Step 1 · Frame it
The decision, not the symptom.
What we do, in detail
Four things, with one line kept deliberately sharp.
Program 01 · Code 70.200
Management consultancy
In a company of fewer than twenty people, the hard decisions are rarely hard to analyse. They are hard because everyone involved has a day job and no one is accountable for reaching the conclusion. So an engagement here is defined by the decision it has to produce, not by days to be filled, and it finishes when the decision is written down with names and dates against it.
Step 2 · Evidence
What is known, and how reliably.
Step 3 · Options
Including doing nothing, costed.
Step 4 · Decide
Written down, with who does what.
Step 1 · Terms
What yours say, against the ceiling.
Step 2 · Invoicing
Same day, complete, no disputes invited.
Step 3 · Schedule
Who chases, when, and in what words.
Step 4 · Escalate
On a date, not on a feeling.
Program 02 · Sixty days, maximum
Getting paid
Since February 2022 a payment term longer than sixty calendar days cannot be agreed between businesses in Belgium, the inspection period counts inside those sixty days, and interest runs as of right without any reminder being needed, along with a fixed recovery charge. Most small suppliers do not know this and absorb ninety-day terms they never had to accept. The rest of the work is dull and decisive: invoice the day the work is done, chase on a schedule rather than on a mood, and escalate on dates set in advance.
Program 03 · Not legal advice
Terms worth questioning
A great many business contracts contain clauses that would not survive contact with the rules: a unilateral right to interpret the agreement, a waiver of all recourse, an exclusion of liability for gross negligence, automatic renewal without reasonable notice, a penalty bearing no relation to the loss. Spotting them is commercial work and it is what happens here. Advising on their legal effect is not, and the output is a short list of questions for a lawyer rather than an opinion dressed up as one.
Step 1 · Read it
The whole thing, including the annexes.
Step 2 · Flag it
Clauses that look one-sided, and why.
Step 3 · Questions
Written, ready to put to a lawyer.
Step 4 · Negotiate
The commercial position, once advised.
Step 1 · Measure
The real share, by revenue and by margin.
Step 2 · Exposure
What a loss or a squeeze would do.
Step 3 · Target
What proportion you will accept.
Step 4 · Build
Deliberately, over years not quarters.
Program 04 · Before it bites
Customer concentration
A company earning most of its revenue from one customer has handed that customer its pricing, its terms and its timetable, and usually knows it long before it acts. Belgian law prohibits the abuse of a position of economic dependence, which matters, but it is a remedy rather than a plan. The work here is the plan: knowing the real figure, deciding what proportion is tolerable, and building towards it deliberately over a period measured in years.
Terms about to be signed, or an invoice nobody is chasing?
A free first conversation, with no obligation. Send the agreement if you have it.