Consultancies, engineering practices and IT integrators invoice for work delivered under a signed contract, then watch a cross-border client stop paying once the engagement closes. Debt recovery professional services claims turn on documentation, not on the size of the invoice. SOLUTIO assesses the file before any recovery step begins, and says plainly when the claim is not worth pursuing.
Most disputes begin at the boundary between phases of an engagement. A fixed-fee project reaches a milestone the client disputes, a time-and-materials retainer ends mid-term without a final reconciliation, or a licence or subscription fee falls due after the relationship has already cooled. Cross-border engagement letters are frequently silent on governing law, which leaves the creditor uncertain which court or arbitral body actually has jurisdiction once payment stops.
Some files start earlier still, at client insolvency shortly after handover: the deliverable was accepted, the invoice was issued, and the counterparty simply ceased trading before settlement. Before advising on a route, we assess whether the debtor still holds assets a judgment could reach, an approach set out on our cross-border debt recovery page.
Professional services claims are won or lost on paper the client signed while satisfied, not on paper drafted after the dispute arose. The file we ask for at intake includes:
A claim with a signed acceptance and a clean invoice trail is a different proposition from one resting on an oral instruction and a disputed timesheet, even where the amount owed is identical.
Clients who stop paying rarely deny the engagement outright. They dispute its edges. The recurring defences are that the work was not delivered to the agreed specification, that no formal sign-off was obtained, that the invoice was issued after termination, or that the fee should be set off against an alleged overcharge on an earlier phase.
Each of these is defeated by the same class of evidence: contemporaneous written acceptance, a scope document the client actually signed, and correspondence showing the client used the deliverable after the date it now disputes. A dispute over a governing law and jurisdiction clause buried in a services agreement often decides which forum hears the defence at all, before the merits are reached.
The sequence starts with an assessment of the documentation against the debtor's known assets and trading activity, not with a demand letter. Where the file supports it, a formal demand sets out the claim and a deadline, framed to preserve the option of a negotiated settlement rather than to provoke immediate litigation.
Where no settlement follows and assets remain traceable, escalation runs through the competent court or the arbitral clause named in the engagement letter, with admitted lawyers and licensed providers instructed in the jurisdiction concerned. The intake step that determines whether this route is worth opening is described on our asset and enforceability check page.
We say so at intake, before fees are incurred, rather than after months of correspondence.
It depends on whether the client engages after the formal demand or waits for a court process. A file with clean acceptance documentation and a cooperative debtor resolves faster than one requiring foreign litigation from the outset.
Recovery is possible where written acceptance or continued use of the deliverable contradicts the later complaint. Without that record, a quality dispute becomes a substantive defence that has to be litigated on its merits, which changes the assessment.
The claim may still be worth pursuing if enforceable assets exist somewhere reachable by a judgment or arbitral award. Where no such assets can be identified, we say so rather than proceed on a speculative basis.
The engagement closed months ago, and the invoice is still open while the client continues trading somewhere else. Every additional week without a documented claim narrows the moment before another creditor reaches the same assets first. The engagement letter, the sign-off and the ledger entry stay the same whether the file is assessed now or later, but the assets behind them do not.