When an invoice is written off, it is easy to record it as a $10,000 loss and move on. But the true cost of a bad debt is considerably more than the face value of the invoice — and understanding the full picture changes how seriously businesses treat overdue accounts.
The tax-paid revenue loss
Revenue is taxed before you know whether a customer will pay. A business on a 25 per cent corporate tax rate that earns $10,000 in revenue pays $2,500 in tax on that amount (assuming it is profitable). If the invoice is never paid, the $2,500 tax payment is not automatically refunded. The bad debt deduction available under Australian tax law reduces the taxable income in the year the write-off occurs, but the original tax was already paid. The effective cash loss is the net-of-tax amount.
The time cost
Consider the time spent chasing a $10,000 invoice before it is written off. A conservative estimate: three reminder emails (30 minutes), four follow-up calls (60 minutes), drafting and sending a formal demand (45 minutes), liaising with a recovery firm (30 minutes), reviewing and authorising a write-off (20 minutes). That is roughly three hours of time from a business owner or accounts person. At a conservative internal cost of $80 per hour, the time cost is $240 — in addition to the invoice value.
The opportunity cost
Three hours spent chasing a bad debt is three hours not spent on winning new business, managing existing relationships, or improving the product. For a business owner whose time is the limiting resource, the opportunity cost of every hour spent in unproductive collection activity is real and material.
The working capital cost
While the invoice was overdue — often for three to six months before a write-off decision — the $10,000 was sitting in the debtors ledger, not in the bank. If the business was funding its operations in part from a line of credit at 8 per cent per annum, six months of $10,000 outstanding costs $400 in interest. If the business missed a purchasing opportunity or had to delay a project because the cash was not available, the cost may be much higher.
The revenue required to replace it
This is the calculation that tends to surprise people most. If your business operates on a 20 per cent net profit margin, recovering $10,000 in cash requires $50,000 in new revenue — because only $10,000 of every $50,000 in sales flows through to profit. A single bad debt at $10,000 effectively requires $50,000 of additional sales just to break even on that one account.
What this means for recovery decisions
The cost of pursuing an overdue account — through a recovery firm on a no-collection, no-commission basis — is almost always cheaper than the true cost of writing it off. The commission on a recovered $10,000 invoice is typically a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on the age and complexity of the account. The cost of not recovering it is the full amount, plus time, plus opportunity cost, plus the revenue required to replace it.
If you have overdue accounts you are considering writing off, refer them to Merion first — the recovery attempt costs nothing if it is unsuccessful.