Your overseas customer has stopped paying. Here is what actually happens next, in the order it happens.
1. Assemble the documents
Before anything else: the invoice, the contract or purchase order, proof of delivery or acceptance (CMR, bill of lading, signed goods received note), and the correspondence in which payment was chased. Gaps here rarely kill a claim, but they slow it down and weaken your negotiating position. An email in which the debtor acknowledges the balance is worth more than most people realise - in several jurisdictions it restarts the limitation clock.
2. Try pre-legal recovery first
A properly drafted formal demand - in the debtor's working language, quantifying the statutory interest they now owe - does far more than another reminder email. It sets out what is claimed, on what evidence, by when, and what follows if payment is not made. A significant share of commercial cases settle at this stage, faster and at a fraction of the cost of proceedings.
3. Check the limitation clock before anything else
Limitation periods vary widely - from around two years in some jurisdictions to ten in Italy - and the way time is counted varies too. Germany runs the three-year period from the end of the calendar year, so invoices from one year expire together on 31 December. Spain cut its period from fifteen years to five in 2015. If your claim is aged, this is the first thing to establish, not the last.
4. Choose the route on the numbers
Pre-legal recovery, a documentary fast-track procedure, insolvency pressure or full proceedings - the right answer turns on the claim value, the debtor's solvency and what the jurisdiction actually offers. In Germany the Mahnverfahren produces a title in weeks. In England a statutory demand often works faster than suing. In the United States the absence of cost recovery can make a modest claim uneconomic to litigate at all. The route should be chosen once those facts are known, not before.
Send us the file and you get a written view on what is realistically recoverable, the route we would take, and what it would cost.
Submit a CaseCommon Questions
Should the claim be pursued in the debtor's country or mine?+
As a rule, where the money and the assets are. A judgment obtained at home does not produce a recovery unless it can be recognised and enforced where the debtor is - a separate process, with separate cost and separate risk. Where the contract has a jurisdiction and governing law clause, that clause usually settles it.
My claim is small. Is it still worth pursuing?+
Value alone does not decide it; what decides it is which procedure the jurisdiction offers for smaller claims. A documentary payment order can make a modest claim economic. In systems where costs do not follow the event, the same claim can be uneconomic to litigate at all - and we say so at the assessment.
How long does the whole thing take?+
Four to twelve weeks where the claim resolves at the pre-legal stage. Where the debtor raises a genuine dispute and the file moves into proceedings, the timetable extends into months and varies sharply by country. The assessment sets out a realistic timetable for that jurisdiction.