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Reminder fees - Here are the rules you should know - Debt Collection Blog
Sebastian S.
19/02/2021

Late payment charges: here are the rules you should know

Every day, businesses, large and small, experience one or more invoices going unpaid. There are often many reasons for non-payment - and sending a reminder letter, with or without a reminder fee, is a good idea to make the debtor aware of your outstanding balance.

Why send reminders?

If a debtor fails to make a payment, the debtor should be made aware of the non-payment as soon as possible after the due date. There are often many reasons for non-payment - and often it is due to a simple oversight on the part of the debtor. Therefore, you should always reminder the payment, either by phone or by letter, a so-called reminder letter.

All experience shows that the sooner you reminder the missing payment, the sooner you will recover your outstanding balance.

Rules on reminder fees

You can send your first reminder as soon as you notice that a payment is overdue (the payment deadline has passed). As a creditor, you have the right to impose a reminder fee on the first reminder you send to your customer.

Reminders for non-payment cost time and money, therefore you have the possibility to impose a reminder fee to compensate for the non-payment, in the form of a reminder fee

The rules for imposing reminder fees are relatively simple:

  • You must give the debtor a minimum of 10 days to pay the reminder fee + original invoice
  • A maximum of one reminder fee may be charged per reminder letter / reminder letter.
  • A maximum of 100 kroner may be charged per reminder letter / reminder letter. The amount is VAT-free.
  • A maximum of 3 reminder fees may be charged per claim. However, there is no maximum number of reminders that can be sent.

In general, you can reminder your customer as often as you want, even without the 10-day payment deadline - in this case, however, you cannot impose reminder fees. 

In other words, if you impose a reminder fee on your customers, the payment deadline of at least 10 days MUST be respected - otherwise the reminder fee is not valid.

Example of a reminder process

There are many ways to reminder your bad payers - many send reminder letters both with and without a reminder fee, it's up to you. Just remember that if you impose a reminder fee on your debtor, you must comply with the requirement of a minimum payment deadline of 10 days and a maximum reminder fee of DKK 100 (VAT deadline).

An example of a reminder process with a reminder fee could therefore look like this:

  1. Reminder, reminder fee and 10 days to pay = 100 kroner
  2. Reminder, reminder fee and 10 days to pay = 100 kroner
  3. Reminder, reminder fee and 10 days to pay = 100 kroner

A total of 300 kroner in reminder fees


Remember the B2B compensation fee

Many companies forget about the compensation fee - and that's a shame.

As a creditor, you can impose a so-called compensation fee on all your business customers in the event of non-payment by a business customer. The compensation fee is DKK 310 and is independent of the other reminder fees.

The compensation fee should be seen as helping to compensate for the additional costs associated with reminders to customers for non-payment.

The rules for imposing a compensation fee are relatively simple:

  • You must give the debtor at least 10 days to pay the compensation fee + original invoice.
  • A maximum of one compensation fee may be charged.
  • You can charge a maximum of 310 kroner in compensation fees.
  • The compensation fee may be imposed in connection with the reminder or as a separate letter to the debtor.
  • A maximum of one compensation fee may be charged per claim.

Take the hassle out of reminders and let a professional debt collection agency do it for you

At Collectia, we have since 1998 helped thousands of small and large Danish companies with their debt collection and reminder letters. We are among Denmark's largest debt collection companies that professionally recover debts for unpaid invoices for Danish banks and businesses.

If you don't want to spend time and effort chasing your customers for non-payment either - let us help you with that. 

Through our online portal you can easily and quickly create your unpaid invoices - and we will take care of the rest. We have made debt collection easy and cheap for you as a trader.


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