Chasing an unpaid invoice is difficult enough when someone isn’t answering the phone. It becomes a different problem altogether when you no longer know where they are.<\/p>\n
Perhaps a letter has been returned because they’ve moved. A business may have stopped trading from the address you have on file, or the contact details you’ve used for years suddenly lead nowhere.<\/p>\n
That doesn’t necessarily mean the money has to be written off. This is where debt tracing comes in.<\/p>\n
Debt tracing is the process of finding an individual or business that owes money when their current whereabouts or contact details aren’t known.<\/p>\n
There are all sorts of reasons why this happens.<\/p>\n
Some people move home and simply don’t update everyone they deal with. Businesses relocate, change trading names or close premises. In other cases, someone may be deliberately making themselves difficult to find because they know money is owed.<\/p>\n
Whatever the reason, recovery becomes much harder if you’re working with an address that’s several years out of date.<\/p>\n
You don’t necessarily need a huge amount of information to begin a trace.<\/p>\n
A full name and last known address can provide a useful starting point. A date of birth can help where you’re trying to locate an individual.<\/p>\n
Anything else you already have may prove useful too. Previous telephone numbers, email addresses, trading names or information from earlier dealings can all help build a clearer picture.<\/p>\n
It’s worth holding onto this information when you first start working with a customer. You might never need it again, but if contact disappears further down the line, those old details can suddenly become much more useful.<\/p>\n
Professional tracing isn’t simply typing someone’s name into Google and hoping for the best.<\/p>\n
Different sources can be checked and information compared to establish whether someone has moved and where they may now be based.<\/p>\n
Depending on the circumstances, that might involve information from credit reference agencies, the electoral register, HM Land Registry, Companies House and other public records.<\/p>\n
With businesses, Companies House can be particularly useful for seeing changes to registered details, directors or company status.<\/p>\n
No single search necessarily provides the answer. Often, it’s a case of bringing several pieces of information together until there’s enough to establish a reliable new address.<\/p>\n
Not always. It’s easy to assume that someone who can’t be found must be deliberately avoiding payment, but that’s not necessarily what’s happened.<\/p>\n
People move. Businesses change premises. Contact details get forgotten about and paperwork goes to old addresses.<\/p>\n
We’ve seen situations where contact starts again once the right person has actually been found.<\/p>\n
Of course, there are also cases where somebody doesn’t particularly want to be located. That’s where having a professional trace carried out can make a difference rather than repeatedly writing to an address where nobody is listening.<\/p>\n
Finding somebody doesn’t recover the money by itself. What it does is give you somewhere to restart the conversation.<\/p>\n
Once up-to-date information has been established, contact can be made and the usual debt recovery process can continue. Depending on what happens from there, the debt might be paid, an arrangement could be discussed or further recovery action may need to be considered.<\/p>\n
Tracing also needs to be handled properly. There has to be a legitimate reason for locating someone, and the information involved needs to be dealt with in line with data protection requirements.<\/p>\n
At Churchill Recovery Solutions, tracing forms an important part of the wider recovery work we carry out for businesses.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the person owing the money hasn’t really disappeared at all. They’ve simply moved on from the address everybody keeps writing to.<\/p>\n
Finding that out can be the difference between an unpaid account sitting untouched and finally having somewhere to go with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chasing an unpaid invoice is difficult enough when someone isn’t answering the phone. It becomes a different problem altogether when you no longer know where they are. Perhaps a letter has been returned because they’ve moved. A business may have stopped trading from the address you have on file, or the contact details you’ve used […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268,236,226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tracing","category-tracing-debtors","category-uk-debt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t