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Bectran Product Team
I
February 5, 2026
7 minutes to read
When a customer is 100 days past due and goes silent, you are no longer managing payment timing or liquidity. You are managing customer behavior and running loss mitigation. The communication breakdown indicates something more serious than temporary cash-flow issues. This playbook addresses how to handle the silent, deeply delinquent account.
When an account crosses the 100-day threshold without a clear payment plan, the dynamic changes. Several patterns emerge repeatedly.
Credit teams report customers who have the money but treat trade credit as a 0% interest loan until forced to pay. They rely on the credit team's politeness to delay payment. These customers ignore calls and emails until threatened with collections and legal action. Average collection periods exceed 107 days (more than three months past standard terms). The resolution requires threatening legal action, which damages the commercial relationship but prompts a response. Many of these customers are ultimately reverted to COD terms.
Sometimes, the amount past due is small, but the risk of future exposure is high. A credit manager might be holding a small past-due balance while the sales team is trying to push through a massive new order. This creates a dangerous leverage point.
Credit teams describe scenarios like struggling to collect $2,000 while $60,000 in open orders await shipment. If a customer struggles to pay $2,000 or refuses to pay, allowing $60,000 in new exposure creates fundamental risk. The silence (lack of communication) combined with 116-day average payment cycles, forces total credit revocation.
Small balances that sit on the ledger for months require just as much administrative work as large ones. If a customer refuses to clear a small limit, it signals a deeper administrative disregard for your terms.
Teams report giving customers multiple opportunities to pay small credit limits within reasonable timeframes, only to have them fail repeatedly. Small balances eventually get paid 120 days late, prompting account closure. The cost of collecting the money eventually exceeds the profit margin on the customer's business.
In the worst-case scenario, the customer stops engaging entirely. This forces the credit team to outsource the problem, accepting that they will likely lose a percentage of the debt to collection agency fees.
Credit teams report DSO reaching 166 days (nearly six months old) when customers do not respond, forcing transfers to collections to recover the money. The likelihood of full recovery declines significantly over time, making the lack of a response the critical factor in sending the file to external collections.
Why does a B2B customer, who likely needs your product or service, stop communicating after 90 or 100 days? The operational reality is often more nuanced than simple cash flow issues.
Many accounts payable departments are instructed to prioritize vendors who stop service. If your company continues to ship goods or provide services despite the past-due balance, you signal that payment carries no urgency. The customer's AP team will allocate their limited cash to vendors who have put them on credit hold. Polite vendors who keep shipping get paid last.
In many organizations, the sales team cannot see the granular details of the aging report. They see a Credit Status: Active flag and continue to book orders. The customer sees this as confirmation that their delay is acceptable. The disconnect between the credit department's concern and the sales department's behavior confuses the customer's AP team or gives them a false sense of security.
Sometimes, silence is a tactic to mask a dispute that was never formally filed. A customer may ignore invoices for 100 days, and only when threatened with legal action do they claim the pricing was wrong. This converts a credit issue into a dispute-resolution issue, giving them even more time while the credit team investigates.
When a company is in genuine distress, it often cuts off communication with vendors to avoid admitting insolvency. Silence at 120 days is a strong leading indicator of potential bankruptcy. They are likely paying critical utilities and payroll while ignoring trade creditors until the last possible moment.
Waiting 100 days for a customer to reply rarely succeeds. Credit teams need a definitive escalation playbook that removes emotion and relies on pre-set triggers. This ensures that decisions like revoking credit or filing legal claims are business processes, not personal conflicts.
If standard email reminders are being ignored, the communication channel must change. The goal here is to determine if the customer is insolvent or just ignoring you.
This phase addresses the scenario where the customer owes a small amount but wants a large order.
If silence continues, the relationship has effectively ended. The focus becomes recovery.
Implementing a strict 100-day playbook impacts more than just the bad debt reserve. It signals to the market and your internal teams that payment terms are requirements, not suggestions.
Chasing a silent customer for 160 days wastes hours of credit analyst time that could be spent on onboarding good customers or managing complex, high-value accounts. Closing the loop at 120 days frees up capacity.
Allowing a customer to float 116 days on a small balance creates a blind spot. If they suddenly place a large order and the system auto-approves it based on an Active status, the exposure jumps exponentially. Revoking credit prevents this shock.
Removing the wild card accounts from the forecast allows treasury to plan better. Knowing that an account will either pay or be written off by day 120 provides certainty, whereas an account dragging to day 166 creates a perpetual gray area in cash forecasting.
When you see an account hit the 100-day mark with no response, run through this checklist before the end of the week:
Proactive escalation is the only way to break the silence. Waiting for a silent customer to volunteer payment often leads to 166-day delays.
Customers ignoring calls and emails past 100 days? Small $2K balance but $60K in open orders? Bectran's collections platform includes automated escalation workflows triggered at 90/100/120-day thresholds, credit hold enforcement that prevents shipments to deeply delinquent accounts regardless of Active status, leverage tracking (open orders + pending shipments) to identify negotiation opportunities, Dunning Doctor to optimize collection messages for 3X higher response rates before legal escalation, and collections handoff workflows that automate transfer to third-party agencies at predefined deadlines—ensuring consistent enforcement and preventing 166-day collection cycles. See how collections automation works.
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