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When delivering your products make sure to send an invoice for goods, Make it blatantly obvious that the invoice is an invoice, some shop owners seem to mistake an invoice as a delivery note or packing note for some reason. Also make a point that this is a sale of goods, it is an agreement between you and the buyer, it is not a sale or return agreement, the goods you have supplied must be paid for, goods cannot be returned, remember this is a business deal, the buyer has made a legally binding agreement to purchase goods from you, they are not consumers and have no rights under the consumer rights act. If the product is of merchantable quality, it is entirely up to you how you handle returns, meaning that you either accept them or not, if you do decide to accept returns you can change a handling fee, this is quite normal and accepted.
After 30 days send your retailer a polite reminder asking for the payment, to be made ASAP. After one week if payment has not been made telephone the customer and ask when you can expect payment to be made ask for a date when you will receive your cheque. You can continue to phone for payment, some retailers genuinely forget, but be warned many are very good at putting you off. It may be a good idea to offer to call in to collect payment and generally have a chat about how things are going, as this will give the retailer a chance to explain if he has a reason for withholding payment, this will be an issue you will have to work through. You can employ Debt collections agencies to recover the funds on your behalf. A warning about taking customers to Court. It is rarely successful, more often than not it is also very expensive, takes a very long time, with the end result being negative. So unless it is a very large amount of money it is not worth it, you will find if you get to this point telephoning the customer and explaining that you will be calling to recover all your products or payment in full generally works quite well, payment is soon forthcoming. This works particularly well if the customer is local, it is only a problem if you are in Essex, and the customer is in Scotland, however you can still threaten to do this, call their bluff and see how quickly the cheque falls on the doormat. Hopefully you will get paid quickly and be able to move to the next step with your customer, it's a good idea to be customer related and contact your customer and ask if they are satisfied with the products and how they have sold, also visit them again soon to show any new work you may be working on.
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