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How to Set up Effective Terms and Conditions Before you Sell on Credit

Written by: Mark Gwilliam

Article Overview: Setting up effective terms and conditions can be a challenge for many small business owners when they are formulating their payment infrastructure. Extending credit can be an effective small business strategy as it allows your business to establish customer loyalty and to increase sales with customers who would not do business with your company otherwise. Consider the following tips when you are setting up your small business terms and conditions:

How to Set up Effective Terms and Conditions Before you Sell on Credit

Understand the Legal Parameters
Each country has a separate standard for credit terms and you will want to familiarise yourself with those laws as you are setting up your small business terms and conditions. What are the legal requirements for customer returns or customer complaints? What are the customer’s rights and privacy laws in your country for small businesses? What disclaimers must your business post to do business with customers?

Establish Procedures
Establish systems and procedures within your small business and across departments to ensure a consistent business approach as it relates to terms and conditions. Consider what your current process is and what the gaps are when establishing procedures and practices in your small business. Define and set up a customer credit policy and communicate it to other team members to ensure a consistent work flow. Develop an application form and consider making it available on your company website for new customers to fill out when they are requesting credit from your business.

Establish a Credit Policy for Your Business
Establish a credit policy for your business which will include the circumstances that you will offer credit, the process to determine a customer’s credit and the terms and conditions that your small business is offering. Select and establish a collections policy for any customer that does not pay or is slow and communicate this process to all employees who would be involved to ensure consistency.

Create a Credit Term Discount
Consider creating a term discount for credit customers such as a 2% net 10 policy to encourage customers to pay their invoices early.

Establishing terms and conditions for your business will help to improve work flow and can enable larger customers who only work on credit to establish a relationship with your business. I encourage you to post a comment about your ideas or practices as it relates to effective terms and conditions that have been effective for your small business. Also, if you are not already a subscriber to my website, enrol to day so that you can continue to receive valuable small business tips such as this.

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Article Tags: application form, business approach, business post, business terms, circumstances, collections, consistency, consistent work, credit customers, customer complaints, customer credit, customer returns, gaps, invoices, legal parameters, privacy laws, small business, small businesses, team members, work flow



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