect the debt. I just had to provide SDI with the debt collection request and supporting documents, and a judicial officer’s practice sent a formal notice to pay to the client. And it worked: a few days later, the money was in my account!”

A formal notice to pay, and much more!

The cost for Xavier was negligible in the end, because the SDI covers a significant part of the judicial officer’s fees for its members when the action results in payment of the debt, and all of the fees if it doesn’t. And SDI's support doesn’t stop with a formal notice from a judicial officer, as Xavier points out.

"My case manager at SDI explained to me that if my client didn’t respond to the formal notice or the reminder sent by the judicial, I wouldn’t pay anything at all, and I could also count on SDI’s help with starting court proceedings to recover the debt owed to me. I would then have received a free case review by one of their partner lawyers assessing my chances of winning in court. And if I decided to start proceedings, I could have benefited from the services of that lawyer at preferential rates."

The benefits of becoming an SDI member

Like Xavier, all fledgling entrepreneurs who are SDI members benefit from highly practical support with debt collection, but also from legal assistance and administrative support, including document templates. As a starter client of BNP Paribas Fortis, you also get a discount on your SDI membership fee.

Discover all your benefits in detail

 

ASBL Fédération des Commerçants, Artisans et PME du SDI, Drève Richelle 161 K, 1410 Waterloo, Belgium – VAT BE 0471.795.627 - RPM Nivelles

In this article
What to do without incurring excessive costsA formal notice to pay, and much more!The benefits of becoming an SDI member