One of the important aspects of successful project management is the management of risk.
This includes identifying risks and prioritising them. Then for the highest priority ones, you can do something about them. E.g., see if/how you might steer clear of them, reduce their potential impact, etc.
But how do you prioritise them? The method I use is to assess their probability of occurrence, the severity of the impact if they do occur, and the difficulty of detecting their occurrence. And I do this on a scale of 1 to 5 for each of those 3 factors. Then you multiply the 3 numbers for each risk and, hey presto, all your risks have a “score” of between 1 (1*1*1) and 125 (5*5*5).
You can do the same with debtors. All debtors are not equal. Debts have different ages. They have different amounts. They are owed by customers of different levels of importance.
But the same principle applies. You can rank them and then attack them in top-down fashion. I had a bad debt last year of £60 or thereabouts. I wrote it off. It wasn’t worth my time even keeping it on my radar screen.
Dealing with challenges like bad debt is just one of the many sorts of issues that you can get help on from trusted, business confidantes in a mastermind group. You can read here for more on my approach – and then let me know if you want to register your interest in joining.