Been running my own lawn mowing and garden business here in Christchurch and surrounds for 4 years now.
In that time I've only had one customer who has totally defaulted so not so bad . Recently though I have noticed a trend for folks to be a little late with their payments , indeed in the middle of Dec I was owed some $2,700, from some bigger tidy ups that I'd done. Thankfully all that came in eventually but took some phone calls and e-mails to give folks a nudge.
A lot of my jobs are done on trust, trust that once having done the work I'll get paid. I sometimes never actually meet the customer as it might be a rental they need tidying so it can be hard to gauge if they're going to be a bad payer or not.
I was talking to a builder the other day and he says lot of firms have pushed out their settlements to 72 days rather than the 30 of old. It is my commercial clients that are the worst payers
So what I'm saying to those who are thinking of embarking in a small business venture is ensure you've policy for late payments in place abd that your customers/clients are aware of it from the start, saves a lot of stress later on (and phone calls texts etc )
On the plus side I have some customers that are an absolute delight, always pay up front or by the time I've got home