What you fund up front, what comes back if the debtor pays, and the point at which chasing costs more than it returns.
Businesses routinely abandon recoverable debts because they add up the gross cost of pursuing them and stop there. That number is misleading, because a large part of it is not a cost at all — it is an advance.
Added to the debt. The court issue fee, the fixed commencement costs, the statutory interest and the fixed compensation are all claimed from the debtor. You fund the court fee when you issue, but if the debtor pays, it comes back.
Genuinely yours to bear. Our fee, the solicitors' fee beyond what fixed costs cover, and your own time. On a defended small-track claim, costs recovery is very limited, which is a good reason to be honest at the outset about whether a debt is really undisputed.
Three situations where the answer is not to escalate, whatever the calculator says.
The debtor cannot pay. Every step after that point buys a document rather than money. It is worth spending a little on establishing this and nothing on ignoring it.
The debt is genuinely disputed. Then it is not a debt recovery exercise, and the cost of getting it wrong includes the other side's costs.
The debt is small and the debtor is determined. A £600 invoice against a company that will defend anything can cost more in attention than it returns. Sometimes the commercially right answer is a firm letter, and if that fails, a write-off and the VAT relief.
It does not quote our fee. Fees depend on the stage, the number of debts and whether the debtor is a company or an individual, and inventing a number here to make the tool feel complete would be the wrong kind of helpful. Send us the invoice and you get a fixed fee, in writing, before anything starts.
It is added to your claim, so if you win and the debtor pays, yes. If the debtor has nothing, you do not — which is why establishing whether they can pay matters more than any other single question in debt recovery.
On a straightforward debt claim, the solicitors' costs recoverable from the debtor are set by the court rules rather than by the hours spent. They are added to the claim on commencement and again on entering judgment. They will not cover the full commercial cost of the work, but on an undefended claim they cover a meaningful part of it.
It can look cheaper because nothing is payable unless money is recovered. Whether it is actually cheaper depends on the debt: on a straightforward invoice that pays to the first letter, a percentage of a large debt is a great deal more than a fixed fee for a small piece of work. On a difficult debt that takes a year, commission may well be the better deal. We charge fixed fees and say so plainly; if commission suits your case better, that is a legitimate choice.
Then interest continues on the balance and the claim can be amended or settled accordingly. A part payment also has a legal effect worth knowing about: it generally restarts the limitation clock on the remainder, so a part payment on an old debt can make a time-barred debt live again.
One page on statutory interest, the fixed compensation sums and what else is recoverable, with the current rate.
Tell us what you are owed and who owes it. You get back what the debt is actually worth once interest and compensation are added, what we would do first, and the fixed fee for doing it.