Frequently asked questions

The first step that the bailiff will take is to conduct a solvency investigation. If this investigation determines that your debtor has a risk of insolvency, you will be contacted by the bailiff. The choice is then up to you whether to terminate or continue the procedure.

If you decide to terminate the procedure at that point, you will be refunded your advance payment, after deduction of the costs incurred for the solvency investigation (€ 55 VAT excluded) and the filing fee (€ 40 VAT excluded). You will also receive a certificate of irrecoverability automatically and free of charge. With this, you can remove the unpaid invoice from your turnover and recover any VAT already paid.

If you decide to continue anyway, and your debtor goes bankrupt or goes into judicial reorganisation, the risk of additional costs is at your expense.

If your debtor is declared bankrupt during the procedure, the procedure via Unpaid will automatically stop. Unfortunately, this means that you will lose your advance payment, but the costs effectively incurred by the bailiff up until the point of the enforceable title, will still be covered. Concretely, this means all the actual costs that the bailiff incurred from the start of the procedure until the end of the statutory payment term of 1 month and 8 days.

Once you have submitted a claim to us, you give us a mandate to carry out the IOS procedure. This means that you give us the mandate to find a solution for your unpaid invoice within the scope of the IOS procedure. You normally do this after all the payment terms you have offered your client have expired.

As soon as you have submitted a claim, we take a number of steps that are closely aligned with each other. Putting a claim on hold before the payment reminder is served can only be done in the case where you have received a direct payment. However, a promise of payment is not sufficient. We assume that, once you use Unpaid, the "promises" phase is over.

After submitting your claim, we will start working immediately. Your claim is processed, and the bailiff starts a solvency investigation prepares the reminder. Thus, we immediately incur a number of costs. If you want to cancel the claim for a good reason (e.g. your client appears to have paid after all), we will refund the full advance if this is done within 12 hours after the claim has been submitted.

If you decide to stop the claim within 72 hours after the claim has been submitted, you will get your deposit back minus €40 (excl. VAT) for the file costs and €55 (excl. VAT) for the solvency investigation.

If you receive a message from the bailiff that the solvency is in doubt which makes you decide to stop the claim, we will also refund the advance, after deduction of €40 for the filing costs and €55 for the solvency investigation. You will also receive a certificate of irrecoverability automatically and free of charge. With this, you can remove the unpaid invoice from your turnover and recover any VAT already paid.

Once the reminder has been served, things will be different. It is always the intention that the debtor pays the entire debt to the bailiff, including all costs incurred. In exceptional cases, the debtor will pay the outstanding debt directly to you. In that case, however, the outstanding costs will still have to be paid. For this purpose, the bailiff sends the debtor a letter of balance free of charge and execution is continued. If you, nevertheless, wish to terminate the proceedings, the costs consist of several elements. On the one hand, the amounts advanced by you and already paid; on the other hand, the indemnity clause that amounts to a maximum of 10% of the principal sum.

Your customer can dispute it at any time, which will lead to the end of this procedure.

Then the procedure stops there. The bailiff will contact you to discuss the possible next steps.

If the other party does not respond, the judicial officer can obtain an enforceable title after one month and eight days and force the debtor to pay. He does this by taking measures, such as seizure and, in extreme cases, a public sale.

If the procedure reaches that stage, there is a risk of additional costs. After all, the advance paid covers all costs up to the moment the title is obtained. These additional costs are always recovered from the debtor. Only when the debtor goes into bankruptcy or WCO, is there a chance that we will have to recover these costs from you. However, we continuously monitor the debtor's solvency. If we think that the chance of these additional costs is real, we will always contact you. At that moment, you have the chance to stop the procedure without additional costs. Our point of departure is that you never risk additional costs without us explicitly informing you. Since we do an extensive solvency check at the start of each procedure, this situation is, fortunately, rare.

• If your customer complies with these facilities, then the procedure will be over once the debt is paid in full.
• If your customer does not comply with the facilities, the bailiff will have to obtain an enforceable right and will force your customer to pay. This will be done by taking measures such as seizure of property. The bailiff will contact you directly to obtain your approval and to discuss the costs for this action.