Professional services debt recovery

Consulting fees, advisory retainers, and project-based billing. When clients benefit from your expertise but don't pay for it, we recover it.

ELENA, Managing partner, Madrid. Did the work. The approver left the company. A German-speaking collector finds who signs now. New approver. Old invoice. Paid.

Professional services have a payment problem that is both infuriating and, on some level, philosophically interesting. You sell expertise. Your deliverable is advice, strategy, design, analysis — output that exists in documents, presentations, and the improved decision-making of your client. When a manufacturing client doesn't pay, you can at least point to a warehouse full of components. When a professional services client doesn't pay, you point to a PDF. The client nods, confirms they received the PDF, confirms they implemented your recommendations, confirms that the recommendations generated significant value for their business, and then explains that the invoice is "still being processed."

The processing, in professional services, is never-ending. Consulting firms, law practices, design agencies, and advisory businesses share a common experience: the client who derives enormous value from your work but treats your invoice as a suggestion rather than an obligation. The strategic review that reshaped their market approach? Invaluable. The brand identity that they've printed on every piece of collateral for the past two years? Transformative. The payment for this work? Under review. Still under review. Permanently under review.