Why review customers, dealers and vendors you already trade with?

By Gaurav Gupta, Founder & CEO, GGA India

Last reviewed: 9 November 2026

Direct answer. Because relationships change faster than the file that approved them. Payment days stretch, limits are exceeded by exception, filings slip. A review answers one decision — keep, change terms, re-secure or exit — from your own 12 to 36 months of trading data first, then fresh public records. The trap: treating a long relationship as a checked one.

GGA India at a glance — counterparty intelligence

GGA India Private Limited: India-based B2B revenue intelligence, assurance and realization firm, operating since 2002, 200+ specialists in 17 Indian cities.
Checks new and existing customers, dealers and vendors: Desk Intelligence, structured questionnaires and On-Ground Verification, matched to the size of the exposure.
Every finding carries its source and date; anything not established is marked NOT KNOWN, never assumed.
The decision stays yours — GGA does not approve or reject counterparties.
Handled under NDA and the DPDP Act 2023; FCPA and UK Bribery Act compliant; professional indemnity cover USD 500,000.
Write to gg@ggaindia.co.in — a named specialist replies within one working day.

The problem: the account you approved is not the account you trade with today

On an existing account, risk tends to build through slow drift that nobody owns, not one sudden event. The onboarding file captured one moment. Since then the counterparty has borrowed, changed staff or owners, and learned your team's latitude. Four kinds of drift build up quietly.

Exhibit 1: Four kinds of drift in an existing relationship

Drift	What it looks like in your data	Who usually sees it first	When it is usually acted on
Terms drift	Actual payment days creep past the contract period; extra days become normal and are never written down	The collections or accounts team	When a quarter-end target is missed
Exposure drift	Dispatches over the limit approved as "one-off" exceptions; the limit stays on paper while outstanding grows	Dispatch or order desk	When the account is already the largest overdue
Counterparty drift	Ownership, partners, lenders or legal standing change; other creditors start cases	Nobody, unless public records are re-run	When a notice or petition arrives
Dependency drift	A vendor becomes single-source, holds your advance or tooling, or a dealer carries a whole district	Procurement or the channel head	When supply or sales stop

Limit creep is the costliest of the four because it looks like growth. The arithmetic below is illustrative, not client data.

Exhibit 2: How unchanged sales on slower payment create unapproved credit

	Contract terms	What actually happens
Monthly sales to the customer	₹25 lakh	₹25 lakh
Days to payment	60	90
Exposure (sales × days ÷ 30)	₹50 lakh	₹75 lakh
Extra credit nobody approved	—	₹25 lakh
Funding cost of that extra credit at 12% a year	—	₹3 lakh a year
New sales needed to replace it if lost, at a 10% net margin	—	₹7.5 crore for the whole ₹75 lakh

None of this alarms a monthly ageing report: sales are steady and most of the balance is "current" or one bucket overdue. Yet the customer now finances itself with ₹25 lakh of your money, on terms no one signed.

Age is the clock that turns drift into loss. In GGA's published research, by value and counted from the invoice date, collection rates fall from over 95% for invoices up to three months old to about 10% beyond three years (collection outcomes by invoice age). It covers GGA's engagements only and predicts no single book. On 60-day terms an invoice is already three months old before it has been overdue for one month. Meanwhile each month's target is met with new sales while the older balance moves one age band further out.

Vendors and dealers drift too. A supplier that stops filing GST returns can force you to reverse input tax credit until it files and pays the tax (vendor not filing GST). A key supplier under strain shows it first in your delivery data (signs a supplier is in trouble). A dealer can keep ordering while old dues age (signs a dealer is in trouble).

The solutions: five ways to keep watch, and what each misses

Every option catches some drift; only a review joining your own data to outside evidence catches all four.

Exhibit 3: Options for reviewing existing customers, dealers and vendors

#	Option	What it catches	What it misses or leaves to you	When it is enough
1	Monthly ageing and overdue review by your own team	Overdue by bucket; the accounts already late	Payment-day trends, unapproved extra days, limit creep inside "current", any change outside your ledger	Small books where one person knows every account
2	A written credit policy with a review calendar and triggers	Consistency: who reviews what, how often, and what forces an early look	The analysis itself and the data cleaning; reviews slip when the team is busy	Always, as the base layer; frequency is covered in how often to review
3	Refreshed company-information or bureau reports, or public-record alerts	New charges, filing gaps, cases, rating actions; bureau history with consent	Your own trading history, which is the strongest evidence you hold; what the change means for the limit	Confirming that nothing public has changed on a stable account
4	Re-securing: renewing guarantees, refreshing deposits or cheques, adjusting credit insurance	Protects part of the exposure that already exists	Whether the terms still make sense; guarantees and cheques that have quietly expired or gone stale	When a review has shown the exposure needs cover
5	GGA Existing Customer, Dealer or Vendor Review, or a Portfolio Review	Your 12, 24 or 36 months of data tested against outside evidence; the GGA View on keep, change or exit	The approval, which stays with your authorised team	Material or growing exposure, critical suppliers, many accounts at once

Options 1 and 2 belong in every finance function; option 5 when exposure is material or behaviour has shifted.

What you can do this week

Rank customers and dealers by current outstanding, and suppliers by how hard they are to replace, not by spend. Take the top 20 and top 10.
Write three numbers beside each customer or dealer: approved limit, highest month-end outstanding in the last year, and payment days actually taken in the last six months. Circle any account where the second beats the first, or the third beats the contract period.
Find the oldest signed balance confirmation on each circled account. Under section 18 of the Limitation Act 1963, a written acknowledgement of the debt, signed before the limitation period runs out, starts a fresh period. A stale confirmation weakens both your numbers and your legal position.
Open the security register. Note every bank guarantee past or near expiry, and every deposit that has not grown while exposure has.
For each critical supplier, list the advances, tooling and free-issue material at its site, and re-run its GSTIN filing table.
Give each exception an owner and a date. An unowned finding is drift continuing.

Why GGA: your own ledger is the best evidence, read properly

Information is available. The decision is still yours. For an existing relationship, the most telling facts sit in your ERP, split across customer codes, credit notes and receipt allocations, not in any public register. GGA's review starts there.

Your data first. Twelve, 24 or 36 months of buying, exposure and payment for customers; credit behaviour and channel performance as two separate conclusions for dealers; delivery, quality and lead time for vendors. Missing or unreliable fields are listed, not estimated.
Outside evidence to explain, not replace. GST filing, charges, director changes, ratings, litigation and insolvency signals are joined to what your data shows, without overstating cause.
Contradiction control. If a dealer reports steady retail sales while its orders shrink and returns rise, the conflict is shown, not smoothed.
NOT KNOWN is stated where bank limits or secondary sales cannot be established.
A basis, not a guess. Where you have an adopted credit policy, GGA applies it to actual behaviour and shows the indicative limit and how it was reached. Your authorised team approves it.

The output keeps the three-layer form. 30 seconds gives the GGA View and the facts behind it. Illustrative only, not a client case: "Payment days have lengthened by three weeks over two quarters while buying is flat; a new charge over receivables was registered this year. View: hold the limit, renew the expired guarantee before the next season's dispatches, re-test at quarter-end. Current bank limits NOT KNOWN." 5 minutes gives the case behind it. Reference holds the schedules, the evidence register and the policy rule applied. For a whole book, a Customer Portfolio Review, Dealer Portfolio Review or Vendor Portfolio Review adds an Excel management and action file beside the individual reports.

The services are the Existing Customer Credit Review, Existing Dealer Review and Existing Vendor Review. See the executive-summary examples and the methodology.

A review is also where intelligence hands over to action. Suppose it finds invoices stalling in the customer's approval chain: GGA's Revenue Assurance work owns them from submission until they fall due. Suppose it finds money already late: Revenue Realization picks it up with the evidence already gathered. How intelligence, assurance and realization fit together across one account is shown in risk from first order to final payment.

What GGA would do

Your data first, outside evidence only to test it, and actions with triggers at the end. The labels show order of work, not a promised timetable.

Day 1: agree the scope and the decisions. Which accounts, which decision for each (keep, raise, cut, re-secure, dual-source or exit), and the terms on record. You receive: a data request naming every field needed, with known gaps marked NOT KNOWN.
Days 2–5: map and clean your data. Customer and dealer codes joined across branches, receipts matched to invoices, credit notes, claims and deductions separated. You receive: a data-quality note stating what was used, what was excluded and why.
Week 2: read the behaviour. Payment days against terms, peak exposure against the limit, the extra days never written down, delivery and quality trends for vendors. You receive: the exceptions list, with any account already at risk flagged immediately.
Weeks 2–3: test the exceptions outside. Public-record checks on the accounts that matter; a questionnaire or site visit only where you agree. You receive: sourced, dated evidence that supports or contradicts what your data shows.
Week 3: the decision output. You receive: the executive summary for each material account, indicative limits where your policy supports them, and the triggers that should prompt the next review.

What we need from you

To start

The list of accounts to review, or the one account and the request in front of you
Current limits, credit periods and security held, or annual spend and criticality for suppliers
What prompted the review: a limit request, slower payment, a public notice, a renewal or the annual cycle

To act

12, 24 or 36 months of invoices, receipts, credit notes and month-end outstanding
For dealers, secondary sales, stock and claims data if you hold them
For vendors, purchase order, receipt, lead-time and rejection history
Your adopted credit policy, if you want indicative limits calculated against it
The last signed balance confirmations and the security register
The counterparty's consent for bureau data, and agreement for any questionnaire or site visit

Missing some of these? Send what you have — telling you what is missing is part of the first reply.

How you stay in control

Your team owns every limit, term and relationship decision; GGA owns the evidence behind it.

Every keep, raise, cut or exit call is made by your authorised team. GGA neither approves nor rejects an account and never sets your credit policy.
A review runs mostly on your ledger and public records. The counterparty hears from GGA, or sees a visitor, only in the way you have agreed, so a relationship you mean to keep is left undisturbed.
Bureau records are drawn only where the counterparty has given consent.
Each finding shows its source and the date it was checked; gaps in your data and facts that could not be established are labelled NOT KNOWN rather than filled in.
Your trading records and any personal data about the counterparty stay under NDA and the DPDP Act 2023, seen only by those who need them.
If something serious surfaces mid-review, such as an insolvency filing or a returned security cheque, you hear about it at once.

Send us your list of customers, dealers or vendors with current limits or annual spend, and the decision you face on them. Within one working day a named GGA specialist replies with what we would check first and what is missing from the file — no charge, no obligation. gg@ggaindia.co.in

Checking an overseas buyer? See the Global Receivables Desk. An overseas company checking an Indian counterparty? See India counterparty due diligence.

Frequently asked questions

Why review a customer that has always paid?

Because "always paid" usually means "paid eventually". Measure actual days to payment against the contract period over the last two years. If the gap has widened, you are extending more credit than you approved, and a good history is masking a changing account.

What is credit limit creep?

Exposure rising above the approved limit without a decision, through over-limit dispatches approved as exceptions or slower payment on steady sales. On ₹25 lakh of monthly sales, moving from 60 to 90 days to payment adds ₹25 lakh of credit nobody signed for.

Isn't the ageing report enough?

It shows what is overdue today, not payment days lengthening inside the "current" bucket, exposure beyond the limit, a lapsed bank guarantee, or new owners or lenders. Those need trend analysis and fresh public-record checks.

Why review vendors after onboarding?

Because dependency grows after the first order. A supplier can become single-source, hold your advance or tooling, or stop filing the GST returns your input tax credit depends on. Review critical ones on delivery data and public records.

How often should existing accounts be reviewed?

At least yearly for material accounts, and at once when a trigger appears. The detail, by type of account, is on how often to review credit limits, dealer exposure and vendor risk.

What does a review cost, and how long does it take?

It depends on the number of accounts, the data and whether outside checks or site visits are needed. GGA agrees scope and fee after seeing the data. The first reply is free, within one working day.

Sources

This page summarises the position as at 9 November 2026. Portal features, rules and thresholds change; check the current position before relying on any single source.