You delivered. You invoiced. And the business that owes you — a real company, with a real address and a real bank account — has stopped answering. So now you’re doing collections work you never signed up for, in the hours you’d otherwise spend selling.
Here’s the short answer: the small businesses that get paid aren’t the ones that chase hardest — they’re the ones that move early with a complete file. Three things decide most commercial accounts: whether your documentation actually proves the debt, whether any individual signed personally, and how much time passed before someone with real leverage got involved. Texas gives you four years to sue on most commercial debts (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.004), but your practical window is months, not years. And because commercial collection runs on contingency, escalating costs a small creditor nothing but the decision.
What follows is what actually moves a B2B account — not a better script for the sixth reminder email.
What actually proves a commercial debt
Most owners treat the invoice as the proof. It isn’t — the invoice is your assertion. Proof is the set of documents that makes the debt hard to argue with, and the difference shows up the moment a customer decides to stall instead of pay. A file that holds up generally has:
- The invoices, with the terms printed on them and the dates legible.
- The contract, signed proposal, or purchase order — whatever the customer agreed to before you started.
- Proof you performed: signed delivery tickets, bills of lading, a work order, inspection sign-off, or the email where they accepted the work.
- A payment ledger showing what was billed, what was received, and how you applied it.
- The correspondence — the promises to pay, the reschedules, the silence.
- The signed credit application and any personal guarantee.
Two things creditors undervalue. First, a partial payment is often the most useful document in the file — a customer who paid part of an invoice, or paid the two before it on identical terms, has a much harder time later claiming the work was defective or the terms were never agreed. Second, a one-line “looks good, thanks” from the person who ordered the work often does more than a contract nobody countersigned.
And if a dispute is real, deal with it now — fix what’s fixable and get the corrected amount in writing. A genuine complaint you ignored for months becomes the debtor’s whole defense; one invented the day you got firm is a stalling tactic, and the paper trail proves which you have.
The leverage you already have and forgot about
Small creditors routinely hold more leverage than they use, because it’s sitting in a filing cabinet from the day the account opened.
Pull the credit application. If you use one, read it again. A properly drafted commercial credit application often establishes the exact legal entity you’re dealing with, the agreed terms, a late-charge provision, an attorney’s-fees clause, a venue clause, and trade and bank references you can use to see who else isn’t getting paid. That page can be worth more than every reminder email you’ve sent.
Check for a personal guarantee. This is the one that changes outcomes. If your customer is an LLC or a corporation and the entity has no money, your claim generally stops at the entity — the owner’s house and personal accounts are out of reach. Unless someone signed personally. A guarantee, often a short paragraph at the bottom of the credit application, means an individual stands behind the balance. Enforceability turns on the wording and the facts, so have counsel read yours rather than assuming — but find out whether you have one before you write the account off.
Know what your paperwork lets you charge. A late fee or interest charge is generally enforceable only if the document your customer agreed to says so; if your terms are silent, you’re limited to what statute provides. (Texas private construction is the exception where statute supplies the rate — overdue amounts under the Prompt Payment Act accrue 1.5% per month, Tex. Prop. Code § 28.004.)
Stop performing. Delivering into an unpaid balance is the most common self-inflicted wound in small-business receivables. Every additional shipment converts leverage into exposure.
Your real deadline is not four years
Texas generally gives creditors four years from accrual to sue on a commercial contract or open account — measured from the date the invoice came due and went unpaid, not from the day you started chasing it (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.004). Our statute of limitations breakdown covers when the clock starts and the industry windows that run much shorter.
Here’s why that number is nearly useless as a plan. Four years is the outer wall of the courthouse, and almost nothing that determines whether you actually get paid survives that long:
- Solvent debtors become insolvent ones. Money that exists in month three is spent by month twelve.
- Entities dissolve and reappear under a new name, with the same trucks and the same phone number.
- The person who ordered your work and knew it was good leaves, and their replacement has no reason to champion your invoice.
- Records go stale — tickets purged, email accounts closed, the informal record that made your claim obvious quietly gone.
Treat the statute as a hard ceiling and your aging report as the real deadline.
One industry note. If you performed construction work or supplied materials, your controlling deadlines are far shorter and they run by month, not by invoice date. For a sub or supplier on a non-residential project, notice to the owner and original contractor is due by the 15th day of the third month after the month you furnished the work, and the lien affidavit by the 15th day of the fourth month (Tex. Prop. Code §§ 53.056, 53.052) — residential runs one month shorter at each step. Suit to foreclose runs one year from the last day the affidavit could have been timely filed (§ 53.158). See the Texas lien deadline reference and when a general contractor won’t pay. Missing a lien deadline costs you the security, not the debt.
When your own effort stops being worth your time
In-house effort genuinely works on the front end. A call from someone the customer knows, in your name, resolves a lot of recently past-due accounts, and it protects a relationship worth protecting. Nobody should outsource a friendly reminder.
The problem is that owners keep going long past the point where it works, because each additional attempt feels nearly free. It isn’t. Collections hours are the most expensive hours in a small company — they’re the hours that would otherwise be spent selling, delivering, or hiring. You can’t invoice for time spent chasing an invoice.
The signals that your own efforts have run their course, covered in more depth in when to send an account to collections:
- The customer has gone silent — calls unreturned, emails unanswered.
- They broke a payment promise, especially a second one.
- They disputed a clearly valid invoice only after you got firm about payment.
- You hear they’re being sold, winding down, or paying other vendors selectively.
- The balance is large enough that writing it off actually hurts.
Any one of those, and more attempts from you are unlikely to change anything — you’re watching the odds decline on your own payroll.
What escalation looks like, and who does what
Be clear on the division of labor. Alexander, Strauss & Associates is a collection agency, not a law firm. What we do is commercial recovery: assembling the documentation into a file that’s hard to argue with, professional third-party demand that signals the account has left your AR inbox for good, skip tracing and asset investigation when a debtor goes dark or reappears under a new entity, and negotiation with someone who now has to answer. Litigation, lien filing, and judgment enforcement are handled by licensed collection attorneys in the debtor’s jurisdiction — we never engage in the unauthorized practice of law.
That distinction matters practically, not just legally. Suing is slow, and a judgment is not money — it’s permission to go looking for money. A great deal of commercial debt gets resolved well before that, by a creditor who is organized and clearly not going away.
Why contingency removes the cost risk
For a small creditor, accounts usually get written off not because the debt is bad, but because every escalation available seems to require money the owner doesn’t want to spend on a maybe.
Contingency collections removes that problem. No retainer, no hourly billing — a fee only on what’s actually recovered, agreed before you place the account. No recovery, no fee. So the real comparison isn’t fee versus free. It’s recovered money minus the fee against what a write-off returns, which is nothing. That’s why an aging account is usually worth placing rather than nursing, and why the balance you assume is too small to bother with is worth ten minutes of asking.
Who you’d be handing it to: ASA has recovered $250M+ across 2,500+ accounts over 25+ years, at a 70%+ recovery rate on accounts we accept — commercial accounts only, money owed by one business to another, which keeps us outside consumer collection rules.
Tighten the next one
Collection is a symptom. Most of the fix is upstream, and cheap:
- Use a real credit application on every new commercial account — legal entity name, terms, late-charge provision, attorney’s-fees clause, and a personal guarantee. Ask before the first delivery, while you still have leverage.
- Verify who you’re contracting with. The name on the truck is frequently not the entity on the invoice, and only the named entity owes you.
- Get performance in writing, and bill large jobs in stages. Exposure that never accumulated never needs collecting.
Where to start
- Pull the file. Invoices, contract or PO, proof of performance, payment ledger, correspondence — and the credit application.
- Look for a signature. A personal guarantee changes what’s collectable, and most owners don’t know whether they have one.
- Date the debt from the day it came due, not the day you started chasing.
- Send one real demand: the amount, the documents behind it, and a specific escalation date you intend to honor.
- Place it when the signals say to, not when patience runs out.
We handle small business debt collection and unpaid invoices for Texas creditors across every commercial industry.
Owed money by another business? Get a free case review — no recovery, no fee. This article is general information for commercial creditors, not legal advice. Deadlines, guarantees, and lien rights depend on your contract and the specific facts — confirm yours with qualified counsel.
General information for commercial creditors, not legal advice. Laws and deadlines change and depend on the facts — confirm specifics with qualified counsel.