Sample Collection Letters: Ready to Customize for Your Own Use

Benefits: Personal visits, telephone calls, and letters are the three most common collection approaches that small business owners use to collect past due accounts. Since many small business owners simply don't have the time or opportunity for personal visits or telephone calls, a letter is often the method of choice. The attached file contains three sample collection letters, each designed with a different purpose. Each succeeding letter is slightly more strongly worded than the previous one — ranging from a friendly reminder to notification that you are turning over the matter to a lawyer or collection agency. You can easily modify any of these letters to fit your situation or your personal style. Before you modify the letter, don't forget to go to the "Billing, Credit, and Collections" discussion in the CCH Business Owner's Toolkit to review the legal guidelines for what you can and cannot say in the letter.

 
File Description: The file contains three one-page documents in rich text format (RTF) that are suitable for use with most word processing programs used in the Windows environment.

 
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Special Features:

 

bullet All the letters can be quickly customized to fit your needs.
bullet You can choose to send one, or all three, of the letters to a particular customer or client, depending on the circumstances and the client's payment history with your business.
bullet All three letters follow the basic rule of a "good" collection letter: each is brief and succinct. Long rambling letters that insult the customer for not paying and that recite all the hardships nonpayment has caused are much more likely to be ignored or to be thrown away unread.