How to Manage Debtors in Ghana | Get Customers to Pay

Getting Paid: Managing Debtors in a Ghanaian Business featured image

Selling on credit is normal in Ghanaian trade. The problem is not the credit — it is that most shops cannot say, today, exactly who owes what and for how long. Sort every unpaid amount into age buckets, call the oldest first, set a credit limit per customer before the next sale, and record every part-payment against the invoice it belongs to.

Ask a shop owner in Ghana how much they are owed and you will usually get a pause, then an estimate, then a sentence that begins "well, there's also…".

The estimate is almost always too low. Not because anyone is careless, but because credit given in ones and twos across a busy month does not stay in anybody's head.

This is not a small leak. For many wholesalers and provision stores, the money sitting in other people's shops is larger than the money in the bank account. It is the business's biggest asset and the one nobody can produce a figure for.

The Credit Is Not the Problem

There is a common piece of advice that goes: stop selling on credit. In much of Ghanaian trade this is not advice, it is a way to lose your customers to the shop next door. Distributors extend credit because that is how their buyers operate. A provision store that insists on cash from a regular trader will watch that trader walk.

The problem is not the credit. It is that credit is being given without limits, without agreed terms and without records — and then chased on the basis of who happens to come to mind.

Everything below assumes you will keep selling on credit. The aim is to stop it quietly eating your working capital.

Ageing: The One Thing That Changes How You Collect

"Customers owe me GHS 42,000" is not information you can act on. It produces worry, not phone calls.

Ageing splits that figure by how long each amount has been outstanding:

0–30 days — normal trading. Most of this will arrive without any effort. Do not spend your energy here.
31–60 days — drifting. A short, friendly reminder now usually works, and costs you nothing in goodwill.
61–90 days — a problem forming. This needs an actual conversation about when and how, not another reminder.
Over 90 days — treat as at risk. Collection probability drops steeply past this point, and a fourth polite message will not change it.

The same GHS 42,000 might be GHS 30,000 in the first bucket — entirely normal — and GHS 6,000 over 90 days, which is the part that should worry you. Or it might be the reverse. Those are two completely different businesses, and the single total cannot tell them apart.

In SellarPro this is Quick Data → Debtors List, which sorts every unpaid amount into exactly these bands with the customer's number beside it. In a spreadsheet, add an invoice date column and calculate days outstanding — the arithmetic is the same, it just takes longer.

Why oldest-first beats largest-first

The instinct is to chase the biggest number. Age is the better signal.

A GHS 3,000 balance at 15 days is a customer trading normally. A GHS 400 balance at 120 days is a customer who has already decided, consciously or not, that this one is not getting paid. Every additional week of silence makes it likelier that the debt becomes permanent — and confirms to the customer that nothing happens when they do not pay.

Work the oldest bucket first, every time, even when the amounts look small.

A Collection Sequence That Does Not Cost You the Customer

The fear behind most uncollected debt in Ghana is not administrative. It is relational: chase too hard and you lose a regular buyer. That fear is legitimate, and the answer is to make the chase routine and unemotional rather than an accusation.

Day 0 — agree the terms out loud. "This is GHS 1,200, payment in 30 days." Written on the invoice and said at the point of sale. Most late payment starts as a genuine misunderstanding about when payment was due.
Around day 25 — a reminder before it is late. A short SMS that arrives before the due date is a courtesy, not a demand. It is also the single highest-return message you will send, because it costs no goodwill at all.
Day 35 — a short, factual message. Amount, invoice, date. No apology and no accusation. Routine tone signals that this is simply how your business runs.
Day 45–60 — a phone call. Not another text. Ask a specific question: "When can you settle this?" Get a date, and record the date. Vague agreements are how debts reach 90 days.
Day 60+ — change the terms. New sales move to cash, or to part-payment against the old balance. Say it plainly and without drama. This is the point at which most owners hesitate, and hesitating here is what creates 180-day debt.
Day 90+ — decide. Payment plan, partial settlement, or write it off. What you must not do is nothing.

Consistency is doing more work here than firmness. Customers learn very quickly which suppliers keep records and which do not, and they pay the ones who do first — not out of respect, but because those are the invoices that will definitely be noticed.

Credit Limits: Deciding Before, Not After

Most credit problems are decided at the point of sale, when someone says yes to an amount they would not have agreed to if they had known the customer's existing balance.

Set a limit per customer, based on what they reliably buy and pay for in a normal month — not on what they are asking for today.
Start new customers small. Raise the limit after two or three payments made on time. This is not distrust; it is the same thing every supplier who survives does.
Make the current balance visible at the till. A cashier cannot enforce a limit they cannot see. This single change prevents more bad debt than any collection process.
Decide who may override a limit — and make sure that person is not the one under pressure from a customer standing at the counter.

Recording Payments So the Ageing Stays Honest

A debtors list is only as good as the payments recorded against it. Two habits keep it trustworthy:

Apply payments to specific invoices, oldest first. When a customer pays GHS 500 against three outstanding sales, that payment must land against the oldest one. Recorded as a general lump against the customer, the ageing becomes fiction — you will see a large recent balance and no old debt, when the reverse is true.

Record the payment when it arrives, not at the end of the week. MoMo payments are the usual casualty: money lands on a phone, nobody enters it, and the customer gets chased for an amount they already paid. That single error damages the relationship far more than any reminder.

The Cash-Flow Cost Nobody Counts

Money owed to you is money you have already spent. You paid your supplier for those goods. The customer has them. You have a promise.

If GHS 20,000 of your stock is permanently sitting in other people's shops, that is GHS 20,000 you cannot use to restock a fast-moving line — and it does not appear anywhere in your profit figure, which is exactly why profitable businesses run out of cash. Profit and cash are not the same thing, and credit sales are where they separate.

Two useful checks:

Is the total owed growing month on month? A rising balance alongside flat sales means you are financing your customers, not growing.
What share sits past 90 days? If it is climbing, your collection process has stopped working regardless of what the headline total says.

Worth noting: debt you never collect also quietly distorts your profit. It was recorded as a sale, so it is sitting in your figures as income that never arrived — related to the way unrecorded costs inflate margins, which we cover in why your POS profit figures are wrong.

What You Need in Place

None of this requires particular software — it requires that four things are true, whatever you use:

Every credit sale is recorded against a named customer, not as a note or a memory
Unpaid amounts can be sorted by age, not just totalled
Part-payments apply to specific invoices, oldest first
The customer's current balance is visible before the next credit sale is approved

SellarPro tracks credit per customer, ages every unpaid amount into buckets with the customer's number ready to call, and lets you log part-payments against the sale they belong to. See credit sales tracking, customer management, and — for distributors, where credit exposure is largest — wholesale software.

The businesses that collect well are rarely the toughest. They are the ones who can answer "who owes me, and for how long?" without pausing.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know which customers to chase first?

Sort unpaid amounts by how long they have been outstanding, not by size. A GHS 400 debt at 120 days is more urgent than a GHS 3,000 debt at 15 days, because collection probability falls sharply with age while a recent balance is usually just a normal trading cycle.

What is debtors ageing?

Ageing groups every unpaid amount into bands by how long it has been owed — typically 0-30, 31-60, 61-90 and over 90 days. It converts one large meaningless total into a list you can act on, because each band needs a different response.

Should I stop selling on credit?

Usually no. In much of Ghanaian wholesale and provisions trade, refusing credit means losing the customer to the shop next door. The workable position is credit with limits, agreed terms and accurate records, rather than credit by memory.

How do I set a credit limit?

Base it on what the customer reliably buys and pays for in a normal month, not on what they ask for. Start conservative with a new customer, raise the limit once they have paid on time two or three times, and enforce it at the point of sale rather than afterwards.

What do I do about very old debt?

Debt past 90 days needs a decision rather than another reminder: negotiate a payment plan you will actually track, settle for a partial amount, or write it off and stop extending credit to that customer. Leaving it on the books unresolved overstates the value of your business.

How should I record part-payments?

Always against the specific invoice or sale being settled, oldest first, rather than as a general lump against the customer. Otherwise the ageing becomes meaningless and you cannot tell which balance is genuinely old.

Part of our Customer & CRM resources — see the full guide and related tools.

Know exactly who owes you, and for how long

SellarPro tracks credit per customer and sorts unpaid amounts by age, so your first call of the morning is the right one. Book a free live demo with your own customer list.

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